New graphics card suggestions

[Brother Oni]

So my EAH5770 is starting to chug a bit and I was thinking about an upgrade.

I've got a budget of £150 and am hoping to future proof my computer for a couple more years. I don't play top end FPS (they make me motion sick) and spend most of my time playing MMOs (or the children playing Minecraft).

I've narrowed it down to these two cards:

MSI GTX 660 2GB GDDR5

Sapphire R9 270X OC DUAL-X 2GB GDDR5

The R9 270X has better benchmarks (4516 vs 4118 according to this page), but I'm not sure it seals the deal.

Suggestions between the two or should I look at another card entirely?

[Max™]

I like Nvidia myself but I only use linux and AMD drivers tend to be hit and miss, though this is an odd situation, as the similar priced cards favor the 270x (which is a 7870 basically, from what I can tell) rather than the 660, normally Nvidia wins on prices, supposedly the 270 price crash was due to bitcoin mining or something?

For a small bump in budget the 760 is not much more but a lot more powerful than either, as a thought.

[Brother Oni]

Looking at the 760s available, the one that's closest to my budget is ~£30 over but from a manufacturer I don't recognise (Palit): link.

The next cheapest one from a manufacturer I do recognise is MSI, but is nearly £40 overbudget: link.

In your opinion, do you think the performance improvement of the 760 over the 270X is worthwhile for my needs? I would really have to justify a 25% overspend to myself, or rather to my wife.

[Max™]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nvidia-GeFor...ywords=gtx+760

There are others on there but the prices seem quite a bit better than the site you linked, as for the performance, it's similar to the bump from 660 to 270x from what I can tell, the only real reason would just be for a bit more future proofing, though as I said, I'm biased towards nvidia because their drivers play nicer with linux.

As it is right now the 270x does look like a really good bang for the buck though, be nice if someone with more amd background than "ugh this doesn't work at all" was around to check with.

[Crudefallout]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nvidia-GeFor...ywords=gtx+760

be nice if someone with more amd background than "ugh this doesn't work at all" was around to check with.

You called? I have a 7970 (gigabyte windforce to be exact), and, while it crashes occasionally, I have had very little other issues, and likely most of my crash issues derive from my overclock. While catalyst isn't the best, it does do the minimum well enough, and manufacturers offer their own separate software that works quite well. With AMD, at least recently, it seems you get often better price to performance ratio at the cost of the extras, and the cost of it always working flawlessly. Otherwise, it has been great.

[Max™]

Well there ya go, if you're comfortable with poking at your components now and then to keep them going and just want bang for the buck, looks like the R9 270x wins currently, I will second what was said about the nvidia stability, I've done all sorts of stupid things (I managed to remove one of the dependencies for my desktop which took out the window display manager as well, and THAT made the computer forget which video card driver I was using, though the card kept running two monitors with different resolutions/refresh rates/inputs/and one rotated sideways in pseudo-Xinerama just fine, despite the actual nvidia-settings file having NOTHING in it.

When I suspended the system and woke it back up the next morning it was a black screen, and THAT was when I discovered I had removed the desktop/nuked the display manager, yet somehow kept running just fine for hours before I went to bed.

Hopped into a terminal, reinstalled the desktop partially from guessing and partially from knowing what it should be named, and ran an install script for the most up to date drivers, which happened to fix every other problem I made.

[Brother Oni]

So the 270X is best value for money, is stable enough (unless I overclock it) but the drivers/compatibility can be a bit finicky, while the 760 has much better performance (better future proofing), very stable, but over-budget.

Doing a bit more digging, I've got the power overhead for the 760 and the spare connectors so it'll looks like I'll probably be going for that. I sold my wife on the overspend by not mentioning the 270X at all and saying her computer getting my old graphics card will let her entertain both children at once via multiplayer Minecraft.

Thanks for the help both of you.

[Don Julio Anejo]

I'd actually have gone for the 270X given the price difference/budget increase of the 760, but hey, your call.

I just find I'd rather guy something 25% cheaper and replace it 25% earlier than vice versa, but this is from a guy that replaced 7850 (which maxed out all the games I played at the time) with a 280X after a year just for I don't even know what.

[Brother Oni]

I'd actually have gone for the 270X given the price difference/budget increase of the 760, but hey, your call.

I just find I'd rather guy something 25% cheaper and replace it 25% earlier than vice versa, but this is from a guy that replaced 7850 (which maxed out all the games I played at the time) with a 280X after a year just for I don't even know what.

If I had a tighter budget then I probably would have gone for the 270X, but I got a surprise refund from my insurance company that will more than cover the difference.
Generally though, I prefer to spend a bit extra and not have to worry about replacing it until later, since I tend to have problems when upgrading/building my own machine (never anybody else's, just mine ) that makes me wary about messing around inside - if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it.

The 5770's lasted me about 4 years now and given rate of obsoleteness has dramatically tailed off (I remember when a graphics card would barely last a year before they started chugging on the latest games), something I know that will last me a good few years is fine by me.

[Max™]

Plus the next significant bump in performance pushes prices up around the same as the 270x > 760 one did, as I recall.