What video card did you buy and why?

[MustangSVT]

I bought HD6850.

Price/performance and power draw was important as I didnt want to upgrade my 450w psu.
It was very close between gtx460 and this but the deal at the time was better.

I won't be buying a new card for a loooong time (my last card was 8800gs)

 

[Dice144]

GTX 460 768. At the time I was rocking onboard ATI. Raiding on Everquest was painful with the IGP.

If I could do it over I would pay the extra $30 and get the 1GB model. I play at 1920x1080 and 768mb in some games is just not enough.

 

[deimos3428]

6850 CF...best of its class/value when it came out

Same for me.

 

[nOOky]

HD6870, because it was the card that best suited me at the time. Added a second one because I wanted to turn things up a bit in games. So far it's been wonderful.

 

[wuliheron]

I bought a 5850 when it first came out. It was the best bang-for-your-buck at the time and could play any game really well. The benchmarks all showed that 2 in crossfire could max out virtually any game on the market. That's about as future proof as you'll ever get with a pc gaming rig.

 

[Spikesoldier]

picked up hd4890 about two years ago, got a second one used a while ago for 75.00. crossfire is good but 4xxx series cf leaves much to be desired compared to 6-series cards.

the main reason i picked the sapphire vaporx is because the cooler is non reference and much quieter than the stock cooler.

 

[Castiel]

6970 over 580? No thanks. Do you mean 6990?

Kicking myself for not buying this card instead

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-430-_-Product

 

[kreacher]

Card: HD 5850 (Feb 2010)
Reason: Price / Performance ratio and prefer single GPU setup
Happy: Yes
Next: Maybe 6 months down the line best price / performance ratio single GPU card

 

[badb0y]

Kicking myself for not buying this card instead

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-430-_-Product

Forgive me for inquiring more but I still don't see why you would want the 6970 over a GTX 580? The GTX 580 bests the former in performance all the time. Don't get me wrong the 6970 is a fantastic card too.

For me it was the 6950 simply because when it launched at 300$ MSRP I grabbed mine for 260$ unlocked it overclocked and well you know the rest.

 

[Borealis7]

4850 used, two years ago for 100$, best deal at the time.
serves me well to this day with my CPU and gaming @ 1600x1200.
there might be a used 460 in my near future

 

[Rifter]

Nvidia 460 1GB x2 in SLI
Best bang for buck(ATI 6xxx did not exist when i purchased)
Would buy again in a heatbeat, they run cool, fast as hell, overclock great.

 

[Mistwalker]

Wanted the best single card I could buy coming from a 4870x2, so I decided to grab a 6990, which was supposed to be out around Christmas.

But as October turned into November there was no word from AMD, and it started to look like 2011 for the 6990, so I grabbed a 580 instead. It died shortly thereafter, got a replacement, then it died. By then the 6950 cards were out and the whole unlocking craze had just started, grabbed a pair and here we are.

 

[Kabob]

I bought an XFX HD 6850 because I needed a card that was short to fit into my Antec Super Lanboy case and I liked it more than the GTX 460, and I promised my wife I wouldn't go overboard.

I'm quite happy with it.

 

[tincart]

Bought a GTX 460 1GB awhile ago. This was before the 6870/6850 came out and it was kicking the pants off everything in its very attractive price range.

 

[nanaki333]

Wanted the best single card I could buy coming from a 4870x2, so I decided to grab a 6990, which was supposed to be out around Christmas.

But as October turned into November there was no word from AMD, and it started to look like 2011 for the 6990, so I grabbed a 580 instead. It died shortly thereafter, got a replacement, then it died. By then the 6950 cards were out and the whole unlocking craze had just started, grabbed a pair and here we are.

wow! what brand was that 580 card so people can be made aware?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Sapphire VaporX 5870. I got it back in January 2010, there wasn't much else (other than a 5850) that could compete with it and I wanted to upgrade.

Recently I added another 5870 because it was fairly cheap (and I ran into a bunch of extra money) and nothing else really was compelling enough to upgrade to. At least nothing could match the value that another 5870 could add when looking at price/performance.

