GPU needed.

[mkell]

Would like some help to choose a gpu please.

I currently have a Gigabyte GTX 460 which has served me well. Overclocked like a dream.

I game at 1080 and cant see myself upgrading my monitor for a while. I would like the head room in case of an upgrade but its not essential.

I want as much eye candy as possible, on new games.

I don't video edit or do any rendering so its just for gaming.

I would like to spend around £250 so I've been looking at the Gigabyte 660ti's.
I could push the spending up to 670 money but is it really worth it?

Due to my 460 being so good I was thinking of sticking with Gigabyte.

Any views would be great. If the ATI cars are as good I could be persuaded to go for one of those. I'm not a brand fanboy just like to get the best for my cash.

Thanks in advance.

[BigChief]

ATI are considered by a lot of people to be inferior because of the numerous driver issues. Having said that there mid range market seems tied up pretty neatly by them on a £ per performance, Nvidia just can't compete.

With the budget you have I would suggest sticking with Nvidia and going for a 670 as from the reviews I've seen there is a significant difference in performance between the two.

Do some googling.

[Willzzz]

I'd wonder whether you need to spend quite that much, a regular 660 or a 7870 will handle most 1080p content with ease and will cost only £180.

The 660 Ti is only really a good card in a few games, titles that are shader heavy but don't need much memory bandwidth, an extra £55 is a lot to pay imo.

A 670 is a great card IF you want to spend that much, it would last a bit longer before you wanted to upgrade again.

[Willzzz]

I would recommend this card:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...098mhz-cores-9

It will give you a great experience at 1080p, way better than your 460 and think of what you can do with the £70+ you didn't spend!

There is a gigabyte model too:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-g...098mhz-cores-9

Although I would prefer the MSI, not for the £1 saving! but it is quieter and tends to overclock better.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have owned plenty of AMD and Nvidia cards myself,and you can get driver issues with both, although not many in my case and at least looking at the experience of mates. However,in many cases issues are less to do with drivers and something else,like a hardware issue or PEBKAC.

I would look at this HD7870 too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...50mhz-hdmi-mdp

Although some AMD cards can be voltage locked(some of the XFX and Sapphire ones come to mind),Nvidia has started to put pressure on OEMs regarding voltage tweaking. So,if you are overclocking consider this.

If you are spending around £250,I would look at this HD7970 3GB:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-m...cores-hdmi-mdp

They tend to overclock well and if you are running something like Skyrim with 3rd party graphics mods,the HD7950 is a good card in its price range.

[Willzzz]

Hmm yeah that looks quite nice, certainly seems like £4.80 well spent over the cheaper MSI card.

The difference between the 660 and 7870 is largely down to the games you play, they trade pretty much evenly on average.

The 7870 will tend to be slightly better at 1600p or with 8xAA, the 660 is just as good at 1080p 4xAA and slightly smaller and quieter.

[scaryjim]

Hmm, at £250 surely it's got to be a 7950 of some description? Problem with the 660 Ti is that it's either faster that a 7950, or slower than a 7870, depending on which game you're playing. If you're up for some overclocking a basic, stock 7950 should overclock comfortably to 1GHz (although, as always, YMMV), which will give you around 7970 performance and only cost you around £220.

Of course, you can overclock a 660 Ti as well, but they start clocked higher and therefore don't have as much headroom, so you don't gain as much. If it was my money, I know what I'd be buying

[KaKTy3]

I would recommend this card:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...098mhz-cores-9

It will give you a great experience at 1080p, way better than your 460 and think of what you can do with the £70+ you didn't spend!

FWIW, I've got the MSI card just over a week ago and am very pleased. It's a lot quieter than my previous (Inno3D 560 Ti 448 SP that died after four months of regular folding) and the reasonable overclock was easilly achieved (1100 MHz core; 6400 MHz RAM). A steal for £177 I got it for, IMO. It marginally beats 7870 too.