T
he sweet spot for the
graphics card market
right now is somewhere
around the £400-£500
mark, with both the
Nvidia GTX 1070 and GTX 1080
offering amazing performance for a
not-ludicrous price. However,
spending that sort of money on a
graphics card just isn’t an option for
many of us. That’s why we’ve grabbed
the next seven cards down from the
GTX 1070. That means they cover a
range of prices from £300 down to
£115, which is a much more palatable
amount to consider when looking at
upgrades. So if you are looking for a
compromise between power and
price, you should find the right card
for you here.Dictionary
GPU – The graphics
processing unit is the heart
of your graphics card, just as
the CPU is for the rest of
your PC. Its hundreds (or
thousands) of tiny stream
processors power through
the highly parallel workloads
that are required to render
each frame of your game.Stream processors
(SPs) – Tiny processing
cores, like the cores of a CPU
but far simpler. The more of
them and the faster their
clock speed, the faster your
framerate. Architectural
differences mean you can’t
directly compare AMD SPs
to Nvidia SPs, though.Video memory – Otherwise
known as VRAM, this is the
high-speed memory on a
graphics card that allows the
GPU quick access to all the
data it needs, such as
textures, polygons, etc. Not
having enough means having
to access your much slower
system memory.AIB – Add-in-board partners
are the likes of EVGA and
Sapphire which take the
chips designed by AMD and
Nvidia and build them into
the graphics cards you can
actually buy. Overclocking,
custom coolers and other
extras allow each AIB to
differentiate its product.Bang for Buck (BfB) – The
number of frames per
second you get for each
pound spent. Calculated
here by taking the average
fps in our tests divided by
the cost of the card. A raw
indication of value.Q&A
AMD or Nvidia?
Nvidia has consistently held
the top-end performance
crown for years. Its cards
also remain slightly more
power efficient. However,
AMD competes well for
mid-range cards, and if
crypto-currency mining is of
interest to you, they are a
better choice.AMD Freesync or
Nvidia G-Sync?
An extension of the AMD/
Nvidia battle is which
stutter-eliminating adaptive
sync technology to plump
for. Both work as well as
each other, for the most
part, but the more expensive
G-Sync tends to be used on
the best displays.How much video memory?
The basic rule is that the
higher the resolution and
graphical fidelity, the more
memory you’ll need. So if
you’ve a high resolution
screen and want your games
to look their absolute best,
then go for more memory.Group test
GRAPHICS CARDS