"Affordable" is at least semi-quantifiable! I laugh at the noobs coming in here constantly and using the word "best" as if there ever was any single consensus on such a subjective idea as "best" of much of anything on a PC. (There probably are a limited number of items upon which there simply is no competition, but our babes are never asking about those few!)
Nevertheless, using the word affordable WITHOUT naming a price range is going to get too wide a range of replies, because what is affordable to me on a fixed income that isn't really very generous, is far different to a youngster with minimal expenses, no tax bill to speak of, and a nice salary! I was very happy to beat $60 shipped on an ATI-made Radeon 9600 Pro over the weekend, that will probably go into a system that does some gaming.
On my budget, even the mid-range of the newest stuff was too expensive when it came out two years ago, but if it still works pretty doggone well (and I just don't DO the twitch & shoot stuff that's so similar to console style games, so super fast frame rates aren't a big deal), so I have a 5600 Ultra I've been fairly pleased with, but am seeing overheating from, and if it is failing, the 9600 Pro is its backup.
I was just pointed at gpureview.com, and what a lovely resource that place is when you want to see the basics of more than a couple of VGA cards! I blew most of the morning running pairs of cards to compare (I didn't see any way to get a wider page with more than two at a time).
:thumbsup:
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