rm082e

Yep. Fanboyism is certainly part of the split on these cards (everyone needs a villain I guess...), but the driver issues are pretty undeniable just looking at any PC gaming forum.

Hopefully they can at least keep the pressure on NVIDIA for the next round of cards.

If you want to future proof a little, here's a 7950 OC for $205.

Because it's our job to take care of these corporations and make sure they succeed, even if we don't like what they are offering, right? They're free to never admit they made mistake, blame the media and/or consumers for "piling on", and we're all supposed to sit here quietly and hand over our money, right?

Capitalism is a two way street. They made this problem, not the Xbox user base. No one was demanding they require an internet connection, use DRM to gain control of the used market, or pack in the Kinect at an extra $100 cost. It's their job to fix what they broke. Thankfully, they seem to be doing a decent job.

*slow clap*

Powercolor AMD Radeon HD7950 850MHZ 3GB 1250MHZ GDDR5 DVI HDMI Mini-DP PCI-E DX11 Video Card

On sale for $230 with three free games - FC Blood Dragon, Crysis 3, BioInfinite. This is a sweet deal.

Oh God those pie-in-the-sky delusions were great. Haha.

Check out the new GTX 760. It's power is between a GTX 660Ti and a GTX670. Here is a 4GB card with great ratings for $309.

If you don't need 4GB of video ram (Running multiple screens? Running above 1920x1080?) then you should be fine with a 2GB card. EVGA has a nice one for $279.

Okay, then trust me - a 770 Classified with a 27" LED 1080 monitor will blow your freaking mind! You will sit in front of Crysis 3 with your jaw hanging open in awe at how damn pretty it is. Graphics may not be the "only thing that matters", but if you have 2K to spend, you will be floored by just how big the leap is. :)

Only if you are in turn going to buy a video card capable of pushing a 1440 image at a frame rate you are happy with. The 770 4GB you listed will be enough to run the latest and greatest games at 30fps in 1440, but you may have to set stuff like AA and post processing to lower settings. That card won't hit 60fps at 1440 without making some choices on the setting side though. If you decide you want 1440, I would go up to a GTX 780, but that card starts at $650. AAA games running in 1440 with a solid frame rate is stunning, but costly...

For reference, I've got the EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked 2GB card, and with some minor settings tweaks on both the hardware and software side, I was able to run Crysis 3 at 60fps in 1080p. Watching the GPU specs with the EVGA Precision on screen display, I would occasionaly see the frame rate drop down into the high 50s when things got really busy on screen. Most of the time though, it was pinned at 59.9.

1080 was plenty for my eyes though, and I think the quality of the picture is just as important as the resolution. Also, for me frame rate is more important than the settings, but I sure want the settings as high as I can get them. Figuring out what your individual priorities are is up to you.

EDIT: Here's a GTX 770 review with a bunch of charts and graphs on frame rate performance for you to review if you care enough. Know that if you get the Classified version of the 770 (the one you linked), it will perform a little bit better than the reference spec.

I thought about mentioning the new Haswell stuff, but figured you were going Ivy to save a little cash.

With monitors, just keep in mind Best Buy will probably only have 1920x1080 models on display. If you want a 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 res monitor, you'll need to shop online. The Dell UnltraSharp line is beautiful, but pricey. If you're okay with a 27" 1920x1080 res, you might want to check out this BenQ for $429. It's got all the bells and whistles and flips to vertical orientation.

If you don't need monitors with vertical orientation and all those features, this BenQ for $206 is pretty sweet. I picked one of these up about a month ago to replace my 23" LG and have been very pleased with it for gaming. I don't play multi-player though, so I don't need the 120hz. I'm sure the other one has a better picture, but couldn't justify spending more than twice as much just to play SP games.