Rock, Paper, Shotgun

RPS Asks: Graphical Cardware?

By Jim Rossignol on September 29th, 2011 at 10:11 am.


This is entirely anecdotal, of course, and entirely unscientific, but 2011 has been the first year since we started RPS that I’ve really noticed a rise in the number of you guys talking about upgrading PCs, or building entirely new PCs. The main reason for this seems to be Battlefield 3, but it’s also been true to a lesser extent for The Witcher 2, and to some degree just for the general upward trend in PC gaming performance.

So then: hands up if you bought a graphics card in the past year! (So since September 2010.) And also let me know how much you spent.

o/ (£199)

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325 Comments »

  1. 29/09/2011 at 10:14 sockeatsock says:

    It seems just as important to say if you didn’t buy one, otherwise you have nothing to benchmark off. I for one, am using a one year old, $250 card.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:34 sneetch says:

      Likewise I haven’t bought one in the last year. I did get a Radeon HD 5850 in February 2010 though. I haven’t really come across all that much that it can’t handle very well in awesome-o-vision (apart from Metro 2033). When I do start coming across that kind of stuff I’ll get one or two not-quite-top-of-the-line cards to replace it but for now it’s doing fine.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:39 Chris D says:

      Good point, my guess would be that if you only count this years upgrades the results will be skewed towards the high end, as the guys who like to have high performance are likely to be upgrading more frequently than those of us who don’t particularly care so long as we can still play our games.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:49 ashereize says:

      @Sneetch I managed max settings on Metro on my HD 5770, so I’m thinking the problem is elsewhere in your rig.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:05 sneetch says:

      @ashereize

      Might be, might be, as I recall there were a fair few people with mystery problems with Metro 2033, at the start at least. In my case my brand new, pretty high spec, PC was struggling with high settings in DX11 especially, I might check it again to see if the various patches since have improved it at all.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:24 PoulWrist says:

      @asherize maybe at like 1024×768. That game can hardly run max settings on a geforce 580. http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-mars-ii-review/19

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:33 Shortwave says:

      Tess in Metro is pretty badly done.
      It looks great but it takes a huge hit.

      My 6950 doesn’t handle it smoothly most of the time.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:35 mike2R says:

      I’m still running a Radeon 4890 from June ’09. Still does most things OK although I’ve become used to adjusting towards the middle for modern games.

      I’ve thought about putting in a mid-range current gen card, but I think I’m probably suffering more from still running XP which gives me less than 3GB of addressable main memory with that card fitted.

      Probably just keep it chugging away until I build a whole new box at some point, I’d like an up to date CPU since I play a lot of games which are CPU bound rather than graphics card, but that means a new motherboard.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:43 LionsPhil says:

      8800GTX from October 2007. Still not feeling any pressure to upgrade: everything runs great. All hail the console boat anchor for stalling the upgrade treadmill.

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:16 Llewyn says:

      Still using the 4770 I got when I built this PC, didn’t get around to adding a second before they were discontinued. Strangely it’s still coping just fine with everything I’ve wanted to play, at 1920×1080. I guess I need to find shinier games to justify an upgrade.

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:18 Resurgam says:

      Lionsphil, you da man, high end 8800s are still outlasting consoles, I roll with the 8800GTS 512mb, there’s just no need to upgrade yet, maybe in a year if there’s something more than BF3, (refreshing origin every 5 mins, BETA is probably gonna break my PC)

      Maybe we should talk about how long we can make them last aswell and still get med/high graphics on 1920*1080.

      Oh and the overheating while playing crysis on high, all part of the charm ;)

      Ahhhhhh 220 quid well spent in 2007.

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:20 DarkWeeble says:

      I’m also running at 5850 that I obtained for about $220. My 8800GTS shit the bed last Fall.

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:21 tanith says:

      About 100 Euro for a GTX 460 Hawk, in March/April 2011.
      My last video card was a GeForce GTO 7900 which I bought in September of 2006 to play Gothic 3.

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:26 VelvetFistIronGlove says:

      I’m one of the crazies that plays games on an iMac (booting up Windows 7 for games). It’s not quite two years old, but has a mediocre-tastic 512MB Radeon HD4850. This lacks the grunt to run a good many recent games at the native resolution of the built-in LCD (2560×1440), so I have to run most games these days at 1920×1080, usually on medium settings.

      I’ll probably by a dedicated gaming PC next year and run it headless, plugged into the iMac to use its screen, because the screen is lovely.

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:37 PeteC says:

      I upgraded my whole PC in April last year. Got an ATI 5870 which I’m really happy with. Handles everything on the highest settings well enough so far (haven’t played The Witcher 2 yet though) so can’t see me upgrading for a few years yet at least.

      The only upgrade I’m really thinking about is an SSD.

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:07 ASBO says:

      I have a first generation mac pro. The chipset is so old there’s nothing I can upgrade it with. So I’ve been waiting since Feb or so for the next generation to become available.

      I will upgrade at the whim of Apple, not some video game (unfortunately).

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:34 Thoridan says:

      @sneetch

      I have the same card, and I’ve not yet met anything that it can’t handle, Except Crysis 2 with the new DX11, and Hi-Res patches, but i think that may be my rig, since I can run everything else i throw at it.

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:52 Fierce says:

      I bought my first 5850 in November 2009 for $370 CDN (after tax, they’d just come out, still have the receipt) and then a second 5850 this February off Craigslist for $200.

      The high prices are due to the context under which I bought them and the high resilience of 5800 series pricing due to Bitcoins and comparative results against the similar priced 6800 series which survives even to today.

      I would definitely say that these cards, especially together, handle everything I can throw at them, including playable rates in Metro 2033. Free driver-side performance bumps are getting fewer and farther between though as AMD almost abandoned the 5800 series for the 6000 series under the Mjolnir project, and I got the 2nd one mostly as an experiment in CrossFireX and its nuances.

