videocards, best performance/price ratio

[gammaray]

Stick with an Nvidia solution whatever you do. IMO the GK104 GTX 770(2gb, not 4gb version)is the best bang for the buck as it can be had for around $300 now. The 4gb version is a waste of money for a single card setup.

yeah gtx770 seems to be priced right, considering the r9 280x is at least 100$ more...what a joke.

 

[McLovin42]

yeah gtx770 seems to be priced right, considering the r9 280x is at least 100$ more...what a joke.

I could care less what price the AMD products are priced at regardless, or what their overall frame rate performance is, be it better or worse than a competing Nvidia card, they are built with terrible parts and QC standards compared to Nvidia are shoddy. The only year in the last decade or so where you could say ATI/AMD was on par with Nvidia was probably the year of the GTX 4 series cards Nvidia released which still shockingly had better RMA/QC issues than their competitor........

 

[blackened23]

I could care less what price the AMD products are priced at regardless, or what their overall frame rate performance is, be it better or worse than a competing Nvidia card, they are built with terrible parts and QC standards compared to Nvidia are shoddy. The only year in the last decade or so where you could say ATI/AMD was on par with Nvidia was probably the year of the GTX 4 series cards Nvidia released which still shockingly had better RMA/QC issues than their competitor........

The big problem for me with AMD is their software. Quite simply, it is not on nvidia's level, even to this day. Reading about experiences with the Mantle "beta" driver brings back a lot of memories of trying to get surround working properly with 7970CF, which was just a PITA. And even beta drivers should not be that annoying to bother with, because i've used beta drivers from numerous other companies and have never had one single issue. And their frame pacing. They basically skipped DX9 frame pacing with eyefinity, so don't bother playing Skyrim. I don't know how their DX11 eyefinity frame pacing fares, apparently their alpha driver has that feature included. Basically, the problem with AMD is "Beta" with AMD truly does mean either beta, or in the Mantle driver's case, "alpha++". The ATI Mantle thread at OCN has nearly 200 pages of people not being able to get it working well. Ridiculous. Even for "beta", I mean, "alpha++", the level of problems for a feature hyped to no end is absolutely ridiculous. And according to AMD, Mantle was in the works for 2 years, and the delay in December was due to DICE. I'm willing to bet the December delay wasn't due to DICE at all, but was in fact due to AMD. That's my problem with AMD right now, and I really wish they'd step it up in terms of software. Right now they're just not up to snuff in the software department. Period. To date, they're still being AMD of the old days in terms of software. That is NOT a good thing, and this is the CHIEF problem that AMD needs to fix. The best hardware in the world is 100% useless without great software to back it. The most promising new features are worthless without proper software to back it.

Anyway, regarding the topic at hand. Price / performance is not the best factor to focus on , because price/performance always favors the extremely low end; I mean if you want to take it that far, the HD4400 is the best price performance. Or a GTX650. Would I game on a GTX 650? At 1600? Nah. It isn't adequate for 1600p despite having good "price/performance".

The best thing to do is look at your total budget for a GPU and choose the best performance you can buy, with the features you want. If you have a 250$ budget, evaluate from there. 200$? Evaluate all 200$ cards and go from there. Focusing on "price/performance" is silly. The best price/performance will have you reaching for some 100$ GPU that isnt' even adequate for 1080p with high settings.

 

[horza]

..

 

[gammaray]

The best thing to do is look at your total budget for a GPU and choose the best performance you can buy, with the features you want. If you have a 250$ budget, evaluate from there. 200$? Evaluate all 200$ cards and go from there. Focusing on "price/performance" is silly. The best price/performance will have you reaching for some 100$ GPU that isnt' even adequate for 1080p with high settings.

Well, i didn't give many details, my mistake. I asked cos i built a lot of computers, but rarely need a discrete video card, so i was asking best price performance in a wide range (100-500$) because some "friends" are in need of one sometimes.

