Need advice on buying a new GPU

[XanderK9]

I do assume you're referring to the HD4000 series fiasco where they were still selling HD4000 hardware (albeit in integrated form) when driver support was dropped? AMD was forced into maintaining a legacy driver then, not sure if said legacy driver is still being updated though.

They aren't. The latest updates are 13.1 (1/21/2013) and 13.4 Beta (4/29/2013), unless I'm missing something.

[Nash]

Eriance allow me to hijack this thread. :D

What graphics card can run modern (2014/2015) games with medium-high or high (but not max/ultra) that are preferrably $300 or less? nvidia only.

[XanderK9]

The GTX x60 cards (760 or 960 these days) should do the trick. The GTX 750 (I'm not sure if the Ti version is worth the extra cost, though) can also work.

I have just noticed how the price went up with the GTX 760 (on Canada's side, at least). Yikes!

[Kostov]

The 700 series are fading, at least in Sweden, so I guess the 900 series is the way to go for but I won't put my finger on it. Although, yeah, there is no 950 (Ti) (yet?), but at that price range you have better AMD cards such as the R9 270. If you're not really picky about OpenGL, that's the way to go for.

[leileilol]

I think where Eriance is going, OpenGL driver politics with GZdoom isn't going to matter much.

Keywords: professional, career

[MetroidJunkie]

I think where Eriance is going, OpenGL driver politics with GZdoom isn't going to matter much.

Keywords: professional, career

That's true, Eriance mentioned using it for Skyrim modding, in which AMD would probably be best suited for in terms of mid-performance and cheap since it uses Direct X.

[Amuscaria]

I just bought the 960. A current friend that is a career 3D artist said he's been using that card and it seems to work well for him. I'm not really playing any new games, in fact the only "new" game I've gotten was Homeworld Remastered, which runs perfectly smooth even on my old card. I also need 2 more sticks of ram to bring my computer to 16 GB, but I'll just order the same ram as my current sticks.

The problem I have with cards is that I don't really know what the difference between a 760 and 960 is. I haven't kept up with the technicalities of GPUs in recent years, and they now seem to be rated by things I have no clue about. I'm not sure how much of a difference a 760 or 960 would make for me, since I'm not a heavy gamer and only tend to play games I'm modding. I won't be needing any Parallaxed 4k textures any time soon. And I rather not burn out my hardware with heavy use (always afraid if I push my computer, I would break it ).

Anyways thanks for the help.

[XanderK9]

The 960 is basically the 770, but at the price of a 760 and smaller memory bandwidth, shading and texture mapping units. That's not something to worry about, though.

[Nevander]

What would you guys recommend for someone who has an AMD Radeon R9 270X who wants a better card for a decent price? I'm leaning towards changing to Nvidia because they are generally more capable and supported. I also dislike how AMD drivers are apparently incapable of forcing Vsync in DirectX games, at least from what I've gathered. Maybe a card that's a little better than mine that's made by Nvidia?

[Hellser]

What would you guys recommend for someone who has an AMD Radeon R9 270X who wants a better card for a decent price? I'm leaning towards changing to Nvidia because they are generally more capable and supported. I also dislike how AMD drivers are apparently incapable of forcing Vsync in DirectX games, at least from what I've gathered. Maybe a card that's a little better than mine that's made by Nvidia?

For $200, you can get a GeForce GTX 960 which is better than what you've got. Or if you can dish out more money; a GTX 970.

[Kostov]

Wait, what? Only $200 ($209)? Damn you Americans. :/

[Caligari87]

If you're looking for raw performance specs (not necessarily real-world) and how two cards might compare, check out http://videocardbenchmark.net/. Basically aggregate user-submitted 3DMark scores, kinda gives a decent overview of which cards may be better for the money.

[Amuscaria]

What is the way to properly remove an old GPU and install a new one?

Should I go into safemode, uninstall the drivers for the old one. Shut the computer down to pull out the old card. Put in the new card, and then pop in the driver CD when I boot it up again? Or is there something more specific than that?

[XanderK9]

It's not required to go into safe mode to remove drivers (in fact, some driver packages refuse to be uninstalled in safe mode), but that's pretty much what's needed to be done.

[NeuralStunner]

Right after you shut off the computer, turn off the power supply, then hold the power button in for a few seconds. (Always do this when changing hardware. Oh, and don't forget to turn the PSU back on before you try to start it up. )

You should probably also download the latest driver for your new card and use that.

Some folks also recommend running Driver Sweeper from safe mode after uninstalling the old driver, but I'm not sure if that's necessary.