      All in all, I’m still satisfied with them, and will have no compulsion to upgrade to anything short of the 7970 next year. Hoping for a holiday sale on RAM and SSDs before then.

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:54 mike2R says:

      @ ASBO

      Despite what Apple says, you can put the Mac Edition Radeon 5770 into a 1st gen Mac Pro. 5870 into the 2008 and later models. 5770 is Open CL compatible if that matters to you.

    • 29/09/2011 at 15:44 dirtyword says:

      Bought a EVGA GTX 460 1Gig in Feb. for $200 (aka ~£128)

    • 29/09/2011 at 20:48 Kenny007 says:

      Had it not been for the now abandoned original release of APB, I’d likely still be rolling with my 8800GTS w/ 640mb. Didn’t have a problem with any game until Summer of 2010 when APB came out. It was APB’s fault most likely. That game became the catalyst for my i7 update. Then the game went dead…lol.

      Still like what the update has brought me (now running with a GTX 470) but I probably would have continued to limp along on that 8800…it was a great card. Bought it in 2007.

    • 30/09/2011 at 06:05 Specials4uc3 says:

      I am running 2 GTX570s and Metro 2033 turns into a slideshow if I activate DX11 max settings. I think it’s pretty much just broken. Witcher 2 at max (no uber) sits on the vsync at 60fps no problem.

    • 30/09/2011 at 09:35 ASBO says:

      @mike2R last year I managed to get an EVGA 8800GT which has a large enough ROM that I could flash it with an EFI firmware. Works very well. But I’m not going to get a new card only to replace the entire system in a couple of months or so (at which point I’ll invest in the GTX285 most likely)

      Edit: Mis-read your post. I’m looking into upgrading it with something a bit meatier, but don’t want to invest in ATI…

    • 02/10/2011 at 08:21 bill says:

      Bought a laptop 3-4 years ago which has some form of ATI Mobile card in it (who cares about the confusing numbers).
      It managed to play portal 2 pretty well, and i HAVE NO PLANS to upgrade my laptop for as long as humanly possible.

      If it gets to the stage where it can’t play modern games on reasonable settings, well, there are loads of current/older games I haven’t played yet.
      If it gets to the stage where it can’t play games at all.. well, I’ve just spent a lot on a smartphone, so I might pick up a cheap console for a while, and a netbook.

  2. 29/09/2011 at 10:15 Gothnak says:

    2 weeks ago I bought a load of cards at a local end of line auction…

    A 570, 6 x 460′s, and a 6850.

    After testing them all and seeing the money they go for, i decided to keep one of the 460′s and sell my 4850…

    So, my Zotac 460 GTX SE i bought, cost me around £48 :).

  3. 29/09/2011 at 10:15 Dlarit says:

    o/ £295

  4. 29/09/2011 at 10:15 Rusna says:

    o/ Sapphire 6950 DiRT3 Edition for 230 Euro delivered home. Not bad.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:56 Nihil says:

      Snap! Although mine was £149.99 rather than crazy euro money. I also slapped a Noctua Cooler on my processor and overlocked the nuts off it to stop the card getting bottle-necked. Works like a charm :-) Bargin upgrades ftw!

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:18 Orija says:

      Woo! I’ll be getting the Sapphire 6950 Toxic edition in a few days time.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:41 pauleyc says:

      I got the same card about two weeks ago. Excellent upgrade from a 4870 (though I’m still waiting for AMD to verify my Dirt3 serial number).

  5. 29/09/2011 at 10:16 Forceflow says:

    I did a minor upgrade from a Radeon HD4890 to an HD6850, which cost me €150 minus the €50 I got for the old card.

    Hope BF3 indeed runs well.

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:34 IncredibleBulk92 says:

      I’m using a 5850 with a 1 St Gen i5 and I’m running bf3 on ultra settings with as on. I think their recommended specss are a little high if I’m honest

    • 29/09/2011 at 19:07 KindredPhantom says:

      I am currently running a 4890 I bought over a year ago, I’m considering upgrading to a GTX 560 Ti, missed out on a really good deal at dabs yesterday. I was considering a 6950, but it would be too big to fit into my case.
      Waiting to see how my 4890 handles BF3 before I upgrade.

  6. 29/09/2011 at 10:16 Braindead says:

    3 weeks old, €222

  7. 29/09/2011 at 10:16 kilometrico says:

    2x PowerColor HD6950s @ $460 AUD

  8. 29/09/2011 at 10:16 Melchor says:

    Bought GT 560 Ti a month ago. 200€
    To go with new i5 2500K.
    Thus far really content with them.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:48 bsplines says:

      Bought the same card as well two months ago, after 4 years with a GTX7950. Not disappointed so far.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:55 Gravy says:

      Just built a brand new 2500k system and bought a MSI Twin Frozr 560Ti for £170 really happy with it so far just need Bat beta to test it a bit. Oh and i got new batman steam voucher too!

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:35 Torn says:

      Yep, 560 Ti and i52500K here also.

      The 560Ti’s are good cards, but beware certain factory-overclocked models have shown to be a little unstable and need a bit of bumping-up voltage-wise.

  9. 29/09/2011 at 10:17 Gnoupi says:

    Have a laptop, bought last summer. So most likely I’ll keep my 5870 until the end of the whole machine.

  10. 29/09/2011 at 10:17 Askeladd says:

    I bought a HD4870 for around 130€ years ago. No I got a 460 GTX in my system from a friend that didn’t need it anymore.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:54 Snargelfargen says:

      My 4870′s still trucking. Doing an excellent job except it can’t handle SSAO. It doesn’t seem to like particle effects or volumetric light either.

      I’ll be getting a new video card sometime around the holidays so I can play Witcher 2 and DE:HR at maximum awesomeness. Until then I have a backlog of games I got on steam/gog/gamersgate sales. Currently plodding through King’s Bounty, Gothic 2 and Stalker Clear Sky.

