Personal Experience with Recent Graphics Cards

[OmgOhnoes]

Okay,

Long story short i'm going to have to do a full upgrade on my PC and am looking for personal experiences with GFX cards in the mid to lower-high end range. Approx $300-400 dollars CAD.

My personal experiences with NVIDIA have been lackluster, several failed cards and this particular card having big driver issues for several games. I was thinking of swapping over to ATI and buying a MB to reflect that.

My question is:

What cards do you have experience with specifically relating to source engine games and are the drivers stable enough for it that you would buy the card again or would you look for another?

[The Domer]

I've had the nvidia geforce gtx 560 Ti for almost 3 years now, and I've never had any issues.

[NerevarineKing]

I've had a GeForce GTX 760 for a few weeks now and it's worked great. Nvidia uses a program called GeForce Experience to deliver and install driver updates to you. The program will also autodetect some of your games and optimize them based on your specs. Of course, you can turn this feature off if you don't like it. The card itself runs source engine games very well and I've had no issues with it so far. If you're interested in a 300-400 CAD card, the 770 is about that much. My friend has a 770 and hasn't had any problems with it so far.

Here's a link to the exact video card I have:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130932

[OmgOhnoes]

Okay, well i have the EVGA GTX 260 R2. It basically has the same software but i ended up not using it because i had to keep a super old driver version to maintain stability with TF2.

I initially had to GTX260's in SLI but one crapped out and so did a replacement; hence the irritance with them.

I was considering upgrading to http://products.ncix.com/detail/msi-gef ... -85445.htm

I'd go from:

M2NSLI-32 Deluxe
Phenom II 965BE OC'd to 4.2ghz
4 GB DDR2 RAM
GTX 260 R2

To something like:

990FX http://products.ncix.com/detail/asus-sa ... -75613.htm
Phenom II 965BE OC'd to whatever (board gives me room to upgrade to 8cores FX's and whatnot in the future).
16 GB DDR3 RAM
and the new GFX card.

The board allows me to do ATI crossfire which is basically why i'm in this dilemma. There is a fairly large thread on Steam Forums about NVidia and their drivers lately.

Do either of you have any stats as far as what settings you run and the FPS you get? Any stuttering etc?

[NerevarineKing]

I run max settings on TF2 w/out any special config files:
Sitting in spawn I get 250-300 fps
In battle with a lot of people I get 100-200 fps

[frostdillicus]

Honestly, manufacturer is more important than chip. Personally I wouldn't touch anything EVGA makes with someone else's 10 foot pole. After I had a 8800GTX melt cause the thermal pads on it were absolute garbage and had to RMA the same motherboard 3 times to get one that worked, I am completely done with the garbage they make.

Personally, I would stick with Asus or XFX for your stuff. Find one of the XFX graphics cards that comes with a lifetime, yes lifetime, replacement warranty and you will never have to worry about it. They will replace a dead card with a card of equal level of the CURRENT generation. Really, an amazing warranty program and one that I have never had to use.

ATi vs NVidia is mostly academic at this point. Find one you like in the right price/performance range for you and you will never really see the difference. Well, unless you decide you need CUDA or something, but you could just use OpenCL at that point.

[The Spanish Inquisition]

Frost nails it.

[Zork Nemesis]

I realize you've probably already been convinced not to get another Nvidia card, but if Nvidia drivers are a concern, I recommend using the 314.22 driver version over the newer versions they've put out. From recent experiences and past history, newer drivers have been somewhat unstable and while 314.22 isn't perfect and a year behind, 314.22 at least doesn't freeze everything up for long periods of time for no explainable reason.

[Plinko]

From what I have seen and heard from folks lately, TF2 is now usually processor bottlenecked and 4BG RAM is a problem for people in that it's such a resource hog to run.
Don't be surprised if your RAM upgrade doesn't help more than any adjustment to your GFX.

[Tilgasse]

Frosty Im the complete opposite.


I only buy EVGA cards. I think they are top tier. I had 2 7950 GT KO's then got a gTX 275 now I'm running 2 GTC660's All of them were EVGA Cards and never had a problem with any of them. I also had a motherboard that was EVGA and they RMA'd it twice for free. I have nothing but positive experiance with them!

[Clay Pigeon]

I've only bought evga cards for the last few generations, but my newest card is a 570, back when evga still offered free lifetime warranty coverage if promptly registered.

I don't know what I'll buy in the future.

[Soltan]

I have two EVGA 580GTX in SLI. I've had zero problems in the 2.5 years I've had them.

[Perfect Villain]

im loving my 7950 that i got for $200 months ago even though i should of sold it during the bitcoin craze

[frostdillicus]

I also had a motherboard that was EVGA and they RMA'd it twice for free. I have nothing but positive experiance with them!

Having to RMA anything at all shouldn't be considered a positive experience. Having it work properly out of the box is what is supposed to happen and in my two builds since then with Asus motherboards that is what has happened.

Maybe they have gotten better, I don't know. However, after having to RMA something 3 times then having a $400 graphics card melt on you because of sub standard thermal pads, you tend to swear off a manufacturer.

[Masakari]

I have had nothing but problems with nVidia drivers. That would be my sole reason to stay away from them.

XFX AMD cards I've been using for about five years, and they've been stable and high performing.