Nvidia cards of 2013 or ATI

[Kiefer]

What is the bare minimum (economical, gets the job done) video card this year? Is there one that will do the job for years to come that might be worth paying a little extra today?

I currently play PotBs... but at some point the 21st century (normal high speed internet) will reach Vermont and I will probably venture on to other games.

I don't need flashy or crazy graphics, I want reliable graphics.

thanks for any tips/advice.

[Breand]

GeForce GTX 650 Ti at $130 is a solid card for a great price. I'm still using my workhorse Radeon HD 4850, best video card I've ever owned. It's old now but still haven't played a game yet that requires me to upgrade.

check out:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... ,3107.html</a><!-- m -->

[Diggles]

dont waste your time with ATI cards. and fucking anything like 3 years old will run Potbs, its direct x 8. I have a Nvidia 550ti & Intel i3 and i can run potbs on maxed settings with FPS to spare. I dont though because it actually kinda creeps me out

[Snowreap]

ATI cards have worked fine for me. I've used the HD 3650, 4850, 4870, 7950 and 7970 and they've all worked reliably, although on a couple of them I had to back off some overly-aggressive factory overclocking.

also, I have had good luck finding Radeon cards that are relatively quiet (not too much fan noise). I try to get cards that have a large, lower-speed fan rather than the ones with small high-speed fans that sound like a jet engine or a vacuum cleaner.

-ken

[Kiefer]

dont waste your time with ATI cards. and fucking anything like 3 years old will run Potbs, its direct x 8. I have a Nvidia 550ti & Intel i3 and i can run potbs on maxed settings with FPS to spare. I dont though because it actually kinda creeps me out

I realize that, my 260 handles it easily.
So 650 cards and up. Some 650s (according to that site) may be better then 660s? Alright, I appreciate the heads up. I could have done that google search, but I figured Purge review would be more honest. I will probably post my PC build soon, to get the Diggles treatment.

thank you

[Slamz]

So 650 cards and up. Some 650s (according to that site) may be better then 660s?

Yeah I think so... there's the 660 or there's a 660Ti or the 660 Superclocked or the 660Ti Superclocked...

So a high end 650 (Ti Superclocked) may be better than an entry level 660 (plain). But you can probably overclock the plain one yourself. I dunno if you can overclock a "superclocked" graphics card. I have to imagine that "Superclocked" means it's already been factory set to the limits of sanity.

[Diggles]

heres cards from 2012

Not sure why Tomshardware stop doing performance charts for grahpics cards. I remember they used to do like 2-4 a year.

And April 2013 best bang for the buck

Graphics Card Heirarchy

[OrsunVZ]

For what it's worth, I wayyyy prefer Nvidia's driver update process over ATI. And it seems (not sure if it is the reality or not) that Nvidia updates more frequently.

[Zirak]

The whole driver thing is why I stopped buying ATI cards. I used to use them but they are so slow with driver updates that I finally just got annoyed with them and switched to using Nvidia cards. I have been much happier.

[Snowreap]

lol, driver problems are one of the reasons why I eventually gave up entirely on nVidia cards. I suppose at some point they figured out that bad drivers were costing them business, and fixed it?

I haven't had significant issues with any of my Radeon cards that weren't eventually traced to something other than drivers.

it may be related that I don't expect a lot of updates, nor do I update video drivers just because they're available. I expect drivers that work, that I can continue to use unchanged until and unless I get a new video card or a new major DirectX version comes out. so if I go 3 years between buying new cards, I'm pretty much ok with going 3 years between driver updates, as long as my current driver is working well.

-ken

[Diggles]

ATi is notorious for driver problems and slow updates. More games support or are Nvidia Bias and at this point Nvidia has already crushed ATI.

Everyone will run into driver problems at some point, ATI you're just way more likely