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Opinions on new graphics card please!
musufasa1986
Member Posts: 14
in Hardware
I am looking at 3 different cards at the moment and want some input from anyone that knows what any of these fancy numbers and letters and specs mean!
I am leaning towards the Zotac AMP 660 ti at the moment. Although I think there is a very small difference between the two 660 ti's?
Zotac Amp ZT 60804 10P GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 816264012839 | eBay
Asus GTX660 TI DC2O 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 | eBay
Sapphire 100352 2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 0 x16 HDC | eBay
Positives and negatives of the cards compared to one another?
Comments
While I love my Asus for this gen I would have to say among the three you posted your best bang for your buck is easily the Sapphire 7950.
That said are you limited to ebay? I ask because you could easily get one of those cards for cheaper on sale from one of the maintstream online retailers.
Nah I am not limited to only ebay. But when you factor in taxes that I have to pay for newegg I have yet to find those cards cheaper.
Those links look like a Newegg Ebay store?
I did not know they had one. They are a bit cheaper it seems than tigerdirect at least, but I may be tempted to spend the extra $20 from tigerdirect. If nothing else just for the service / return policy if something goes wrong.
I have always been skeptical about buying electronics off ebay. But if you arent worried about service after the sale those are some great prices, and free shipping.
I would go with the Sapphire 7950 out of the 3 you linked.
Of those I'd go with the Sapphire. One of the down sides of the other two is that they tend to be bottle necked by the 192 bit. Even though I almost always go with Nvidia for my personal cards. I would also be wary of Ebay for electronics. I normally do all of my business through tigerdirect, and I've not had any problems with them over the years.
Thanks for the replies guys! Looks like the 7950 is the clear favorite!
If I did buy from ebay it would be from newegg or another well known retailer. The warranties are still valid and the service is the same as if I bought it off their main site.
A better card for under $300 isn't likely, apart from other Radeon HD 7950s that could be very slightly better. If your budget is $300, then the main alternative to a Radeon HD 7950 is to save some of the budget by getting a slower card.
I also just found this....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006
That makes the card $330 after tax. $310 after rebate... and I can sell the extra coupon for about $50.
Making the card about $260.
Almost a no brainer at this point.
Not sure but I asume the cards mentioned above are within your budget range?
Else I would say none of the above and perhaps look at http://www.nvidia.com/titan-graphics-card, thought the pricing was around 899,-
Of course also depending if you only want a video card upgrade and if all fits your system specs.
Here some more specs
from CyberLink, ArcSoft, Corel, or Sonic), x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound. Upgrade your GPU to full 3D capability
with NVIDIA 3DTV Play software, enabling 3D gaming, picture viewing, and 3D web video streaming. See www.nvidia.com/3dtv for more details.
A GeForce GTX Titan costs more than all three of the cards in the original post added together. It's a nice card, but way, way out of the budget of most people.
It sounds like a heat related issue. But your temps appear to be ok from your next post.
How do you only have 1/2 an inch room from the card and bottom of case?
Could be thermal, but I had something like that once, and it turned out to be bad memory in the card itself.
Thing with Sapphire cards, is they sometimes have funky layouts, and some aftermarket coolers wont fit on them, especially if you're doing liquid cooling.
I suspect they use a little cheaper parts to try to bring their costs down.
You might have gotten a defective card, and can RMA it for a replacement.
The lower the clock speeds a video card uses at idle, the less power it consumes. But if the clock speed goes too low, the chip won't function properly. AMD and Nvidia try to set their idle clock speeds to the minimum that they can use for which essentially all chips will work fine. But occasionally a few don't.