  11. 29/09/2011 at 10:17 Will Tomas says:

    I bought a new PC last Christmas so haven’t replaced the graphics card yet as it has coped with everything I’ve thrown at it. It came with an ATI Radeon 5770.

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:49 diamondmx says:

      Ditto – Radeon 6570

    • 29/09/2011 at 17:27 rayne117 says:

      5770 here, from February 2010. Drivers with it are absolute shite, I have found. I can’t run RO2 on ultra, but that’s the first game so far I couldn’t max out. So she still has at least another good year of medium on games. And with no job, it’ll have to.

  12. 29/09/2011 at 10:17 Outright Villainy says:

    2 weeks ago I got a 6870. Doesn’t really count as upgrading since this is the first PC I built but there you go.

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:41 Annexed says:

      Picked up a Sapphire HD 6870 Vapor-X for ~ £150 last month and happy with that so far.

      Even more happy with the Be Quiet Straight Power E8 680W Modular PSU I bought at the same time for ~£70 – fairly extravagant, but it’s made a massive difference replacing the noisy Dell PSU that the machine came with.

  13. 29/09/2011 at 10:17 Obliter8 says:

    First time in a while any game apart from Metro 2033 has challenged my PC!

    Upgraded to GTX580, £340 last week.

    Also i5 2500K, 8GB DDR3

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:59 Nice Save says:

      I got the 3GB version of the GTX580 a couple of months ago, but the 210 I had was only a placeholder until I could afford something decent.

      ~£400

  14. 29/09/2011 at 10:17 piphil says:

    Bought a 6870 1GB a month ago for £135 incl. del.

    This was partially because my old 8800 GT started causing blue screens, but also because it’s about 2 years since I last upgraded and therefore the itch has returned.

    It’s surprising me how much power you can get for your money these days – my next plan is to upgrade MB/CPU/RAM to a Sandy Bridge i3 system, for which I’m looking at an outlay of around £200 for something that’s about twice as quick (according to Futuremark) than my old system (E6400 C2D).

    No wonder manufacturers are pushing multiple screens and 3D – a £500 PC can play pretty much any game now, so they need to justify the extra pixel-pushing-power afforded by their higher-end kit.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:21 Askeladd says:

      You should maybe wait for Ivy Bridge from Intel. They got some pretty neat new tech in the pipeline for the coming year.

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:58 piphil says:

      I could probably wait for the next gen after that. Fact is I’ve got £200 in my pocket, and I want a PC that will play Skyrim smoothly. :-P

      I could also wait for AMD to produce a half-decent chip as well… *Ducks* :-)

    • 29/09/2011 at 23:51 Facelord says:

      @ piphil
      My new Phenom II 955 Black Edition processor rocks, I definitely don’t regret taking a step out of my comfort zone and buying a non-Intel processor. It gives me roughly the gaming performance of a first-generation i7 processor and it cost me $200 less on the card and the motherboard.

      Anyways I just built a new computer a week ago, it has a Sapphire 6850 graphics card and the Phenom II I mentioned, 4 GB of RAM, a Western Digital Caviar Black 500 GB hard drive… nothing’s bottlenecked, everything’s stable. I’m considering overclocking my card or my processor but I have no problems running Crysis, Deus Ex: HR, Batman: Arkham Asylum and tons of other games on highest possible settings at full 1080p with over 60 FPS so it’s not necessary yet. My build’s gonna be more than sufficient for the next few years, I’m proud of it. In the end it only cost me $600 total, my new monitor was an extra $180 on top of it(ASUS ML239H model). After my old PC died(capacitors nearly burst on me) I just scrapped it, it had an integrated Dell motherboard so I couldn’t really reuse anything except the outdated 3870 card and maybe the E6600 Core 2 Duo. My 15 inch 1024×768 monitor’s always been hard on the eyes as well, the new one’s stunning. Again, very proud of my new build.

  15. 29/09/2011 at 10:18 LimEJET says:

    Last christmas, I bought myself a GeForce GTX 460 for about 1400 SEK, which is about a tenth of that in GBP.

  16. 29/09/2011 at 10:18 Ertard says:

    Bought my 5850 in September 2009. That was a good £270 or so on release. Sometime last year (I think it was early) I could not stand AMDs atrocious driver support any longer, sold it, and effectively paid another £50 for a 460.

    Yesterday I bought a 560 Ti for BF3, £200. So yeah, £200. Will buy the 6-series whenever that damn well pleases to come out.

    All of these are swedish prices converted to pounds.

  17. 29/09/2011 at 10:18 NinjaMonkey says:

    I got an ATI raedon 6800 and It’s been killer. Cost me £120 and it’s ruin every game I’ve had so far on full graphical settings.

  18. 29/09/2011 at 10:18 Belmakor says:

    o/ (£251.48)

    1280MB EVGA GTX570 SC HD PCI-E (June 2011)

  19. 29/09/2011 at 10:19 choconutjoe says:

    o/ (3100NOK ~ £345)

  20. 29/09/2011 at 10:19 telpscorei says:

    I had a hell of a time trying to get a 6970 working in my machine. Turns out I’d need to get a newer PSU to support it (PCI-E 8 pins were required, I had 6 pins). So I tried to get an Asus 6950 instead (requres 2 6 pins, which I have). This was “being delivered” for over a month before I just gave up.

    Am now planning to upgrade to a Radeon 7000 series when they come out, as well as maybe upgrading my PSU if it needs it.

    Sigh, so despite all that, my count for graphics hardware this year is still 0, when it should be around £250.

    EDIT: Corrected card numbers

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:27 Askeladd says:

      Never save on the PSU. My 3 year old PSU can go from double 6 pin to double 8 pin.
      Just remember that next time you build a PC.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:40 telpscorei says:

      Didn’t save; got a Corsair 650 or something or other. But when it was made, the 8 pin connector wasn’t a thing.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:51 kmv_007 says:

      I just got a 6870 for $150 USD after MIR. Upgraded from a 4830 I’d had for a little over 2 years. The highest resolution I’ll use it on is 1080p so I should be good for several years.

