Best GPU for £300

[yelpir]

Looking to build a new gaming rig - I've set a limit of £300 for the GPU which I think drops me in 7800GT range but not GTX. The idea is very much to buy a powerful card now which can be paired in SLi in 12 - 18 months time to stay at the top end.

Any suggestions or cards to avoid in this area?

Thanks

Yelpir.

[Dav0s]

yup atm 7800gt is where u wanna be looking.

[Dougal]

If you're not getting anything NOW. Wait for a bit. Get a Crossfire Motherboard and a master card in your range.

That'll do you for a long time, if Andrzej and ATI benchies are to be believed

[dangel]

There's always a faster card coming.. <shrugs>

Right now the 7800GT is a great buy.

[yelpir]

Never had any joy with ATI cards in the past - had 3, returned 2 and flogged the other after 2 months. It's not that I'm an Nvidia fanboy but at this time I'm really not looking at ATI.

[skuzgib]

I'm sure that's just bad luck.

7800gt is what you're after.

[yelpir]

All are 7800GT's born equal (mainly referecne designs) or are there brands to avoid - it's been about 3 years since I bought a high end card.

[Dougal]

You can probably get a 2nd hand GTX for £300.

The GTs are going for around £280+ now.

[kempez]

SCAN have a nice Gigabyte 7800GT for £260 - gigabyte are a good solid brand too

[Lee H]

7800GT is in that price range and if you look @ anandtech they have the XFX 7800GT review where they easily overclocked to operating speeds faster than a 7800GTX.

[YorkieBen]

yes but a 7800gt at the same clock and memory speeds as a 7800gtx is not as fast becuase it has less pipes

[krazy_olie]

7800GT at the moment, nothing really to compete at the moment from ATi at that price.
You can overclock the 7800GT higher than a standard 7800GTX but it would still have slightly less performance due to a few less pipelines. The recent review on anandtech shows this.
That said it kills almost everything else.

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/ there's an XFX one which comes with an overclock (The same one in the anandtech review) on offer here.

[yelpir]

Thanks - gonna go for the XFX pre overclocked from SCAN's today only. Post count too low from yesterday to get free delivery but hay - ho, want to order today so I can build at the weekend.

[Xenctuary]

Dispatch times from Scan are very good, so I think you'll be pleasantly suprised. And, just in case there is any doubt left in your mind that the XFX GeForce 7800GT is not for you, this paragraph from Neoseeker's review of the card pretty much won me over:

Considering the $200 (it will be $150 for manufacturers who follow NVIDIA's MSRP) USD difference in MSRPs between the XFX GeForce 7800 GT and 7800 GTX, I'm extremely pleased with the level of performance that the 7800 GT is capable of delivering. XFX's 50MHz overclock on the core and modest 50MHz on the memory certainly played a factor. I was expecting the decrease in the number of pixel and vertex shader pipelines, as well as memory clock speeds, to have a larger impact on performance, but that simply wasn't the case. While these differences were measurable by scientific means in nearly all of our tests, they will simply not be great enough for most gamers, to notice. What is 5 to 8 FPS in a game when you're already pushing 80+? Negligible.

Good luck with your system

[cm_uk]

you seriously should consider crossfire doubts aside...

[Xenctuary]

Others in a similar situation might also want to check out this article: GeForce 7800GT vs. GeForce 7800 GTX @ Legion Hardware