You are saying low end are the best price ratio right now, but does it always have to be that way? i mean if a 7770 can be had for 100$ what about Xfire 2 of them, would we get the performance of a 7870? or better? or not worth it considering all factors?

Personally my budget is almost limitless, i don't see a point in owning something faster than my GTX770. That being said, i fully understand what you are saying. It's a sound advice, of course, to go with a budget.

 

[blackened23]

edit: nevermind

 

[Termie]

blackened, there is actually one area where price/performance matters, and that's when a card at a lower price actually performs equivalently to or better than one at a higher price. So you shouldn't throw P/P out the window entirely. Just saying "I want to spend $100 [or $200/$300/$400/etc.]" isn't the answer either, because you could end up wasting money.

What you really need to do is set a price range and desired performance range, and hopefully you can then find something in your range that will provide the performance you need at the lowest cost.

In the current market, there are actually very few choices, with AMD all but out of the >$200 market due to mining and Nvidia all but out of the <$200 market due to business decisions.

 

[IEC]

Well, i didn't give many details, my mistake. I asked cos i built a lot of computers, but rarely need a discrete video card, so i was asking best price performance in a wide range (100-500$) because some "friends" are in need of one sometimes.

You are saying low end are the best price ratio right now, but does it always have to be that way? i mean if a 7770 can be had for 100$ what about Xfire 2 of them, would we get the performance of a 7870? or better? or not worth it considering all factors?

Personally my budget is almost limitless, i don't see a point in owning something faster than my GTX770. That being said, i fully understand what you are saying. It's a sound advice, of course, to go with a budget.

Always go for the single best card you can. SLI and Crossfire scaling is not 100%, and doesn't work with all games.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Always go for the single best card you can. SLI and Crossfire scaling is not 100%, and doesn't work with all games.

There are realistically very few games that dont or can't use sli.

 

[nwo]

There are realistically very few games that dont or can't use sli.

Yep... Times have changed

 

[blackened23]

blackened, there is actually one area where price/performance matters, and that's when a card at a lower price actually performs equivalently to or better than one at a higher price. So you shouldn't throw P/P out the window entirely. Just saying "I want to spend $100 [or $200/$300/$400/etc.]" isn't the answer either, because you could end up wasting money.

Well I missed the part in the OP where he actually specified 100-150$. I don't really disagree with what you're saying, I mean it's pretty much implied that once you set a given price range that you look at everything at that cost and under. If you're looking at a 250$ budget, look at everything 250$ and under. Gauge the performance and features of everything 250$ and under. Or if your budget is 200$? Evaluate 200$ and under based on performance/features/value added stuff and go from there. Performance is obviously important, but isn't always the sole consideration. That varies per buyer. Obviously performance is the most important consideration for PC gamers.

As far as 200$ and under...I think NV is okay overall at 150$ or less, but I will agree partially with you. One thing about NV is, I do wish they had a killer card at the 200$ pricepoint and the 400$ pricepoint. There's a pretty big gap between the 2GB 770 and the 780, and the GTX 660ti should be 200$ (since it is slower than the 760) but isn't for whatever reason. It seems the 660ti is nearly impossible to find and those which are around have huge markups. Therefore at the 200$ mark the 270X would look good, but then again the PC gamer's bain - cryto coin mining - seems to have affected 270X prices now. 200$ price point just needs some love all around, although the sub 200$ market is well represented by both AMD and nvidia - both offering compelling choices.

So I guess I don't really disagree, it's pretty much implied that once you set a budget to evaluate everything at that price point and under. It's not like someone would say "Eureka! I have 300$ What to buy?!" and look at 300$ cards alone. They look at everything at that pricepoint and under of course for performance/features/value adds/etc. I guess the main point I was hinting at was, the "price/performance" statement is so vague without added context. Like, what the buyer is looking for in terms of performance/features, what budget they have, etc. I often see people throwing out "price/performance" as a metric which isn't all too useful without added context, I guess that's what I was getting at. Then again I missed the part where OP specified 150$. LOL. So nevermind I suppose.