      Combined with the recent upgrade from E5200 to Q6600 I think I’m good for a couple more years.

      I’m curious about the guy who bought a 6870 requiring 8-pin PCIE power. The Sapphire 6870 requires 2 6-pins, no 8-pins.

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:14 telpscorei says:

      Well spotted mate, I evidently meant the 6970. And, by extension, the 6950.

    • 29/09/2011 at 15:09 telpscorei says:

      To ANYONE ELSE with a CORSAIR HX620 that has run into this problem:
      http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=71027
      On that link is the email address of one of the corsair support dudes. If you email them with the requested cable and your PSU, they will bloody well send it to you!

      This is why I love Corsair. I am sending that email the minute I get home. I could actually have a graphics card in my machine that was made sometime this year before Christmas! It truly is a summer in the middle of August miracle!

  21. 29/09/2011 at 10:19 LarsBR says:

    XFX 6870 1GB, in April for DKK 1599 (which converts to 187 of your pounds of sterling).

  22. 29/09/2011 at 10:20 skalpadda says:

    My Radeon HD4870 still plays everything I throw at it well enough. The Witcher 2 is the only game where I’ve had problems getting decent performance out of it and I’ll be waiting until there’s more than one or two games that demand more before I start thinking of upgrading.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:33 TeraTelnet says:

      Likewise, my 4870 seems sufficient for now. I reckon sometime next year I’ll think about upgrading it, though replacing my Windows HDD with a solid state drive will come first.

  23. 29/09/2011 at 10:20 grossvogel says:

    MSI GTX 560 Ti, £160

  24. 29/09/2011 at 10:21 John P says:

    I bought a Radeon 6870 in November last year for about AUD$350. It’s been a good buy; the rest of the hardware is approaching 3 years old but it still plays everything smoothly.

    I should say I only bought a new card because the old one died, though. Otherwise I would have stuck with the old one for a while.

  25. 29/09/2011 at 10:21 Eraysor says:

    I “bought” a Gainward GTX 570 Phantom earlier this year. I say “bought” because I didn’t pay the £270 it was supposed to cost because my previous graphics card died (a Radeon 5850) and that covered most of the cost under the warranty.

  26. 29/09/2011 at 10:21 Bishop says:

    Bought a 6870 1GB a day ago for £150 incl. del.

    This was partially because my old GTX 260 crashed constantly if AA was on or I stood too near an explosion. (Team mates shooting me in the face with a rocket on borderlands caused a crash, L4D running through fire, R02 being in a tank when it exploded crashed, camera too close to an exploding pumpkin in TF2).

  27. 29/09/2011 at 10:21 Spooty says:

    o/ 2x MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (£358.32 at the time)

  28. 29/09/2011 at 10:22 mejoff says:

    Grabbed a 450 for about 98 squids a couple of months back.

  29. 29/09/2011 at 10:22 Domothy says:

    570 for £300 in January.

  30. 29/09/2011 at 10:23 Icarus says:

    I got a cheap second-hand PC off EBay about February time, but it only had integrated graphics, so I bought a GT430 for about £90. Ended up having to buy a new PSU to accomodate it, but that was only another thirty quid from Maplin, so that was that sorted. Had no issues since, luckily.

  31. 29/09/2011 at 10:23 halibutpants says:

    o/ £220 (Scan Today only deal, normally £270 ish) Asus 1280MB GeForce GTX 570 DirectCU II

    Best 220 notes I ever spent too, got it about three weeks ago in prep for BF3 :D
    (also required a new PSU too for those bloody 8-pin power sockets on the card)

  32. 29/09/2011 at 10:23 dandy-pandy says:

    Gainward nVidia GeForce GTS450, 512MB, GDDR5, 128bits, HDMI, DVI-I, PCI-E

    98 euros :) not that rich as you guys

    picked it cause i still use my Philips CRT 107 e, have it since 11 years :D

  33. 29/09/2011 at 10:23 phuzz says:

    Not been able to afford shiny hardware for about a year or so. However, my trusty old 8800GT has now started to crash after about 20 mins in any demanding games* (ie anything more complicated than civ 5), so I think I’m going to have to spend some of my hard earned pennies soon.
    I will be watching this thread to spot bargains.

    *(blatantly a heat issue, despite the aftermarket Zalman cooler I stuck on it, so I finally got round to fitting the water block I had for it, unfortunately it’s a non reference card and there’s a component sticking up near the gpu, so the block is at a slight angle. Really I’m amazed it works at all, but somehow it’s still soldiering on, so I’m loath to actually fix the problem, and instead I’ve been sucked into civ)

  34. 29/09/2011 at 10:23 krtecek007 says:

    first, I had to upgrade (4-5 months ago) motherboard and CPU (to be able to play Crysis2 + Witcher 2)
    then i had to upgrade RAM + graphic card (Gainward 560 GS 1GB) to be able to play new Deus Ex (and probably re-play Witcher 2 in higher resolution)
    i hope that this will be enough for Rage, Battlefield and Skyrim

    also I would like to note that after every such upgrade I promise myself that it was “last” such update and any future game “above” this configuration would be then played on my PS3 – unfortunately I’m always defeated…

  35. 29/09/2011 at 10:24 AMonkey says:

    I spend something like £600 creating a new PC this year. GTX 570, AMD quad core processor, new mobo, hard drive, DVD drive and computer case. Def worth the price being able to play games like the Witcher 2 and BF3. And it will last me for years and won’t take a lot of money to upgrade further if need be.

  36. 29/09/2011 at 10:24 stone says:

    MSI Geforce GTX 560 Ti 1GB TwinFrozr II at a bargain (~£150). I wasn’t happy with the old card when I ran DXHR. So that’s the reason. Hope it will run BF3.

  37. 29/09/2011 at 10:24 Novotny says:

    o/ £279, 6970

  38. 29/09/2011 at 10:24 thekeats1999 says:

    Last month upgraded to a gtx 560 ti. Mainly for Skyrim and Batman.

  39. 29/09/2011 at 10:24 Mitchk says:

    I can just about get away with running Witcher 2 on high/ultra on my few-year-old setup, but I’ve been doing done serious umming and arring about upgrading for Battlefield. The more I look at the game and the spec it’s likely to have the more things I realise I’ll probably need to upgrade, so it’s a difficult one for me to decide on. Seeing it in all it’s glory at Eurogamer may just have swayed me…It could be an expensive end to the year!

  40. 29/09/2011 at 10:25 WMain00 says:

    Bought a Gigabyte GTX 560 only yesterday. Expecting to arrive today!

    How odd that RPS would post such talk only a day after buying!

    GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!

    o/ £158

  41. 29/09/2011 at 10:25 evilmatt says:

    Picked up a HIS 6970 last christmas for a shade under £300. And added a £10 mini displayport adapter for some sexy triple-screen gaming!

  42. 29/09/2011 at 10:26 simonh says:

    o/
    GTX 570, £226 (if converted from SEK) I also got an Intel i7 2600k etc, updated everything except harddrives.
    Primarily for BF3 and Skyrim (and work), but it was really time to upgrade anyway.
    Bought it two weeks ago. Before that I had dual 9800GTX that I bought for £207/each in April 2008.

  43. 29/09/2011 at 10:27 abigbat says:

    Bought my new rig a few months ago with a GTX590.

    The machine’s power is mostly for my work, but the GPU is purely for gaming (BF3 beta runs at 90fps+ at max settings]

  44. 29/09/2011 at 10:27 Alexander Norris says:

    o/ HD6870 for £150. I bought it to replace my trusty 4850, which was starting to show some signs of fatigue. It has treated me well, running pretty much everything except Shogun 2 on the highest possible settings at 1920*1080.

  45. 29/09/2011 at 10:27 Metonymy says:

    Being a little contrary here, but to me, the days of upgrading are forever gone. There hasn’t been a meaningful upgrade in gaming visual quality in nearly a decade.

    Add this to the my belief that improving animation+model quality, visual aftereffects, and artistic content don’t directly improve game quality, and I find that I always buy the ~$100 card.

    If anything, the better graphics are harming gaming, since the artistic grunt-work investment is simply too high for investors to take risks with the game itself. This is exactly why we are playing the 30th iteration of call of duty/halo, games that were never very good to begin with.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:31 evilmatt says:

      Tried Eyefinity, Surround, or 3D yet? The increased level of immersion is great stuff, particularly for FPS and driving games.

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:37 abigbat says:

      have you been experiencing some sort of media blackout? CryEngine 3, iD Tech 5, Frostbite 2 and the upcoming advancements to Unreal are a massive step forwards in graphical fidelity, not to mention it’s looking likely that the next Xbox will be revealed at next year’s E3. Plus a lot of major developers have been bemoaning the lack of technical progress brought on by the current extended console cycle which has to prompt hardware manufacturers to up their game.

      I agree that the last few years of Unreal dominance have lead to a lot of samey-looking titles, particularly shooters, it’s looking as though that’s set to change now that the big budget games are starting to outgrow their understated hardware.

      Plus, as a game artist myself we’re desperate for technology to move on; it’s not a case of the grunt work become more taxing and thus more expensive as hardware improves, increased technology allows us to stop holding back for fear of overloading the systems we’re designing for!

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:56 The Sombrero Kid says:

      A Decade ago we were playing Deus Ex, half a decade ago we were playing deus ex 2, 3 years ago we were playing mass effect – all of these games to the modern eye look like shit.

      & also that line about improved hardware decreasing game quality is a crock, the faster the hardware the easier it is to develop for, the wider the talent base, it’s only the developers who chose to increasingly optimise thier products that have exponentially increasing budgets against a linear increase in power, everyone elses development budget gets lower the more powerful the hardware.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:06 Bhaumat says:

      I sort of agree with this, but for different reasons – I’m almost never interested in the releases which demand incremental upgrading. More often than not they are games which are showing off their use of new, more powerful graphics capabilities at the expense of gameplay. Plus being the forerunners of said graphics capabilities, they end up being buggy and inefficient.

      I build pcs to be fairly cost efficient, but mainly with a few years of being “good enough” in mind. When I last rebuilt my pc (and to answer the article question – ATI 5850, £175, exactly a year ago), it was because it was no longer good enough for the h264 decoding I was demanding of it, not for gaming.

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:37 The Colonel says:

      Cryengine2 over Cryengine3 surely? There are very few games nowadays that even come close to Crysis in terms of graphics. TW2 being one of them.

      I think the concern of the OP is more that game design is very conservative because you have to invest so much more time and money in art assets with modern engines. In my opinion there ought to be much more sharing of assets and engines between teams and companies. Look at Valve who have used the same engine for years and it’s still one of the nicest (if not most powerful now).

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:53 Wilson says:

      @The Sombrero Kid – I have to take issue with the comment about those games looking ‘like shit’. There’s no argument that they don’t look as nice as modern games, but claiming that they look like shit is too much exagerration.

      Obviously different people have different thresholds for the kind of graphics they can stand, which is fine. But there’s no need to disparage graphics just because they’re old. I can happily put up with Deus Ex/Mafia type graphics, and I can still enjoy the atmosphere they provide. I wouldn’t want new games to aim for graphics of that level, but if a game with enough interesting ideas and fun gameplay came out with Deus Ex graphics, it wouldn’t put me off buying it.

