Hey all,

I'm currently running an Nvidia GTX260 and I'm thinking it's time to upgrade. I'd like to keep it under $200. Any suggestions for the best Nvidia < $200? I'm not interested in Radeon cards. (buying from US, not EU, just fyi)

Thanks for any advice.

---

Originally posted by TheMaelstrom
Hey all,
 
I'm currently running an Nvidia GTX260 and I'm thinking it's time to upgrade. I'd like to keep it under $200. Any suggestions for the best Nvidia < $200? I'm not interested in Radeon cards. (buying from US, not EU, just fyi)
 
Thanks for any advice.

---

Stick with what you got. The nVidia 500 series isn't really competitive in the <$200 market, certainly nothing compelling or worthwhile to upgrade from a GTX260.

The only card that Nvidia has that is competitive on a price/performance basis right now is a GeForce GTX 560 Ti, which is a little over $200.  It should get you about double the performance of your current GeForce GTX 260.

Nvidia does have lower end cards to sell, too, but they're not competitive with AMD's lineup.  I guess if you want to pay a fanboy tax, you can.  A GeForce GTX 550 Ti isn't any faster than your current card, so that or anything slower would make no sense as an upgrade.

Nvidia's next generation of cards, Kepler, is supposed to launch this year.  Rumors say that the first cards could launch in a couple of months or so.  Nvidia might also be competitive again, after losing badly in performance per watt the last two generations, and performance per mm^2 the last three.  Both of those feed significantly into performance per dollar of cost to build the cards, and that affects prices at retail.  That's why Nvidia mostly isn't competitive on a price/performanc basis right now.  At the very least, Kepler will probably be a larger than normal improvement over the last generation, if only because Fermi was a disaster.

Thanks for the advice guys. Looks like I should just stick with my GTX260 for the time being. I'm hoping it'll handle Tera / Firefall / Diablo 3 on max. I'm playing the D3 beta and getting some hitching, but I'm hoping it's just a server issue and not a video card issue. My rig is more than capable, including a quad core 3GHz and 12G of RAM.

If it's hitching as in, the frame rate isn't entirely smooth, then it would be very unusual for server issues to cause that.  A processor, video card, or hard drive could easily cause such hitching, though.

Hitching like rubber banding would be indicative of something with the network or server though.

I went through like an entire summer of playing games that had issues with ATI cards until those issues were resolved via driver updates.  Nvidia has issues too (Dragon Age II and Crysis come to mind), but by and large, I'm more than happy with the Nvidia card currently running in my system even if the newer ATI cards are theoretically more powerful.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/benchmarks,123.html

I have been using this site for the past 10 or so years. Any time I am planning to build a new PC I go here and review the lastest greats everything. Its a pretty good site for info. I'm sure everyone has their own favorite sites for such things.

PS my opinion from another thread and things to consider.

Normal Television (pre HDTV) ran at about 30 fps. HDTV runs at about 60 fps. I honesly do not think the human eye will notice any significan change in FPS past 60fps. I would sugest getting a vid card that will consistantly give between 30-60 fps andy more and its wasted money.

I don't know anything about your current vid card  and what games you play or the fps you get  but if its between 30-60 fps you don't need a new vid card.

If you are getting the performance I suggest above with your current vid card you might want to research processor, memory ssd upgrades instead.

I did not see any mention about your monitor. If you have a crap monitor no upgrade will make it display bettter. I revently bought a flat panel 27" monitor and upgraded my video cable to Digital and it made a huge diff in what I see onscreen.

Upgrading to a 560 isn´t really worth it unless you really needs dx 11.

Either you need to pay more and get a 570 or you should ask around and see if you can´t get a second hand 290 card from someone that is upgrading (or 280 works as well).

While a 560 is slightly better than the 260 it isn´t really worth the price.

Originally posted by Palladin

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/benchmarks,123.html

I have been using this site for the past 10 or so years. Any time I am planning to build a new PC I go here and review the lastest greats everything. Its a pretty good site for info. I'm sure everyone has their own favorite sites for such things.

Yeah, me too. Tom rocks. :)

Originally posted by Loke666

Upgrading to a 560 isn´t really worth it unless you really needs dx 11.

Either you need to pay more and get a 570 or you should ask around and see if you can´t get a second hand 290 card from someone that is upgrading (or 280 works as well).

While a 560 is slightly better than the 260 it isn´t really worth the price.

The 560 is alot better than the 260 due to the cuda cores which is the big diffrence in GPU card performance. Also the 260 & 280 are very unstable cards.

GTX 560: