Gfx card suggestions

I have been out of the desktop world for quite a long time now, had too many other things to spend my money on :P But I have finally gotten round to building a new PC :)

What I have so far:
CM Storm trooper case
Antec 750W PSU
Asus Crosshair V Formula mobo
AMD FX8150 CPU
OCZ agility 3 SSD
WD Caviar blue HDD

So basically everything except the graphics card as I am completely out of touch with that side of things. I am looking to spend something in the region of £250, £300 max on a card for gaming, but I am not sure what the best options are at the moment. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :mrgreen:

If you really want to spend that much on a gfx card, I would go with one of the cheaper 7970s (like this) or one of the fancier 7950s (like this).

eBuyer actually have a good special on this one at the moment: http://www.ebuyer.com/413191-sapphir...s-11196-00-20g

But, depending on what games you want to play and what resolution you run at, they may be overkill.

I have been a loyal ATI graphic card user since the Radeon 9700 Pro, but recently swapped from a ATI 6950, to a NVidia 580GTX.

Comparing the noise from each card, compared to the old ATI I sometimes have to do a double check to confirm if my PC is on, now that I have the 580. The ATI sounded like a hurricane kicking off, if you value you piece and quiet if you use headphones it may not matter to you.

Oh the ATI was a powercolor, and the 580 is a Asus Direct CUII.

That means nothing though,as the cooler is dependent on the OEM who makes the card,not AMD,unless you use a reference design.

Anyway,as you have a GTX580 already I would probably not bother until the next generation cards are released.

There are cheaper options than ebuyer at the moment, so do shop around.

Does anyone know how the game bundles work, if it doesn't mention the games do you not get them, or should they come with every card?

This is for a single 1080p screen?

Umm yeah what CAT said, the Asus GTX580 is a fantastic card still, stick with it for a while longer.

If you really want to spend some money wait for the AMD 8xxx series.

I have owned a Sapphire 4950 a friend owned a XFX5870 and recently I owned a Powercolor 6950. Every one of these cards with the default fan settings were on equal footing on general noise generate.

Even after using MSI Afterburner to customize the fan speeds, this did little to minimize the noise.

That is just my experience with those cards, I am not upgrading... i only recently upgraded to the 580 a few months ago, got it 2nd hand dirt cheap when the 680's came out.

I have no graphics card at the moment :P (well, I got a cheap gt620 as I needed the pc immediately for work etc.) I have been looking at the ATI options as the nvidia cards (although I prefer them as I am a bit of a fanboy admittedly ) seem a fair bit more expensive in terms of what you get per pound (correct me if I'm wrong). Now obviously I would like to spend less if at all possible, it's just my budget limit. I will take a look at some of the 7970's that are available though, seems pretty good at first glance. Thanks for all the feedback so far :)

And yes, it is for a single 1080p screen at the moment. I will be looking to get a dual monitor setup at some point in the future though.

I'd wait until you get a second monitor and upgrade your graphics at the same time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Willzzz

I'd wait until you get a second monitor and upgrade your graphics at the same time.

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I don't have a gaming graphics card at the moment, that's the point :P A GT620 is hardly up to the job of anything beyond 2D even on a single screen

Oh lol, getting confused between two different people!

A 7950 is a good choice, I'd go for one of these:

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...81770000&src=3
http://www.dabs.com/products/sapphir...81770000&src=3

or squeeze to a 7970:

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...81600000&src=3

I recently bought the Gigabyte Windforce 7950, i'm incredibly impressed. The card is pretty much silent even when playing a demanding game like Planetside 2.

Thanks :) so far the HD7950/7970 are the top choices, so done a little bit of reading round on the forum and other sites and heard a bit about some spiking. Is this a big issue on these cards or not?
Would keeping the gt620 in as a physx processor work alongside the AMD cards?

620 is way too slow to use as a physx card really. Also running amd card as primary will require hacks to get physx working on the nvidia card.

I think the stuttering issue was something to do with Windows 8,but we can see if other review sites replicate it first. Kepler cards also were affected by a stuttering issue,which some people noticed,others did(I think it is fixed now). If you want PhysX I would consider a GTX670,ideally one with one of third party coolers.