    • 29/09/2011 at 12:00 abigbat says:

      I don’t agree that game design is becoming more conservative at all. Certainly a lot of games have similar visual styles simply because they choose to stick to a formula which sells [Gears defined action characters as hulking, log necked brutes, Warcraft encouraged MMOs to work with bright palettes and exaggerated proportions, strong white men in their 30s with shaved heads and rugged jaws prevail over female characters and ethnic groups every time] but that’s not to say those tropes extend throughout the industry. In fact a lot of AAA games are starting to push visual design forwards to escape the cliches created by their peers: Guild Wars 2′s art direction is astounding, Deus Ex: HR managed to make it’s dull engine shine thanks to a strong visual ethos, and the ever-growing indie scene is packed with inventive, original design.

      I believe that strong visual direction should go hand in hand with strong game design and an engine which enables the artists to realize their vision. In fact I think the best way to describe the current trend in game art would be “intelligent design”; taking an established formula and tweaking it to best work with the game engine and concept. From that angle improved graphical fidelity and power is ALWAYS a good thing.

  46. 29/09/2011 at 10:29 pyjamarama says:

    It”s funny because I think that 2011 will mark the year that dedicated graphics card will begin there decline for gaming. This was a flat year in terms of high end graphics performance it’s all small refinements of 2010 releases this is mainly due to new fabric technology being delayed to 2012. But 2011 marked the year of reasonable competent CPU/GPU or APU as AMD likes to cal it architectures, in 2012 is only to get better, the low even mid range of dedicated graphics card will be completely unnecessary only the high will remain an option, and I wont be surprised that by 2015 even the high end will start to look not that important.
    I spend 0 this year but next year I will upgrade.

  47. 29/09/2011 at 10:30 Item! says:

    I upgraded the whole PC this year…including buying 2 x GTX 570s.

    It is pleasing to me to have everything I can throw at it locked in at 60fps on full settings…

  48. 29/09/2011 at 10:30 Chris D says:

    Only just inside of a year, Palit GeForce GT 220 1GB at £51.46 inc vat. Had to replace my old card when the fan jammed solid. With hindsight I should probably have splashed out a bit more but I haven’t found anything I can’t play yet. Proof PC gaming doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

  49. 29/09/2011 at 10:31 godgoo says:

    I built a new PC just before TW2, i7 2600k based set up with a GTX 560ti OC edition (£189). Very pleased with it so far, I was surprised at how much bang you get for your buck you get nowadays compared to 4-5 years ago!

  50. 29/09/2011 at 10:31 Davee says:

    Nope. My two SLI-bridged Nvidia GTS 250′ies (that are now very much budget cards) have been able to push out decent FPS with decent looks the last year and a half. Although they’re a bit slow for the latest releases; so I can’t help but think that I may want to upgrade soon. Which would be perfectly bad timing if there’s going to be a push for new consoles (with shiny hardware) any time soon after that, since I’d probably need to upgrade once again when that happens (game graphics takes a step forward).

  51. 29/09/2011 at 10:31 ashereize says:

    Yeh, I upgraded my graphics card – was a 7600gt or something like that (I forget – it came in the computer) and I upgraded to a Radeon HD 5770 (A humble £90 upgrade). Now I play on either max settings, or just below. It helps that the rest of my pc was decent to begin with.

  52. 29/09/2011 at 10:33 hmrf says:

    I’ve recently (in April) built a completely new rig. And threw a ridiculous amount of money in its direction. Which lead to a PoV GTX 590 as a graphics card for 617 €, which should be about 533 GBP. Mostly because I thought: “The more money I throw at my new PC now, the longer I don’t have to concern myself with updating again”.
    Fortunately with that PC I might even be able to play ArmA 3 when it’s released ;)

  53. 29/09/2011 at 10:33 Williz says:

    £50 to get a 2nd 4890 to crossfire with my exsisting one.

    Still a damn string card for it;s age, probably won;t bother upgrading until it start stuggling or one of the cards die.

  54. 29/09/2011 at 10:34 Bensam123 says:

    Radeon HD 6950 and unlocked it to a 6970. You can’t do this anymore, but 6950s remain quite cheap ~$200 and quite competitive with the Nvidia equivalent. Honestly you can’t go wrong with either company around that price point.

  55. 29/09/2011 at 10:35 Galvanism says:

    I recently got a new system for bf3 and it included a £350 580GTX, card is blisteringly fast.

  56. 29/09/2011 at 10:37 Jams O'Donnell says:

    Looking for a decent mid-range card that wouldn’t break the bank I got a Radeon 6770 for £75.

    And then discovered it wasn’t compatible with my motherboard, so I also got a new motherboard, RAM, processor, and Win 7 for around £300. :/

  57. 29/09/2011 at 10:37 Elos says:

    Bought a HD6950 2GB a month ago. World of Tanks still doesn’t run properly. :(

  58. 29/09/2011 at 10:38 Tinus says:

    Bought an MSI r6950 Twin Frozr III for €250 a couple of months ago, along with a new 600W power supply to make sure it could breathe.

  59. 29/09/2011 at 10:38 TooNu says:

    o/ £200

  60. 29/09/2011 at 10:40 Keilnoth says:

    I will probably soon downgrade my PC because I will probably soon downgrad my apartment and have less room space for the big screen, big tower, big mouse and big keyboard.

    And what really scares me is the fact I will have to pay money to downgrade it. That’s very not the way it should be, isn’t it ?

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:48 godgoo says:

      Jeez, how small is this apartment gonna be?!

    • 29/09/2011 at 11:26 PoulWrist says:

      So you’re moving into a closet?

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:05 Subject 706 says:

      You don’t actually need a gigantic tower case to have a powerful pc, you know. Just recently I ‘downgraded’ my gaming pc in size (but upgraded it in power) by simply going mATX instead of ATX. Went from an Antec P180 to a Silverstone FT-03. Decreased the case footprint a lot, I could cut my desk in half now if I wanted to. (I might well have to, since my office/gaming room is now being overtaken by our son, forcing me to move my computer into our bedroom, hence the reduction in size)

  61. 29/09/2011 at 10:40 mpk says:

    o/ £75.

