Best price-to-performance ratios in the $250+ range?

[Kadence]

I'm looking for a graphics card and my ideal price point is $250 or so, though I'm willing to go up if a particularly good deal is available.

My use for the card would be gaming. The newest game I'd be using it for is Witcher 3.

What cards at $250, give or take, are the best deals in terms of price to performance ratio?

 

[RussianSensation]

Well the only card that fits your criteria at around $250 is an after-market R9 290. The next 2 cards are 290X for $280 and GTX970 at $310. 970 comes with TW3 and Batman AK though making it effectively cheaper than the 290X in price/performance when considering the cost of those games.

The above assumes you have a potent CPU though.

Keep in mind AMD is announcing R9 300 series which means either fire-sale prices on R9 290/290X cards or possibility superior options in AMD's own line-up at the $299 price level (i.e., R9 390 is rumored to be $299 with 8GB GDDR5).

 

[antihelten]

It's perhaps worth noting, that if you take a closer look at the graphs RS posted the 290 outperforms the 970 in the first graph (from Techspot), but is slightly behind in the next two (from gameGPU).

The reason for this is that techspot lowers the tesselation level of Hairworks to 8, something that greatly improves the performance of AMD cards when Hairworks is enabled (to the point where they start beating Nvidia cards they would otherwise normally lose to), whilst at the same time incurring little to no IQ loss.

Unfortunately Nvidia does not currently allow you to do the same.

 

[Silverforce11]

PSU? If its rubbish, then R290/X is out of your specs and you might be left with only two options: 960 or 970.

Either way, newer stuff is about to drop.

 

[Headfoot]

Any PSU that can run a 970 can run a 290, the difference is not big enough to matter

 

[DownTheSky]

Yeah, imho if you've already got a decent card and can wait for 2 weeks, new stuff's ab to drop. If the wait is too long, both AMD Radeon R9 290 at $250 or nVidia GeForce 970 at $320, are good cards.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

970 comes with TW3 and Batman AK though making it effectively cheaper than the 290X in price/performance when considering the cost of those games.

That promotion is no longer active. There are plenty of 970s that still come with Batman, but the Witcher 3 is no longer included in any bundles.

 

[Kadence]

Thanks guys I'll wait til next month and see where the prices are at. I'm probably looking at the 970 as it seems worth the price.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Thanks guys I'll wait til next month and see where the prices are at. I'm probably looking at the 970 as it seems worth the price.

You can occasionally find nice 970s around $300. A week or so ago you could find the EVGA GTX 970 SSC for $310. But if the R9 390 ends up being a better binned R9 290 with 8GB VRAM it might end up being a tough call between the two, especially if AMD can come up with a killer game bundle (which they might have to if the cards are all rebrands). Last month that R9 290 that RussianSensation posted above was bundled with GTA V and Dirt Rally for the same $250 after a $20 rebate.

 

[Attic]

The $250-~$300 range card is a touch choice right now. AMD cards age much better than nVidia cards so depending on how long you typically have a card you may gauge this as a factor.

Tempted to say the only choice is the aftermarket R9 290 from AMD. The Sapphire Tri-X 290 is right around $250. The 970 has the gimped memory issue that has the possibility of being an issue as games start using 4gb as a min level mark for use (970 has a 3.5gb configration with 512mb tacked on but slower). 1080p should be fine, but higher resolutions on upcoming games i'd be concerned with placing an order for a 970

That being said it's either the 290 or 970 IMO. If you want the power savings for a greenthumb or case ventilation/noise situation then the 970 starts getting worth it's additional asking price. After this area i'd look to the 980ti and just bite the bullet, the 980ti is a huge win even for that money IMO. Getting off topic, 980ti plus a 4790k and a high res and refresh monitor = gaming bliss.


Good news here for waiting a bit is that there is a large area for AMD to come in and drop some nice goodies at $300-$500 with their upcoming release. I think it's likely they will offer something significantly better than the 970 for around $300 and that they will offer something near the 980ti performance for ~$500.

 

[RussianSensation]

That promotion is no longer active. There are plenty of 970s that still come with Batman, but the Witcher 3 is no longer included in any bundles.

Thanks for correcting me. I didn't know that TW3 coupons had run out.

 

[soccerballtux]

You can occasionally find nice 970s around $300. A week or so ago you could find the EVGA GTX 970 SSC for $310. But if the R9 390 ends up being a better binned R9 290 with 8GB VRAM it might end up being a tough call between the two, especially if AMD can come up with a killer game bundle (which they might have to if the cards are all rebrands). Last month that R9 290 that RussianSensation posted above was bundled with GTA V and Dirt Rally for the same $250 after a $20 rebate.

it makes more sense to get a 290 for $240 after rebate, sell the new copy of GTA5 for $30, and maybe sell the dirt:rally for $15. that puts you at $200 for a 290 and overclock it. gtx 970 can't beat that, especially seeing as it doesn't have 4GB RAM