Need help picking a good graphics card

[SteveGrabowski]

I honestly wouldn't add anything that uses more power without checking on that psu first, be it a 970 or R9 290. If it's anything decent though I would go with the R9 290. Less driver headache for switching the cards, about $80 cheaper, and you'll probably only use 50 more watts at load.

If the psu sucks, that's even more incentive to by AMD, as you'll be able to pick up a 500+ watt 80Plus psu for $50-60, and still won't go much over $300, if at all depending on sales.

If you have the money, the 970 is by no means a bad card. It's just not worth a 25% price premium for what is more or less equal performance depending on the game. Especially considering aftermarket coolers fixed the noise and temperature issues that came with the stock cooler, which also helps to mitigate the power demands.

R9 290's can have really large peak power draws in gaming. The Sapphire Tri-X R9 290 OC was measured by Tom's Hardware to peak at 336W for the card itself in gaming. The Gigabyte Windforce R9 290 peaked at 341W.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-and-290x,3728-4.html

A nice 600W-650W PSU is enough, but say something only delivering 480W on the 12V rail (common for low end 600W PSUs) isn't up to running an aftermarket R9 290 with factory overclock.

 

[skipsneeky2]

$300 or under there's no denying the r9 290,its really the only option.The extra $30-$50 could be argued for something like the $350 Asus 970 Strixx but at the $300 or under mark you can't wrong with a 290.

With Newegg pricing the cheapest 760 at $170,the cheapest 970 at $330 and Nvidia pretty much discontinuing the 770 really makes the 290 the only viable option above $200 outside of the 280x.

770 officially isn't eol i believe but the pricing as of yesterday when i checked Newegg pretty much had one going for over the price of a 290 which is absolutely insane.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

$300 or under there's no denying the r9 290,its really the only option.The extra $30-$50 could be argued for something like the $350 Asus 970 Strixx but at the $300 or under mark you can't wrong with a 290.

With Newegg pricing the cheapest 760 at $170,the cheapest 970 at $330 and Nvidia pretty much discontinuing the 770 really makes the 290 the only viable option above $200 outside of the 280x.

770 officially isn't eol i believe but the pricing as of yesterday when i checked Newegg pretty much had one going for over the price of a 290 which is absolutely insane.

The 770 prices are ridiculous. Why would anyone buy a 2GB card right now for those prices? I can't believe the way Nvidia has ceded the midmarket to AMD by not releasing the GTX 960.

 

[tential]

What???

Borderlands Series? You must be kidding me?

Performs horribly at Borderlands. Maxed settings, on my HD7950 and I see framedrops all the time!
/sarcasm

You can tell when people have no idea what they're talking about on this forum. I've never noticed this "bad" performance on Borderlands.

The 770 prices are ridiculous. Why would anyone buy a 2GB card right now for those prices? I can't believe the way Nvidia has ceded the midmarket to AMD by not releasing the GTX 960.

I said it since the day the GTX 770 released. 2GB of VRAM? K.... not even an option.

3GB VRAM minimum it's going to be 2015, why would you gimp yourself on VRAM when every developer is using VRAM like it's going out of style.

 

[Vicard]

Doesn't do much good to recommend something if you can't use it.