A South African graphics card buyer's guide

If you’re a PC gamer, the most important piece of hardware in your computer is always going to be the graphics card. When it’s time to create virtual armies, plunder demon-ridden caves or just hop around volleying rockets at people’s faces, it’s your graphics card that is doing the heavy lifting.

The sheer importance of the graphics card also makes it an intimidating thing to purchase. There’s a bit of margin for error with something like a CPU, but generally if you go for something decent and you’ll be alright. The nature of graphics cards, with their rebranding, feature lists, various clock speeds and transistor counts means that there will always be an enormous variety and it’s easy to make a purchase that isn’t actually getting you the best value for your money.

So if you’re a little uncertain when it comes to hardware, or maybe you’re an expert and just want to know what the best deals are, you should find something in here to help you out. I’m going to do this is by price – the best card for your money, for each price range. I’ll also quote the online store where I found the best price.

Under R800

I consider R800 to be a pretty important price point. A lot of people can’t really afford to pay R1000 for an upgrade, be they a student, still in school or just not able to spend that much on a luxury like a graphics card. Often you just want something that’ll be able to run most games at a decent framerate. You won’t get high detail or huge resolutions on cards like this, but you should be able to at least run most games while achieving decent fps. For a lot of people, that’s all they want.

I’ve chosen the Radeon HD5670 for this slot. It features DirectX 11 support, and a not unrespectable core speed of 775 MHz.  Aside from gamers, this card is a great budget option if you’re looking to make use of Radeon’s Eyefinity feature, which allows you to run multiple monitors. Of course, don’t expect to be playing anything that’s not Minesweeper on multiple screens.

R773 from Ikonic IT. 

It may look modest, but it’ll get the job done.

R1000 – R1500

Now we’re getting a little more power. In this slot you can actually get some incredibly decent stuff. My pick for this price range is the Radeon HD6790.

This card will easily run all of today’s AAA titles, and it should pump out very respectable frames per second, depending on your resolution and detail levels. If you have a larger screen – 22inches and above – you’d probably want to choose this over the R800 option.  This card features DirectX11 support, a core clock speed of 840 MHz and 800 stream processors.  If you’re wanting something just a couple of hundred rand cheaper, I’d have a look at the Radeon HD5770.

R1435 from Ikonic IT

 
The sleek exterior really accentuates this card’s pedigree.

Around R2000

The R1500 – R2000 price point is a little dry. There is the very excellent Radeon HD6850 which you can pick up for around R1900, but that price is so close to the HD6870 that it’s actually worth investing that little bit extra. If your budget is absolutely strict though, this is the card I’d recommend.

The HD 6870 is a beast if you can afford to spend a little extra. Unless you’re running multiple monitors, this should be able to play everything you throw at it on high settings. With a whopping 1120 shaders, obligatory DirectX11 support and a core speed of 900, this card will get any job done.

R2100 from Nivo Interactive Shopping

 
It may look a lot like the 6790 but don’t be fooled – this is in a whole other class.

I’m a Columbian druglord (R2500 and up)

If money is not much of a concern to you, graphics are an easy place to splurge. For the best performance to price ratio available, I’d recommend opting for a Crossfire/SLI setup. My personal recommendation is two Radeon HD6950s in Crossfire. As far as the extreme top-end goes, this is a very affordable setup, and can definitely hang with the big boys. Even running just one of these babies offers top-notch gaming performance. Compared to previous generations, the 6950s have also been found to scale very well in Crossfire.

If you’re just interested in getting the biggest, baddest thing available and cost be damned, you want to be looking at either the Radeon HD6990 or Geforce GTX 590, which compete for the title of top dog. These cards are generally a lot less cost-effective than a Crossfire option though, so my recommendation still stands with the dual 6950s.

R2630 apiece from Ikonic IT

 
Now imagine two of them. In the same machine. Yeah.

Final Notes

You’ll probably notice almost all my recommendations are Radeon cards. This has nothing to do with any kind of bias or brand loyalty; I just generally find that at the moment, Radeon is a little better in terms of price vs. performance. While Geforce often outperforms in terms of raw power, you generally pay a little bit more than what you’re getting.

It should also be noted that you can find some of these cards for a little cheaper, if you’re willing to go with a lesser known brand or a lesser known store. I only feel comfortable quoting prices of brands that I trust and stores that have good reputations. If you’re willing to try an unknown brand and a lesser known store to lower the price tag, do so at your own risk. Ultimately, the extra money is worth the peace of mind in my opinion. There are a lot of shady operations out there.

The main thing you should take away from this is that graphics card prices do not have to be a barrier for entry into PC gaming. The technology has evolved to a point where you can get quality cards capable of running almost anything for a reasonable price. Both Geforce and Radeon have an extremely extensive range, so you should find something to suit your budget. Just always try to make sure you’re doing the best you can with the money you have.

Do you have any of your own recommendations? Do you own one of these cards? Tell us about it in the forums, or comment below!