Today we discuss how to get some bang for your buck when upgrading your video card! It's all too common for people to buy new parts and wind up frustrated because they didn't shop around / do any research.
If you know anything about video cards, then you know there are hundreds of different types of cards out there, all of which vary widely in terms of cost and performance. To anyone new to upgrading a graphics card, this may seem daunting, because it isn't always (ever) clear what card to get. I remember just last September, I was wondering what GPU (aka video card) to get for my new computer. I wanted something powerful for the latest games, yet economical because I was a hobo-esque college student. Alas, no one could tell me exactly what to purchase.
Thus I embarked upon an epic quest of discovery in search of the perfect graphic processing unit for my beloved PC. About three days, hours of research, and a hefty hit to my bank account later, I had arrived at the spiritually-lifting conclusion of what card I wanted
The ATI Radeon HD 5830--it was one hell of a honeymoon.
I immediately installed all the most demanding software I had (Crysis, FFXIV, Minecraft ;D) and realized what an awesome decision I had made. The 5830 performed everything flawlessly and would prove to be one of the more powerful cards on the market some nine months later.
Goose, quit reminiscing and get to the point; save me the moneys!
FINE! Here are the steps I used to finding an awesome, economical video card.
Important Note: Stay away from Retail stores like Best Buy. They charge ridiculous prices for sub-par parts.
Things you will need:
* How much you want to spend
* An idea as to what kind of performance you are looking for
* Patience
Once you have these, go to Newegg or Amazon and filter a search for video cards by your price range. Find a product around the amount you are looking to spend, and read the reviews. Do people generally like it? If not, go find another.
After you find a card that appeases the masses, Google "name_of_selected_card review" and do some research on it. The reviews will usually have charts comparing the performance of your card to other popular products on the market. LOOK AT THESE! You'd be surprised how much better some of the cheaper cards are than some expensive ones.
Keep in mind, more FPS (Frames Per Second) = Better. 25-30 FPS is decent. Anything higher will give you eyegasms (which is a good thing).
These review sites generally employ recent video games as a standard to gauge performance like in the above example. Use these to get an idea as to what expect from each card. Play World of Warcraft a lot? Then a card boasting high FPS on Modern Warfare 2 will probably suit your needs. You'll have to use your intuition on this one, or do a google search for "name_of_video_card performance title_of_game_you're_familiar_with" to get an idea.
If you can't find a suitable card for what you intend to do, you may need to up your price range and restart.
Once you're done examining the performance of the card in question on various benchmarks, do some price checks on the GPUs that out performed yours. You may be pleasantly surprised to see that the card with 10% better frame-rates is 20% cheaper, or perhaps that a card outperforming yours by a large margin is only a tiny bit more expensive.
You can expand on this search by repeating the process, but one of those popular cards on the benchmarks will probably be the winner.
At this point, you can buy it, or you can wait for a sale. In my case, Labor Day was right around the corner, so I got an awesome deal on the 5830 (which made it that much sexier).
A general rule of thumb is to always wait until a holiday for computer parts. Companies like Newegg, TigerDirect, and Amazon have great deals on these occasions, and you can save quite a few Benjamins if you practice a little patience during your video card search.
If you are new to the video card world, these steps will probably lead to a worthwhile purchase without you getting hosed. If you're still unsure, ask around a forum or shoot me an email.
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