The PC (Personal Computer) is a highly configurable and upgradable gaming platform that, among home systems, sports the widest variety of control methods, largest library of games, and cutting edge graphics and sound capabilities.
I'm trying to help a friend upgrade his rig...any recommendations? Nothing top tier, but a card that will give him good price vs performance and hopefully be good for a year or two. Thanks all!
I think it was mentioned on another post that the 560 Ti is the best bang-for-your-buck card out there right now. I can't confirm this though, I haven't been following the latest stuff in a while. I still have a 285 on my system.
560 Ti is pretty good or a 570 if you want to spend a little more. If you want to consider crossfire/SLi at a later date to make your card last that much longer, consider a 6950 or 6970. the amount of extra power with ATI cards is better than you get with nvidia, but only with the 6900 series. I've bought myself a 6950 with the intention of getting another as and when I need it.
Just have to wait for the other parts to arrive yet!
Personally I don't like SLi set up or ATI, This is why:
SLi: Some games more than often don't really benefit or increase performance out of SLi, some others don't even support it. Most likely you are going to face heating problems and your PC is going to sound like a mini fridge.
ATI: Good cards, poor driver support... It's been like that since always.
Alright, well...things didn't go so well. Instead of upgrading my friends computer, I'm upgrading mine and then using my old parts in his rig (which will still be a substantial upgrade for him, at a much lower price)
I went with two 6950's, a new motherboard, 16gb of ram, and a Corsair water cooler for my 965BE. Building it now and I'll do his tomorrow. Oooooops.
@MB: GTX 560Ti/Radeon HD 6950, depending on who you like better. Both are great cards.
Tom's Hardware does a monthly comparison across price ranges to say what the best values are.
I don't think they'd ever recommend "leftover cards" like the 560 TI, which is basically a 570 with a bunch of "disabled" cores. The AMD cards seem to struggle with multi-sample Anti Aliasing in BF3 at the moment, EA was pimping NVidia cards as far back as I can remember.
@Eurobum: EA pimps NVIDIA primarily because NVIDIA gives them money. That's what the "The way it's meant to be played" bullshit is about. I guarantee Tom's has recommended cards like the 560Ti before, though I think it's mostly been an "honorable mention" in the price range of the 6950.
NVIDIA gives companies money and access to their engineers to tell them what they can or can't do on their hardware, and the company slaps some NVIDIA "way it's meant to be played" stuff somewhere in their product. I believe AMD/ATI also does it, but to a lesser extent.
I do agree with everyone about the 560 Ti's being the best out there and going for only about $250. Although, if you're looking for something a little above $100, the card that I have now works pretty good which is a 450 GTS. I mean, I haven't tested it with any of the graphical whoring games like Battlefield 3 or Skyrim, but I did spend plenty of time on The Old Republic on high settings and it runs beautifully.
Do NOT go ATI. They may have better looking hardware for cheaper, but they are complete ass when it comes to drivers. Every damn game that came out this year had some major problems with ATI that needed a driver update. Every friend I know who has an ATI has had major problems with it, from the mid range to the high end (skyrim, rage, saints, bf3).
Just get a 560ti or 570. 570 is the most solid card out there. Never go for high end unless you run a surround monitor setup at crazy resolutions.
Do NOT go ATI. They may have better looking hardware for cheaper, but they are complete ass when it comes to drivers. Every damn game that came out this year had some major problems with ATI that needed a driver update. Every friend I know who has an ATI has had major problems with it, from the mid range to the high end (skyrim, rage, saints, bf3).
Just get a 560ti or 570. 570 is the most solid card out there. Never go for high end unless you run a surround monitor setup at crazy resolutions.
I haven't had any driver issues with my 5850 and I've played most of the major games to come out this year...
The only game I heard that had problems that I didn't play was Rage and ATI fixed it same day, and that game was full to the brim with graphical issues all around.
Do NOT go ATI. They may have better looking hardware for cheaper, but they are complete ass when it comes to drivers. Every damn game that came out this year had some major problems with ATI that needed a driver update. Every friend I know who has an ATI has had major problems with it, from the mid range to the high end (skyrim, rage, saints, bf3).
Just get a 560ti or 570. 570 is the most solid card out there. Never go for high end unless you run a surround monitor setup at crazy resolutions.
I can echo this sentiment. Using an ATI card will be a one time thing for me because of the bad experiences I've had with the drivers. Graphical tearing (not related to V-sync), flickering textures, artifacts (not due to heat), etc. It's unfortunate how much I look forward to switching back to Nvidia, but I know that's the right place to be and that I'll never make this mistake again.
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