Upgrading video card

[Grey Fox]

Nope, still PCI Express x16

[Josquius]

OK.
So what's the sweet spot in price I'm looking at?
I'm not dirt poor these days so can afford to spend a bit but don't want to be blowing silly money for the best thing out there.
£200ish? Or has inflation pushed things up to £300?

There seem to be an awful lot of types of every model out there...
And even within those types there are varieties- I found one sort of R9 in a black edition and a dd edition with £20 difference between them. What on earth does that mean?

[DontSayBanana]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

[viper37]

There seem to be an awful lot of types of every model out there...
And even within those types there are varieties- I found one sort of R9 in a black edition and a dd edition with £20 difference between them. What on earth does that mean?

AMD and Nvidia make the chip and provide basic references for it.
Other companies buy the chip and put them on their board.  Some are just basic specs as provided by Nvidia/AMD.  Others have higher clock ratios, more than one fan, etc.

So check the specks of the card to compare memory clock and gpu clock.
Generally speaking, at similar prices, I tend to prefer MSI TwinFrzr versions of video card, they come equipped with better fans and are clocked a little higher.  Though are better varieties out there, too, some have 3 fans and are overclocked substantially by default.

I'd say first, decide if it's AMD or Nvidia.  No brand is absolutely better than the other, but generally, AMD offers better prices.  Nvidia has the best cards of all though, but you'll need a new mortgage to afford it
Imho, AMD cards offer the best price/performance ratio.  280x or 290x are very good cards that should fit in your budget (don't know about the prices in UK, but check it).

[Norgy]

The x70 cards from nVidia are generally very good, and not too pricey. The new GTX 970 is probably the best nVidia card when it comes to value for money.

My problem with AMD is, and will probably continue to be, drivers and cooling. For their lower end of their product line, cooling is much less of a problem, though.

I agree with viper; the fact is that nVidia's graphics cards are expensive. Very expensive. AMD is a better choice that way.

These days, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is going quite cheap, due to the new 980. That's a lot of graphics card for the money.

[viper37]

My problem with AMD is, and will probably continue to be, drivers and cooling. For their lower end of their product line, cooling is much less of a problem, though.

cooling wise: default, stock cooling cards are bad.  I don't know why AMD doesn't enforce higher standard on this.  But there are lots of card manufacturers who invest in this (MSI, Gigabyte among others, in the past, I've seen XFX too).
drivers: I honestly don't see the problems there.  If I look at Dragon Age Inquisition, those with Nvidia cards have had driver problems since the beginning.  Other games, the problem lies with AMD.  I don't see it as a general issue for one card or another, it really varies for each game.

[Norgy]

I accept that. I just think in general (with a few exceptions) nVidia deliver better drivers, better software (like GeForce Experience) and better cards.

Then again, my last Radeon or AMD cards on anything beyond my living room media computer were two Sapphire 5870 Toxics that produced more heat and sound together than your average blast furnace. Crossfire also seems more broken than SLI.

The last couple of generations of either nVidia or AMD seem fairly solid no matter what you choose. nVidia were losing the battle badly three-four years ago, but I'd say they've had one hell of a comeback.

[viper37]

I accept that. I just think in general (with a few exceptions) nVidia deliver better drivers, better software (like GeForce Experience) and better cards.

Gaming Evolved with AMD.  Don't know wich one came first.  I have a laptop with an Nvidia card, so I have both.  Don't see much difference, but Gaming Evolved is recent, about one year, I think.

But Geforce Experience looks better than Gaming Evolved.  Don't know how it performs exactly, I don't have many games.

[Josquius]

hmm...perhaps a 3rd value needs to be added into the old "Whats the best power for price"- sound.
I'd rather not have something that always sounds like a building site in my room. 


Is this the kind of thing I should be looking at?

http://www.conrad.ch/ce/de/product/1000295/Grafikkarte-Gigabyte-AMD-Radeon-R9-270X-Windforce-Overclocked-2-GB-GDDR5-RAM-PCIe-x16-DVI-HDMI-DisplayPort?queryFromSuggest=true

[Norgy]

The Windforce cooler apparently is quite good.

Here are some recommendations from Tom's Hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-4.html

[Grey Fox]

NCIX is letting me down, my black friday purchase still hasn't showed up.

[viper37]

NCIX is letting me down, my black friday purchase still hasn't showed up.

me too
I only have the memory, not the board and the rest of the stuff

[Grey Fox]

Not even shipped.

[viper37]

finally!  it shipped!
the two days snowstorm has delayed my other orders, though.

[Grey Fox]

Same! & from ontario. WTF did they do for a whole week.