A powerful graphics card is probable the most expensive component in your PC if y'all're a gamer, only with all electric current and past-gen GPUs bachelor in the range of $100 to $500, it can exist tough to selection the right solution for your needs.

In an effort to narrow things down, we're nigh to compare today'due south almost relevant gaming cards that sell for $200 or more than, testing them in a slew of games to meet how it breaks down as we look for the best graphics cards for gaming at resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600.

Well-nigh GPU releases go through our testbench, however when we review these graphics cards, the GPUs are fairly new or barely making it to market place, drivers are non entirely optimized, and most importantly, truthful market pricing has non settled down to its long-term value.

Models Launch Codename Fab Bandwidth Release
Price 		Current
Price
GeForce GTX 670 10-May-12 GK104 28nm 192.ii GB/s $400 $400
GeForce GTX 680 22-Mar-12 GK104 28nm 192.2 GB/southward $500 $500
Radeon Hd 7870 19-Mar-12 Pitcairn XT 28nm 153.six GB/s $350 $310
Radeon HD 7850 xix-Mar-12 Pitcairn Pro 28nm 153.half dozen GB/s $250 $250
Radeon HD 7950 31-Jan-12 Tahiti Pro 28nm 240.0 GB/southward $450 $350
Radeon HD 7970 9-Jan-12 Tahiti XT 28nm 264.0 GB/s $550 $450
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 25-January-11 GF114 40nm 128.2 GB/south $250 $230
Radeon HD 6870 22-October-10 Barts XT 40nm 134.4 GB/s $240 $180

Relative operation leads by and large remain the same through the life of the GPUs, but our accept on best value is completely changed the second Nvidia or AMD make up one's mind to conform their prices. To requite you lot a clear instance, the Radeon Hard disk drive 7970 debuted to market final January with a sticker toll of $550. A couple of months after the GeForce GTX 680 arrived offer amend operation for less money. AMD rapidly reacted slashing the Hard disk 7970's price to $450. Similarly, the slightly slower HD 7950 was dropped from its original price of $450 to just $350.

The tabular array higher up includes all the cards we'll be benchmarking, starting with the nearly recently released. Note that although nosotros have the Radeon Hd 7970 GHz Edition on hand, we didn't include information technology in this review because we don't encounter why anyone would buy the factory overclocked solution at a $50 premium.

Testing Methodology

We picked x games for our test, six of which are DX11 titles and include recent releases such as Max Payne 3 and Alan Wake. Games will be run at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 equally we believe these are the resolutions gamers are targeting with today's $200+ graphics cards, using monitors between 24 and thirty inches. All games will exist tested with fraps which lets united states record threescore seconds of gameplay.

Test Organization Specs

  • Gainward GeForce GTX 680 Phantom (2048MB)
  • Gainward GeForce GTX 670 Phantom (2048MB)
  • Gainward GeForce GTX 680 (2048MB)
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 (3072MB)
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB)
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB)
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB)
  • HIS Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB)
  • HIS Radeon Hard disk drive 7950 (3072MB)
  • HIS Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB)
  • HIS Radeon HD 7850 (2048MB)
  • HIS Radeon HD 6990 (4096MB)
  • HIS Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB)
  • HIS Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB)
  • HIS Radeon Hard disk drive 6870 (1024MB)
  • Intel Core i7-3960X Farthermost Edition (three.30GHz)
  • x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 (CAS 8-8-eight-20)
  • Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79)
  • OCZ ZX Series 1250w
  • Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
  • Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
  • Nvidia Forceware 301.42
  • AMD Catalyst 12.7