    Also a new monitor at £130

  62. 29/09/2011 at 10:40 SAM-site says:

    Playing off a 2 year old laptop running XP after getting fed up of 10 years in the PC arms race, so as much as I’d like to play BF3 it’s not going to happen. I would look into getting a tower again but frankly processor and graphics card naming conventions make absolutely no sense at all, so it’ll be a right pain in the backside to figure out what to get.

    What do Intel, AMD, Nvidia et al have against plain language descriptions of their products?

    • 29/09/2011 at 10:51 godgoo says:

      I have talked with people about that before and I think it’s intentional to confuse stupid people into early upgrades and to give the enthusiasts their own language to perv over.

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:08 Subject 706 says:

      Not to be snide or anything, but 15 minutes of internet research would easily clear up your hardware confusion. Bit-tech for example usually have great hardware guides, split into ‘budget’, ‘serious gamer’, ‘extreme’ and so on.

    • 29/09/2011 at 13:08 Askeladd says:

      Experts are sometimes getting confused too.
      They just slap a ‘TI’ or ‘GTX’ or something else on the card and then you have to figure out whats better.
      An Expert can look at the sheet and tell you want’s better, but from the names alone for people that don’t follow the market it’s kind of hard.

      Once you know what what is and they don’t change their performance-naming-system you can tell the difference, without looking at their performance sheets.

  63. 29/09/2011 at 10:41 Srethron says:

    My 8800GT suddenly stopped working September 2010 so I replaced it with a GTX 460 for ~$230 US. Then I noticed the 8800GT’s fan was dusty, blew compressed air on the fan… and it started working again. So now it’s my backup. Oops. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    Edit: My system and its 3GHz dual core is getting a bit long in the teeth. Still, the only games it has struggled with on 1080p (still playable) are Darksiders and Deus Ex: HR.)

    For my future system, well, let’s just say John Carmack mentioned building a PC with 192GB of RAM in his 2011 Quakecon keynote. I don’t know about any of you, but I took this as a challenge. I intend to hold out for Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPUs to come out before beginning building.

  64. 29/09/2011 at 10:41 Rhodri2311 says:

    Watercooled 5970 – £600

  65. 29/09/2011 at 10:42 arienette says:

    My PC is 4 1/2 years old (still does alright for itself) and in desperate need of an upgrade. So if it helps the card I’ve got my eye on for when I’m less poor is worth about £150.

  66. 29/09/2011 at 10:42 actionthom says:

    o/ £148. The upgrade I’m intending on doing is CPU/mobo/ram though

  67. 29/09/2011 at 10:42 Manac0r says:

    TRI Sli 580 for multiple monitor setup and a u3011 at 2560 x 1600. I only paid for two due to RMA error :)

  68. 29/09/2011 at 10:42 CaLe says:

    I built a whole new computer, with a 6950 as my card.

    Spent about 900 new pounds in total

  69. 29/09/2011 at 10:43 Bushcat says:

    GeForce GTX 580 1536MB GDDR5 £300
    i5 2500k overclocked 4.6ghz.Both bought last week specifically for bf3.
    Just awaiting Mr Postie so i can crack on with the beta..

  70. 29/09/2011 at 10:43 Trenchdog says:

    Built a new Sandy Bridge based PC in May this year, with an i7 2600k CPU, and two EVGA GTX460 FTW gpu’s in SLI. Bought one of the cards a few months earlier.

    Total damage for the gpu’s: EUR 420.

  71. 29/09/2011 at 10:45 MerseyMal says:

    Built a new PC, last month and threw in a pair of XFX HD 6870 Black Editions @ £130 a pop.

  72. 29/09/2011 at 10:45 Persus-9 says:

    I bought an ASUS HD 6850 back in December for £120. I bought it not so much for the upgrade but because I moved from a shared flat in London into a two room apartment with my girlfriend in Stockholm. Taking my old desktop with me would have been a royal pain in the neck and my old Force3D 4870′s truly exceptional hairdryer impression was tolerable if I was just sitting alone in my room with headphones on but wouldn’t have worked so well with my girlfriend trying to study in the same room.

  73. 29/09/2011 at 10:46 Reaper says:

    Upgraded my Graphics Card to a GTX 560 TI a few months ago for 216 euro.

    That was because my old graphics card died on me.

    I kninda have a tendency to upgrade parts of my PC every 2 years. Things like Graphics. Memory and I just add to and CPU and mainboard stay for as long as it feels fast. (kinda relative)

  74. 29/09/2011 at 10:47 Scarecrowe says:

    Just ordered a GTX 460 to replace my 3 year old Radeon 4770… It’s done sterling service, and is now going to a new home :)

  75. 29/09/2011 at 10:47 Groove says:

    I recently bought an entirely new pc, built by Overclockers. This will probably skew the pricing a bit, but it included a GeForce GTX 460, which they reckoned to be about £95. Obviously that includes their fees in that.

    So far, it’s wonderful.

    *edit*

    Reading other comments I’ve noticed an awful lot of GTX 460s, and I paid the least. Either the pricing was skewed down rather than up or I found a good deal.

  76. 29/09/2011 at 10:47 Finarfin Greenleaves says:

    I bought a new PC last summer. 190€ for GTX 460.

  77. 29/09/2011 at 10:47 Man Raised by Puffins says:

    Nope, my cheapy ATi 4850 is doing just fine (especially now that I’ve found a work-around for its overheating problem).

  78. 29/09/2011 at 10:47 Jnx says:

    I bought a new mobo, cpu and mems, does that count? I will put around 230 euros to graphics card this year though. Still running with my old HD4870. Still runs pretty much everything well, except witcher 2.

