Time to upgrade graphics card. Which one for $200 budget?
 

So I have a ghetto (now)BFG GTS 250. looking for more power and quiet, but not water cooled.

the rest of my system consists of 6GB ddr2, 128GB SSD, 3 GHZ quad core AMD cpu.

looking to spend around $200.

any suggestions? :accepted:

GeForce 560

any particular version or model? I noticed some are a Titanium model :suspicious:

Ti has more shaders and clocks but are over $200

Your other option is Radeon 6870 but I prefer Nvidia due to better drivers. With an ATI card, you are waiting 1-2 weeks after every big game comes out before you get a completely functional driver.

As far as models, I would look for one with a lifetime warranty if you plan on using it for a while. BFG and XFX used to do this I think. I am testing one from MSI right now actually, and it's very good. Nice heatsink, good overclocker.

GTX 560 FTW?

eVGA GeForce GTX 560 FTW+ 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, HDMI at Memory Express

looks noisy tho..

why dont you wait for ATI 7000 Series ?? Its coming "FASTTTTTTTTT"


You can get 7850 or 7790 in that price range.

http://www.coolaler.com.tw/image/new...d7000_sp_1.jpg

http://www.coolaler.com.tw/image/new...d7000_sp_2.jpg

Yeah good job advising someone to buy something that doesn't exist that nobody knows when will come out and for what price, or even performance it will bring.

lol! I'm waiting for the iPhone 5 too :D

man there are too many versions of the 560. I like eVga for lifetime warranty but they dont look to have quiet coolers.

My point is to wait and seeeeeeeeeee

And there is a lot of test results out on the internet for ATI 7000 series.


And, if you are Nvidia fan, don't bother look into it.

Myself is using gtx580 Xtreme, but who knows which brand is the next king.
I go whoever has best performance, fooook the branding.

What about this?

PNY GeForce GTX 560 Ti XLR8 Black Box 822MHZ 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Mini-HDMI DX11 PCI-E Video Card - PNY Technologies Inc - VCGGTX560TXPB

This one should be fairly quiet but might be a bit more than your budget.

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?s...e&promoid=1297

there's a really good chance it's getting a hard launch by next week at CES when AMD will announce the rest of the Southern Island series.
that will open lots of options by waiting a few days..unless OP's card is dead i personally think it's worth waiting for.

usually Intel and nVidia has a better overall performance on their units over AMD products in the same class.. AMD products are usually cheaper in the same class to fight this issue..

The Lifetime warranties on cards are worthless in my experience, especially BFG's (who, fortunately, went out of business).

These are the "lifetime" warranties I've dealt with in the past:

BFG - Completely useless, dragged their feet on honouring the warranty, left me without a graphics card for months, replaced it with a card nowhere close to the capacity of the original (replaced my GeForce4 Ti 4200 with a GeForce FX5200 :roll: Had friends with similar experiences (replaced 8800 Ultra w/ GTS 250 (on the same level performance wise, but it took them nearly 4 months), replaced 8800 GT 512 w/ GT 240, replaced 6800 Ultra w/ 8500 GT, etc. Pretty much replaces your existing card with something as fast or slower, never an upgrade, and takes forever to do it)

Visiontek - Completely useless, wouldn't honour warranty. Apparently the card making a high-pitched whine and the temperature sensor not working at all wasn't enough to cover under warranty.

Pine (aka XFX) - This was back in the GeForce2 days, so they may have improved since then. My old GeForce2 card popped a capacitor about 4-5 years after I bought it (bought it in 2001, was still using it in my non-gaming PC), sent in for warranty, took about 2 months to tell me card was no longer covered by warranty which was a real WTF !?!? moment since it had a "lifetime" warranty. Lifetime warranty only applied to the GPU itself, not the other electronics onboard.

As far as warranty is concerned, I've had good experiences with Gigabyte, Asus, and MSI. All 3 of which were fast, honoured the warranty, and Gigabyte even had a custom card made up for me which was fucking amazing (my 6600GT had a TV Tuner and Video Input (Composite, S-Video, and Component) as well as a fanless heatsink, none of which were options on their 7000-series cards, so they had one made up for me with those features. They first offered me credit towards another card (the day after it arrived), but since I was using that in my HTPC, none of the others were really acceptable. After a few phone calls and e-mails between me and tech support, they finally offered the custom option and about a month later, I had a unique 7600GT in my hands :) No video input like the 6600GT, but I was still very stoked)

well, i'm not looking for king of the hill unfortunately. a nice bump is all i can afford.

6870 :bigthumb:

I know you are not going for top performance.

But if you can wait for ATI 7000 series, you might have a good chance getting better card within same budget.

i would say, GTX560 is the lowest card you should get... the 560Ti is nicer if you can afford a bit more.. only main advantage the Ti has is more CUDA cores...

i have 3 other cards lying around so no rush. hmm well seeing as the gts 250 has no warranty anymore maybe I'll slap on an arctic cooling passive heatsink.

Always would look at Tom's Hardware before making the plunge for another video card.

Best PCIe Card: $180 To $300 : Best Graphics Cards For The Money: December 2011

Edit: Also a review on the 560.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-top,2944.html

Personally, I stick with eVGA or XFX because of the warranty that they offer.

I just picked up a PNY GTX 560 Ti OC for $219! :D
Posted via RS Mobile

If you're going to do that, you could at least recommend he look at this month's guide instead of last month's ...

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2012 : Best Graphics Cards For The Money, January Update

Finds great deal, doesn't share link ;)

once it was $169.99 after MIR at NICX
ME had Asus and Gigabyte 560TI for $179.99 after MIR.

They had the OC version for $229 which was fairly cheap already, so I thought I'd try to fool them and price match the non-OC version at ATIC for $220.

I sure fooled them. :troll:
Posted via RS Mobile

spend a little more for an asus gtx 560 dcuii. good buy for budget, and it'll run almost all recent games really well. great cooling looks sick too!