Choosing the best graphics card: ITReviews.com Buyer's Guide - page 4
Price and performance for 3D gaming and everyday work
01 August, 2011 by IT Reviews Staff
PREMIUM
You're a power gamer. You've got a monitor the size of most people's TV, and you need a card that can drive the sheer volume of pixels you require to make the most of it. The rest of your system is fine, but your graphics card is getting a little long in the tooth - and you don't mind spending to improve your frame rates.
This is the area in which graphics card companies make their most money. Cutting-edge hardware offers amazing performance and next-generation visuals, but you can expect to pay through the nose for it - with many cards costing the same as an entire low-end PC system.
The premium market is also where you need to be the most careful: high-end graphics cards are often bulky and come with high power consumption components. You'll want to measure twice before buying to make sure it can fit in your case, and you'll need a beefy power supply to cope with your new card's power demands.
If you're sure that it's a premium card you want, however, you'll be spoiled for choice. Both AMD and Nvidia have recently released next-generation GPUs that offer performance eclipsing anything that has gone before - but, as mentioned, they fetch a high price.
AMD's most recently launched premium graphics card is the Radeon HD 6970 2GB. As the name suggests, it comes with a massive 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at insane speeds, along with a next-generation GPU that can offload tasks from the CPU to speed up physics simulation and other common in-game requirements.
As with the company's lower-end cards, it also includes support for CrossFireX - meaning, for those who are building the ultimate rig, it's possible to buy more than one and chain them together for extreme performance gains.
Nvidia's top-end offering, the GeForce GTX 580, offers less RAM - 1.5GB to AMD's 2GB - and lower clock speeds, but a more efficient chipset that means an overall increase in performance over the competitor's product. As with AMD's offering, you get SLI support for chaining multiple cards together - if your motherboard supports the technology.
However, Nvidia's board is newer than AMD's - and, as a result, comes with a significant premium, costing up to £100 more than the equivalent AMD product for a definite but modest improvement in performance. Nvidia GTX 590 cards boast not one but two processors identical in design to the 580 and offer blistering performance - but, unsurprisingly, come at a very hefty premium.
A card based on the money-no-object Nvidia GTX 590 - a snip at £600.
If you're willing to settle for a slightly older product, AMD's latest generation of cards is a great choice and will set you back around £300 to £350. Nvidia's latest GeForce models offer better performance, but you can expect to pay at least £400 for the privilege.