 

[Mistwalker]

wow! what brand was that 580 card so people can be made aware?

They were Gigabyte cards, I made a post about it back when the problems happened. Someone else made an even bigger post shortly after mine, different manufacturer, so I wouldn't single any company out...just a handful of bad 580s with similar problems. They were all reference design right at launch anyway.

I was pretty stunned to lose two of them within a month, but I seem to have been a pretty isolated case (thank goodness).

 

[adairusmc]

I traded my 5970 that I had for a 5870+ cash, and was going to upgrade to a 580 or a 6970 when they came out. I was going to get a gtx580 but I could not find one in stock when I wanted to order, so I got a pair of 6970's and crossfired them instead. So far I have been pretty happy with everything, though I haven't done much gaming on them except for Starcraft II.

 

[nanaki333]

oh wow. i had a gigabyte gtx 460 in a pc that died after about a month of minimal use too.

 

[Skurge]

Forgive me for inquiring more but I still don't see why you would want the 6970 over a GTX 580? The GTX 580 bests the former in performance all the time. Don't get me wrong the 6970 is a fantastic card too.

For me it was the 6950 simply because when it launched at 300$ MSRP I grabbed mine for 260$ unlocked it overclocked and well you know the rest.

I think he wanted to use surround, but something about the 580 not fitting or something.

I bought the FX5500 cause the name Geforce was everywhere and I didn't know much about graphics cards back then. After Seeing what the source engine ran and looked like on my friends 9500, I dumped the FX and got a 9600XT (I gave the FX away btw)

I bought an X600 cause it just needed a PCI-E card at the time and the 6600gt was out of my price range.

Got the 2900XT over the 8800gts as I preffered ATI after the FX mistake (hard to get rid of that mindset)

I got the 4870 with a new system, great bang for buck at the time, it was also faster than the more expensive 260.

I replaced the 4870 with the 5770 cause I wanted a quieter system. I added a 9600GT for physx, but it wasn't worth it for the extra noise it made so I sold that too.

 

[airdata]

I bought a 2gb hd 4870 vapor-x because it was one of the best cards out at the time and it was for an i7 rig I was building.

Then i parted it out and still had it so I decided to keep it in my main system I'm going to run it til the wheels fall off.

 

[Petey!]

GTX 470. For the price is way more powerful and cheaper then the AMD alternative when I got it, and I have a really good case so there wasn't really any noise/heat issues/concerns for me.

 

[brencat]

For me the decision came down to the GTX 560 vs 6950 2gb given the $250-$275 price point I was willing to spend.

In the end, I chose the 6950 2gb for the games I like to play (mostly shooters like BFBC2) and that the reference cards were unlockable (unlocked the shaders on mine no problems!).

The GTX 560 simply didn't offer enough horsepower for the $$ at the 1920x1200 resolution I wanted to play at. Was already playing 1680x1050 on my old GTX 260-216 so it had to be a significant upgrade either way.

One caveat I'll note however is that had the GTX 570 for $287 AR with 2 free games deal from 2 weeks ago been available in January when I bought the 6950, I probably would have chosen that instead.

Love the 6950 2gb and no driver issues at all, despite my initial worry coming from 6+ yrs of using Nvidia cards. 11.1 WHQL are good to go.

 

[MagickMan]

I bought a ref ASUS 5850 soon after they launched, then bought another a few months later for Xfire, they both OC like nothing I've ever seen before. Plus, I bought some Thermalright coolers w/ Scythe GT fans for them, and they're completely silent. For the price, I still haven't seen much of anything that beats them, and it's been well over a year.

 

[kat.]

Upgraded from a dead gigabyte 4890OC to a Evga 570sc. Basically read the reviews of all the available cards at the time and decided to jump from ATI to Nvidia. The 570sc is a fantastic card, I am glad I got it. FPS in WoW, Dragonage and Fallout jumped amazingly high on highest settings and the image is fantastic.