The concluding few months we've seen both AMD and Nvidia turn their attention to the high-terminate segment of the graphics market place. In add-on to launching their latest unmarried-GPU flagship boards, both companies but recently launched a couple of dual-GPU beasts and laid merits to the "earth'south fastest graphics card" -- and indeed they both came quite shut in nearly of our tests but AMD is challenging Nvidia to dorsum their marketing claims with hard evidence.

We haven't heard back from the green team on that one, but we have to say it's great to run into such spirited competition as it'south usually customers that reap the benefits. That's especially true today equally mainstream cards are getting more and more powerful and even a $100 production is capable of far more than you may give it credit for. So, while AMD and Nvidia settle the score at the super expensive enthusiast level, we actually desire to have a look at what's been happening elsewhere.

We've compiled a tabular array with some of what we consider the best options at several cost points between $70 and $200. Every bill of fare called tin can cope with the typical game on respectable settings. Items are listed from least to about expensive, therefore, also by functioning. For reference, we've also placed each product next to its closest competitor.

Our Preferred Graphics Card Cost Contest'due south Approx. Equivalent Price
AMD Radeon HD 5670 $70 Nvidia GeForce GT 440 $lxxx
AMD Radeon HD 5770 $120 Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 $115
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 (768MB) $150 AMD Radeon HD 6790 $150
AMD Radeon Hard disk drive 6850 $165 Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 (1GB) $160
AMD Radeon HD 6870 $205 --

The Radeon HD 6000 and GeForce 500 serial based on the refreshed Fermi architecture still oasis't trickled downwardly to all price points, so there are a few concluding-generation cards in in that location. They however offer an incredible value, though. We didn't include an equivalent for the Radeon HD 6870, as yous'd have to go for either the GTX 460 mentioned earlier it or upgrade to a GTX 560 Ti, which treads further onto the high-end ground at $250.

The most affordable of the cards selected, the Radeon HD 5670, is the everyman betoken you will want to go every bit far as discrete GPUs are concerned. For $60, this card provides decent gaming frame rates in resolutions like 1680x1050. If yous don't heed toning down some of the visual bells and whistles, last generation games like Crysis 2, CoD: Black Ops and StarCraft Two become playable with this card. Needless to be said, from this point forwards you gain further gaming operation as you spend more than.

It'south also worth mentioning that modern CPUs that have built-in graphics cores like the Intel Sandy Bridge processors render sub-$70 graphics cards useless. For example, a Core i5-2500K with the Hard disk Graphics 3000 logic performs about on par with a Radeon Hard disk drive 5450 that currently sells for $45. Information technology volition be interesting to see how this functioning scales in the near futurity when AMD unveils its Fusion-based performance oriented desktop CPUs.

This cursory selection is intended to offer GPU upgrade suggestions for the about common price points, but if yous're building a arrangement from scratch or upgrading your current rig, our ever-fresh desktop PC buying guide might be just what you lot're looking for.