January 31st, 2012
Best Graphics Cards for Money: February 2012 (Buyer’s Guide)
Buyer’s guide for February 2012. Updated with newest AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce cards.
Which is the best graphics cards for money this month? We have included the newest AMD card – Radeon HD 7970 and 7950, which have taken GeForce GTX 580 and ASUS MARS II position.
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
16 | 800 | 40 | 850 | 2400 | 108/400 | 12119 | 2625 | ||
Radeon HD 6770 is a refreshed Radeon HD 5770. It offers slightly lower performance in comparison to Radeon HD 5850, due to decreased memory interface and lower number of Fragment Pipelines. | |||||||||
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
16 | 800 | 40 | 840 | 2100 | 150/400 | 13717 | 3245 | ||
Radeon HD 6790 is refreshed and improved version of Radeon HD 5770. It has wider memory bus width (256bit) which will easily handle high resolution monitors. | |||||||||
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
32 | 900 | 48 | 775 | 2000 | 127/400 | 15708 | 3539 | ||
Middle-end graphics cards starts here. Radeon HD 6850 is quite similar to GTX 460, but its cheaper and performance is comparable. | |||||||||
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
32 | 384 | 64 | 880 | 1375 | 170/500 | 19013 | 4607 | ||
In this price tag you should definately get one of GeForce GTX 560 Ti models. This graphics cards is better solution than Radeon HD 6870. | |||||||||
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
40(48) | 448 | 60(64) | 732 | 1900 | 210/500 | 20825 | 5898 | ||
The newest graphics card from NVIDIA. Refreshed PCB with new GeForce GTX 560 Ti gpu, with additional pipelines (384 -> 448). It is the best solution it this price tag. In syntethic benchmarks GTX 560Ti(448) is even faster than GTX 570. | |||||||||
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
32 | 1792 | 112 | 810 | 5000 | 150/500 | 27111 | 6898 | ||
Radeon HD 7950 released on 31st January is a better solution than GeForce GTX 580. It features the newest technology available (DirectX 11, PCI-E 3.0 and ZeroCore). This card, when overclocked, has a performance of stock Radeon HD 7970. It is possible to flash BIOS from HD7970, which gives even more peformance. | |||||||||
 | Raster Units | Fragment Pipelines | Texture Units | Default Core Clock [MHz] | Default Memory Clock [MHz] | Power Draw / Required PSW [Watts] | 3Dmark Vantage P Score | 3Dmark 2011 Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
32 | 2048 | 128 | 925 | 5500 | 250/600 | 28322 | 7781 | ||
Radeon HD 7970 released in January is the fastest card from AMD. It is available at the same price as GeForce GTX 580, while it offers better performance. Card is known for unbelievable overclocking potential (15% OC on stock fan) | |||||||||
