I built my PC about 5 years ago, i5 750 LGA 1156, motherboard GA-P55M-UD2, with 8GB running win7 64 ultimate. The video card is a Geforce 9500 GT which has served me well and has no issues. But it is Christmas time and I would like to upgrade my video card.

I figure I would go with a PCI 3.0 card since the 2.0's are kind of scarce and pricey.

I occasionally play games when the weather turns cold and would likely try my games from 5 years go like IL2, Silent Hunters, CIV4. So my gaming needs are rather subdued, but I really do want to Battle of Stalingrad sometime. So I was thinking an EVGA GTX650 since it is $60-70 with rebate.

A) Anyone have a bad experience with EVGA?
B) Is an AMD/ATI type of card better?
C) Is there a better economical/performance choice?

Thanks in advance

A) I haven't, and I've had at least 3 of their cards.
B) Depends. In certain price/performance brackets, yes. So at say $200 the answer is different than $250 which again differs from $300. If you're looking under $100, I can honestly say I'm not sure as I've not used recent cards in that class.
C) With video cards, the best you can afford is better bang for the buck up to about $350. After that prices rise asymptotically with their performance, where you pay 15% more for 5% more performance.

If you can spend $150, then spend it! Look for a sale on a $175 card, don't pay more for a stock OC'd $125 card. Especially if you want it to last several years again. If you can spend $175, then do so! If you can't, spend the most you can because it DOES make a difference at the lower end.



The Jedi Master

+1 on all Jedi said.
I've got an EVGA and perfectly happy with it. I can't think of a brand I've had a bad experience with either though. Sapphire was good to me with my cards before this one.
I do think nvidia has been better for me than AMD performance-wise, an experience repeated from one I had a long time ago. I'll probably stick with nvidia until I have a dead certain reason not to in the future.
As for the rest, read up and decide what you want in your budget. Then watch for a sale on the next model up. Not a bad time of year to be looking for a gpu.
Newegg, Amazon, Tigerdirect...the usual places.


For reference, this might help you compare apples to apples:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

A) Yes, got a card with a chipped PCI-E out of the box.

B) Nvidia tends to have better drivers for flight sims. Currently it is really the only option for DCS as AMD dropped DX9 support.

C) I'd recommend spending more. A GTX 650 is rather weak. I have an MSI GTX 670 PE/OC 2GB I am looking to sell for $160 shipped. It is faster than anything else in the price range and can max out most games at 1080. Runs very quiet and cool thanks to the excellent cooling design. You can see more details here.

Thanks for everyone's advice. I gave "Santa" my list, which was above the GTX650 per everyone's input, and will see what I get.

Flogger I did check out your card too, but I think I might have a problem fitting that card in with my current setup. That 670 card is mad powerful.

What kind of a PSU do you have? That would be my main concern; although a quality 500 watt PSU will run the 670 and just about any single GPU on the market. Even the newer 970 cards. The exception being the very power hungry $600-900 level cards. Those might require more.

I upgraded from a 560ti to the 670 on an AMD 965 (similar in speed to your i5) and the performance jump was pretty big in most games. About 70% or so in the recent Tomb Raider game. I received the card halfway through my play through, and went from 20s-30s to 40-50s.

What? Since when?

For one, AMD no longer supports DX9. A lot of the older flight sims like DCS are DX9 only. AMD users experience rather poor frame rates compared to their Nvidia counterparts. This will change for DCS when EDGE releases as it is DX11. Nvidia also seems to have a better track record supporting smaller games, whereas AMD tends to focus on the big blockbuster titles primarily.

AMD does support DX9. A DX9 driver is included with new driver downloads -- many games are DX9 even now. If a new game uses DX9, AMD will support it.

AMD no longer supports old AMD DX9 CARDS -- like the old X1xxx I used to own. So, if one has a "hopelessly out of date" AMD card, that won't be supported with monthly (or whenever) driver updates. Rather, one must download a separate driver for the old class of card -- on the AMD site. I doubt any gamer still depends on one of those old cards (yes, there must be at least one person in the world ). I have a couple in a cardboard box.

AMD has long had a policy of providing drivers for "old games" -- but not updating them for old games no longer supported by the game developer -- that does include MSFSX, for example. So, if MSFSX needs a better driver, it won't get it. However, a DX9/DX10 driver that does support it is in the normal AMD graphics driver package for newer AMD cards (just won't update specifically for MSFSX). Worth noting, some of the old simulations were CPU limited -- not GPU limited.

Generally, the new AMD gaming cards are a lot faster than the DX9 era cards (several hundred to nearly 3000 shaders versus ~50 or ~100 shaders) -- so they run the old, out of date games faster without resorting to driver changes. And, as noted above, popular new DX9 games still being supported by their developers get new drivers -- if AMD deems one is needed.

Somehow, folks have misread "not supporting old AMD Cards (from the DX9 era)" to mean not supporting DX9 graphics.

The above is my understanding of the issue. And, I've had no problems with my games -- including some real old ones.

Some fact, some opinion FWIW.

I run DCS, MSFS 10, and tons of other DX 9.0 games on my AMD hardware. There were some driver issues a year ago or so where some DX 9.0 games had flickering, but those have been resolved by AMD's driver dept. They all run just as well on AMD hardware as NVidia's hardware...