Question

Which is the current best bank for buck, or best price to performance ratio Video Graphics card available today for playing 3D video games in the latest version of Windows?

This might also be best 'budget gaming' card or sub $200 card if I were to categorize what I was looking for though the specific price is less important. There is a place with most of these graphics cards where features and price go up fairly linearly and then suddenly the price jumps 2x for the next best card. I want the card just before the jump ;)

This is a question who's answer will change over time and I thought this might be the best place for the 'current' version of this question to live.

Answer 1

This is going to change every couple weeks as prices change and new chipsets come out. Who is going to maintain this question that often? Tom's Hardware is a much better place to get this information as they review everything, do tests and show you the pros and cons. It depends heavily on what kind of performance you are looking for to. This isn't a bad question, there are just much better places to get this information.

http://www.tomshardware.com/

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/

Here is the current list for Nov. 09 with every price range also: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2464.html

Answer 2

The problem is that this is too general. The "best" video card for Linux is not necessarily the same one I'd recommend to Windows or Mac users.

Right now the best Linux cards are still Intel integrated (except that awful, awful GMA 500 "Poulsbo" chipset made by PowerVR); they work out-of-the-box and they're vendor-supported; since the regression has been fixed in Xorg, Intel chipsets are performing quite well, even though they are typically under-powered compared to the discrete cards.

For discrete cards: it's a toss-up. If you want Free, built-in drivers and the ease of life that brings, go AMD/ATi; the cards are having less recall issues these days than nVidia. :)

If you don't mind a binary blob that'll break with every kernel upgrade, go nVidia; the support is there and they're wildly popular...just know that your kernel is tainted so no one will help you fix it and when nVidia stops supporting your board because it's "legacy", you're SOL and you're left with an obfuscated, barely-accelerated 2D driver that no one wants to run called "nv".

Matrox: binary only past their ancient Millennium G400 cards.

Via: I don't think the "three-driver" issue in Xorg has been sorted out yet. (Unichrome vs. OpenChrome vs. In-Tree)

Answer 3

It depends on your budget, really. That and it'd be helpful to know what you have right now/you're upgrading from. Video cards range from $30 to $600.

I had a friend building a cheap gaming rig that'll play the latest and the greatest on a 1680x1050 display -- so I recommended the GTX260 216-core series. These can be had for a shade over $200

Had another friend that wanted to get away from his rubbish on-board GeForce6150 (built-into nForce430 board) to use Aero Glass in Windows 7 -- I recommended either the GeForce 9400/9600 or the GT220. He wasn't going to do too many of the latest games, but had a small 1280x1024 display -- so any more of a powerful card, he'd have to get a higher-res display to reap the benefits. These ranged from $50-$70.

There are ATI equivalents of all the cards above, but both of them wanted to stay with nVidia for one reason or another. Neither of them were in the market for the most powerful card on the market either.

Answer 4

It depends on your screen resolution. I'm using an nVidia 9600 GT with a 17" monitor and it's plenty fast for every game I've played. I don't know how it would do with Crisis at max settings, but that's not "budget" territory. Of course, these days you can get a 9800 GTX for $120.

The most important thing to know is that anything from the 8800/9600 upward is going to be plenty fast for anything unless you're one of those people with two 25" monitors.