Group test: what's the best graphics card?

5. HIS 7970 3GB review

• Reviewed on: 13 February 12
• RRP: £480 inc VAT
• Rating:

At the time of writing, the price of these HIS 7970 cards hadn’t settled. Around £480 seems par for the course, although it may be possible to get the card for around £20-£30 less. At these prices, the 7970 does seem a little expensive. The new architecture marks quite a change for AMD, although this hasn't yet turned into a card that'll blow away gamers. The 7970 is a nice card, but not one that's ground-breaking in terms of performance, and we suspect there is potential for nVidia. With that in mind, we'd recommend waiting a few weeks to see what the new nVidias can do.

 

4. Asus Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II

• Reviewed on: 16 May 12
• RRP: £280 inc. VAT
• Rating:

Overall the Asus Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II looks like a pretty good graphics card. The problem is that it finds itself up against the brand new nVidia GTX 670. And on that score it's a loser. The latter card may be more expensive, but for an extra £50 it gives you far more performance, and a slight improvement in power consumption too. Unless you really can't go up the extra, the 7870 remains, without a price drop, the second choice in its category.

3. Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti

• Reviewed on: 18 September 12
• RRP: £280 inc VAT
• Rating:

The Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a nice card that offers decent performance, and just about gets the nod ahead of the now rather old-fashioned 7870 cards. However, the loss of a memory controller is a significant setback, and given that the price difference between this and the GTX 670s is only around £20, we can't really recommend this over its more expensive sibling. Once the price falls another £20, it may start to become a very interesting product.

2. nVidia GeForce GTX 680

• Reviewed on: 17 April 12
• RRP: £419 inc. VAT
• Rating:

AMD's 7000 series relies on a graphics architecture that is drastically different from previous AMD chips, so we may still see much better performance with driver improvements, but right now, if you have £400 to spend on a graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680 is the clear winner.

1. Nvidia GeForce GTX 670

• Reviewed on: 16 May 12
• RRP: £329 inc. VAT
• Rating:

Almost identical in performance to the AMD Radeon HD 7970, despite costing £30 less, the nVidia GTX 670 is a fantastic deal. And the best news is that this is only the card running at its default settings. The next few months should bring all manner of new configurations, and an overclocked version of the GTX 670 would be more than a match for the 7970. It's also much lighter on power – around 55 watt – and quieter. It's still not cheap, but it's clearly the card to buy if you want excellent game framerates without a £400+ price tag.