Last piece of my build- seeking video card advice!

[crabsmack]

So I've been assembling my first ever build through the past month or two, jumping on deals as I came across them. I now have every piece except for the video card, which is rather essential considering this is going to primarily be a gaming computer.

I picked up an i5 2500k, 8GB of RAM, a 750W PSU, and a 1920x1080 monitor. If there's any other info you need, please let me know.

I'm looking for something that will be able to run newer games on high (not necessarily max) settings for some time to come. Right now, that'd probably be Skyrim, Arkham City, and possibly BF3. I'd also like to be set for Diablo 3 when it comes out. My price range could go from $150-300, but I'm looking more at <$250, and of course cheaper is better. I've already overshot my budget on this build.

Right now the two main cards I'm looking at are the Radeon HD 6950 (not sure if 2GB or 1GB, how much difference does it make?), and the GTX 560 Ti. The GTX 570 looks very nice but I'm not ready to drop that much money after just purchasing an entire computer. I have no preference as to AMD vs. Nvidia. I'm currently running a venerable souped-up Dell with a Radeon HD 4650, and I haven't had too much trouble with AMD's drivers.

I'm also interested in the possibility of unlocking a 6950 to a 6970, though I'd have to look into which cards reliably unlock. Are there any driver issues after doing this, or do you just essentially have a 6970? And even if it fails, it still remains a usable 6950? It doesn't fry it or anything?

Of course, if there are lower-end cards that would serve me nearly as well for a fraction of the cost, please let me know! I've put together a rather nice computer and I'm not going to skimp on the video card, but I'm not interested in paying $100 more for a 5% performance increase.

As far as SLI/Crossfire goes, it's a possibility in the future but not a strong one, and I certainly won't be buying two cards to start. Compatibility with that is not a major concern. Additionally, I'm not going to be going above one-monitor 1920x1080, so that doesn't need to be accounted for either.

Thank you for reading, and any advice you have/deals you know of would be greatly appreciated!

[Deleted]

BF3, your going to need a very expensive one. I run Skyrim on equal specs with a MSI Twin Frozr n580gtx 1gb, if you get the 2gb version your good to go I reckon.

[Aeiri]

I'm in the same situation as you. Basically trying to decide between the 560 Ti Hawk and the 6950 Twin Frozr III.

So hard to make a choice. Leaning more towards the 560 because they generally are reviewed to have better drivers, I am currently playing at a resolution where I can't take advantage of the 2GB Ram really(1600x900), and some of my favorite games(SC2, Civ 5) are games where the 560 Ti outperforms the 6950. Then again I have ordered BF3 and I know its a vram hog so I'm not completely sure if the 2GB Ram would help or not(I do know it usually outperforms the 6950 by a bit in BF3).


I plan on upgrading to a 1080p monitor in the future, just not within half a year or so probably. Maybe not even till next black friday. When I do I won't be running 2-3 monitor gaming setups though. Just 1 for gaming and 1 for random browsing so I don't know if the extra vram would help at all in that situation.



I wish one would just be flat out better than the other to make the decision easier T_T. Also I'm kinda uneasy about making a decision based on the fact that you can flash the 6950 to a 6970. I'd rather not have to rely on that for performance.