out of the loop... graphics cards?

[~Darkseeker~]

Hi all,

firstly sorry about the thread spam, have neglected my PC for a while and am now doing many things to it at once.

I'm not up to date on what graphics cards are good these days, last time I knew much about GPUs the GTX 560 Ti was the bee's knees.

I've got a GTX 570 at the moment (1280MB Gainward Phantom) - I want to update it a bit but the rest of my PC is a bit aged as well (full info in the sig)

What graphics cards could I buy that will provide a decent upgrade, but also:-

- are PCIe 2.0 compatible (I see many are 3.0 now)
- are pretty quiet (It's a small room...)
- isn't going to be throttled by my aged sandy bridge i5 2500k and 8GB dual channel memory (1866MHz rated)
- doesn't cost the earth!

I realize this is an oddly specific but yet also not at all specific list of requirements throw some names at me if you can think of any. cheers!

 

[cb600fshornet]

PCIe 3.0 cards are backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0 so any PCIe 3.0 card is fine.

For a true upgrade with a decent performance difference, I'd recommend a GTX 970, though this card is 100GBP more than the 960 so if you can't stomach the price difference then a 960 will probably be okay!

 

[BikerEcho]

I agree with Joedaman.
Btw. The 960 is one of the most quiet GPU's on the market right now. Buy one with a non reference cooling design for best bang for the bug.

 

[BK_123]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/evga-super-super-clocked-gtx-960,4063-3.html

 

[~Darkseeker~]

What do people think of the lower R9s/upper R7s? They seem to be getting pretty good press lately and are cheaper. Really I just need something that's going to cool it's self more efficiently than this phantom, this thing literally goes to 11 at the slightest hint of rendering (spinal tap reference, by 11 I mean about 70C) and due to the design of my case, it heats everything else up along with it (hard drives, PSU etc).

 

[cb600fshornet]

What do people think of the lower R9s/upper R7s? They seem to be getting pretty good press lately and are cheaper. Really I just need something that's going to cool it's self more efficiently than this phantom, this thing literally goes to 11 at the slightest hint of rendering (spinal tap reference, by 11 I mean about 70C) and due to the design of my case, it heats everything else up along with it (hard drives, PSU etc).

The AMD/ATI cards tend to consume a lot more power than their Nvidia equivalents, if you're concerned about cooling then honestly, Nvidia is the way to go!