I'm building a new gaming PC on somewhat of a budget.

I've been looking at the GeForce 460 or the Radeon 5770. I'm trying to stay around $150.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

5/24/2011 10:52:12 AM

With that budget the 460 is your best bet.

Check around for sales. You can probably get a better card for $150 if you find a good sale. e.g. Newegg has a 6850 for $140 after rebate.

[Edited on May 24, 2011 at 11:17 AM. Reason : sales]

5/24/2011 11:10:43 AM

If you are building a gaming PC, I'd highly recommend not skimping on the video card (Those aren't bad cards you listed by any means). I just recently purchased a GTX570 -- I had been using a GTX275 which I thought ran games "Smoothly at max settings". Now I realize that there was nothing "smooth" about the experience I had before. Save up an extra month and drop around $300 -- it will be well worth it.

5/24/2011 12:34:14 PM

I'll sell you my GTX 295 for 200

5/24/2011 12:48:31 PM

I don't want to buy anything used.

I really don't want to spend over $250 on a graphics card. What do you recommend in that price range?

I'm not trying to play Crysis or anything. These are the games I'm looking at.

Warcraft
Diablo 3
Starcraft 2
Mass Effect 3
Star Wars - The Old Republic

5/24/2011 1:48:53 PM

for $250 you could probably get a 6950, the videocard with the best performance/dollar stat currently available

The GPU bench at anandtech lets you look at performance per dollar metrics

[Edited on May 24, 2011 at 1:57 PM. Reason : more info]

5/24/2011 1:57:12 PM

Thanks for that site. That will be a big help.

[Edited on May 24, 2011 at 2:17 PM. Reason : Were you referring to the 6950 CF or 6950]

5/24/2011 2:11:45 PM

I was originally going to go with an AMD Phenom X6 processor but from the looks of it, the Intel i7 series has come down in price and outperforms AMD quite a bit. That saddens me.

5/24/2011 2:45:29 PM

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935.html

The advice/recommendations @ tomshardware.com are usually spot on. They also post a monthly article entitled, "Best Graphics Cards for the Money: Month/year". The link above is to the article for May.

5/24/2011 3:23:13 PM

So based on that article, $200 should be more than enough to do what I want.

5/24/2011 3:42:51 PM

the hassle of amd and their rotten chipsets is never worth the lower price. always buy intel.

5/24/2011 4:46:46 PM

I've used AMD for years and NEVER had any problems

5/25/2011 9:27:52 AM

amd used to have suspect chipsets. it got better when nvidia made the best amd chipsets and now it's rock solid since ati/amd makes them all. tighter standards on windows drivers helped as well.

5/25/2011 9:31:03 AM

and when i say years, i mean the last 3

5/25/2011 9:50:40 AM

i bought an amd and gigabyte board for my htpc and i regretted it instantly. their drivers suck. the chipset sucks. it was such a stupid buy when i could have gotten an i3 for like $50 more.

[Edited on May 25, 2011 at 9:52 AM. Reason : n]

5/25/2011 9:52:21 AM

Love my GTX460. It's the Gigabyte (brand name, although it does also have 1GB VRAM) version which comes with two onboard fans.

5/25/2011 10:27:07 AM