In the market for a Graphics card (up to £150) in the next three months.

[go0rath]

I'm in the market for a graphics card in the next three months for a new Ivybridge system. I've got a budget of up-to £150 to spend on the card. What should I be looking out for? What is going to be giving me the best bang-for-buck?

(I'll be using the card for Battlefield 3 & Shogun 2).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hopefully,the HD7850 2GB will drop down to that price and they seem to overclock well too. The GTX560TI 448 and GTX570 might drop down to that price too. Nvidia should also have released their GTX660 although this will probably be at least £200 IMHO.

I assume you have a decent PSU,a 64 bit OS and a reasonable CPU?

[Rookie1986]

There is a lot going on right ow in the GPU market so like Cat says, you might find that if you hold on for the few months like you mentioned that prices have shifted around a fair bit.

If you are building a new IvyBridge system then you will meet the games requirements there but both BF3 and STW2 are demanding games and require a lot of GPU power to produce the magical "60fps all on Ultra".

For now the only thing to do would be wait and watch, if your not buying for another 3 months then I would look at trying to turn your GPU budget in to £200, you will see a big difference for doing this.

Rookie

[go0rath]

Hopefully,the HD7850 2GB will drop down to that price and they seem to overclock well too.

I have been interested in the 7850. Slightly outside my budget currently, but I'm not looking to put the system all together until the end of August/September so I've certainly got time to wait.

And yes, I will be going with a decent PSU, 64 bit OS and CPU. Those have been easier choices to make than what GPU to go for!

[go0rath]

There is a lot going on right ow in the GPU market so like Cat says, you might find that if you hold on for the few months like you mentioned that prices have shifted around a fair bit.

I'm certainly hoping so!

For now the only thing to do would be wait and watch, if your not buying for another 3 months then I would look at trying to turn your GPU budget in to £200, you will see a big difference for doing this.

Unfortunately £150 really is the top-end that I can go for, even allowing for the passage of time.

[teppic]

The HD6950 is around £160 at the moment, so you might find it at £150 soon. The HD6870 is under budget (£118 at Scan), but a very good performer for the money. Nvidia has nothing that can match these at these prices right now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have been interested in the 7850. Slightly outside my budget currently, but I'm not looking to put the system all together until the end of August/September so I've certainly got time to wait.

And yes, I will be going with a decent PSU, 64 bit OS and CPU. Those have been easier choices to make than what GPU to go for!

Ebuyer had an HD7850 2GB for around £160 recently.

[Iron Sights]

I bought an MSI hd 7850 recently for about £180 and many of them seem to overclock like a beast. Mine is overclocking nicely, making it faster than gtx580 and never goes above 60 degrees full load. If you can wait then see what nvidia brings otherwise this is a good buy. If you do buy atm none of the main manufacturers are cherry picking good cards, even the "overclocked" MSI editions in a few cases have been average overclockers, so buy the cheapest

[DLUK]

Ebuyer had an HD7850 2GB for around £160 recently.

Going to be a massive rash of cheap 570's soon (perhaps even 2GB models) 120k unit to clear Nvidia have, so that's a great card for £150 or less and then the GTX 660 which should be a killer card between £150-200 although probably £200 at launch. If the 660 for £200 has 2GB that would be the best card for the price. Once it get close or arrives AMD will slash price of their competing cards so that may offer a choice with 3 free games from the AMD camp.

One word of warning is if you run 1080p more and more games want more than 1.28GB VRAM now for best looks features so although we may see the 570 really cheap soon bear in mind a 2Gb card may make some games look better at 1080p+ if that's important to you.

[c12038]

Scan have the XFX HD 6870 DD cooling for £118.42 and the 1GB Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 OC £143.47

Both are excellent cards and good performers for games and utils


Hope this helps

[go0rath]

Thanks for the help!

[RobBerry23]

Might be able to pickup a 7850 on the eBay's or around, Dab's had a good deal of if you spend over X amount you get about 10/20 or 30 off your order.

The 6950 is pretty good, I own the 6850, its nice but noisy! if you do get it get the Dual fan version whatever you do!

[royalpasion]

i would strongly suggest on the 7850 price wise as it is up to par and may be slightly better than gtx 570 and with a good find £160-80 you will have an amazing card.