  79. 29/09/2011 at 10:50 Alexnader says:

    Have not upgraded yet but I’m intending to go from my trusty old HD5750 to a shiny HD 6950. I will be spending $225 unless I find a viable reason not to get the cheapest manufactured one they have at the store.

  80. 29/09/2011 at 10:50 jezcentral says:

    o/ £275 GTX570, in April 2011.

    (Ironically, it was in anticipation of DXHR, which turned out to be the graphically least demanding game I’ve played for ages).

  81. 29/09/2011 at 10:52 kororas says:

    £350 GTX580

  82. 29/09/2011 at 10:52 xeroxlaser says:

    Nvidia GTX 550 TI £100 And just found out I cant run BF3 on High >.<

  83. 29/09/2011 at 10:53 Zanchito says:

    GeForfe 560Ti OC for around 350€ I think, and I got it cheap. Between lower wages and higher prices, this is a bad country for tech. Nice for eating and women, though.

  84. 29/09/2011 at 10:54 Hmm-Hmm. says:

    Still have to (get a new computer). I’ve just witheld myself from purchasing more demanding games for my aging iMac.

    Haven’t decided on whether to get a windows machine or a mac. Either way, I’m not in much of a hurry.

  85. 29/09/2011 at 10:54 Stuart Walton says:

    Just upgraded from an Xpert Vision HD 4850 512MB to a PowerColor HD 6870 1GB, Paid about £125 and got steam codes for Deus Ex:HR and Dirt 3 too.

  86. 29/09/2011 at 10:55 BigJonno says:

    Nope, I’m still running with my old 8600. A friend of mine did send me pretty decent ATI card he had no use of, but it was just before the London riots and it mysteriously went missing before arriving at my door.

    One thing I have noticed is how completely random things get with old cards. Of the brand new games I’ve thrown at my PC this year, two haven’t been satisfactorily playable (Rift and The Witcher 2) one has been fine (Dragon Age 2) and two have been running smoothly at close to max settings (DC Universe and Space Marine.)

  87. 29/09/2011 at 10:56 Astatine says:

    I have a GTX 570. It cost me £270 or something new not long after the model was released, and it pretty much runs everything fine at 2560×1440.

    I wonder how well it’ll cope with Skyrim.

  88. 29/09/2011 at 10:56 Mark.W.OBrien says:

    MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti Twin FrozR III HAWK 1024MB GDDR5, £210 in July

  89. 29/09/2011 at 10:56 Gap Gen says:

    Mr Anecdote says:

    Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
    £144.00 on 26/01/2011 from ebuyer

  90. 29/09/2011 at 10:57 aircool says:

    About 4 months ago, my year old 5870′s fan had become annoyingly loud and in need of some 3-in-1 oil. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the damned fan off to oil the bearings without some serious screwdriver surgery. So I gave it to one of my dad’s friends…

    …and bought a GFX570 (OC something or other) for £250. I looked at the prices of other cards, and realised that it would still cost me about £150-200 for a card of similar spec to the 5870. A GFX580 just seemed too expensive and a bit pointless for someone who still uses a 1680×1050 monitor.

    The GFX is pretty awesome, everything runs great at high detail and most games run at 60fps with everything max’d out. BFBC2 looks great running at the highest settings with lashing of AA and AF.

    Ahem, of course there’s Rage and BF3 coming out as well, but that had absolutely almost nothing to do with not deciding to upgrade.

  91. 29/09/2011 at 10:57 Squirrelfanatic says:

    I built my very first self assembled machine this year and got me a Sapphire Radeon 5850 1GB (full retail) for 100 EUR. It was one of the last units in stock here in Germany. Very pleased with the performance and the price. :)

  92. 29/09/2011 at 10:58 Ruffian says:

    HD6950 cost me around 280 $. It’s been a badass little card (the things a brick). Got her simply so I could game for a while without havin to worry about upgrading. Also for running Metro and Crysis on full blast.

  93. 29/09/2011 at 11:00 Spielo says:

    I bought a new iMac a few months back, 27″ (2560×1440), Core i7 3.4GHz, Radeon 6970M 2GB, 4GB RAM (will upgrade to 12GB soon). Not everyone’s cup of tea of course, but it suits my needs perfectly. Wasn’t cheap though, about £1,600 using my friend’s student discount.

    It should run Battlefield 3 better than my old 2GHz Core Duo MacBook with an Intel GMA950 would have :-)

  94. 29/09/2011 at 11:03 Viserion says:

    My GTX 295 is still powerful enough, no DX11 but that doesn’t bother me. Waiting to see how it holds up against Battlefield 3 and Skyrim but I’m not planning to upgrade this year anyway.

  95. 29/09/2011 at 11:07 Fod says:

    Bought a second hand GTX 470 for about £110 a month ago. It had a dicky fan and MSI replaced it with a GTX 480. Win, epic win. Second hand, high end, previous gen hardware is totally where it’s at.

  96. 29/09/2011 at 11:07 Shakermaker says:

    I’ve bought a 6950 last January. Quite happy to have an AMD card again. Driver updating through Steam is so damn easy.

  97. 29/09/2011 at 11:07 perfectheat says:

    My brother gave me his old 5850 for free a week ago as he bought the gtx 580 (about £480 here in Norway). So it’s the only thing I didn’t buy brand spanking new for my new build. Runs like a star in both NS2 and Minecraft :)

    When the new 600 range is due early next year I might get one of those or a (by then less expensive) 580.

  98. 29/09/2011 at 11:07 Iskhiaro says:

    I did, £83 for an XFX 5830 XXX edition

  99. 29/09/2011 at 11:09 kael13 says:

    Around April 2010 I bought a pair of Sapphire Vapor-X 5870s for £300 each. They’re not bad at all, (if you can bear the Crossfire and driver issues..) but I think I’ll be upgrading to Nvidia’s new chipset when it arrives next year.

  100. 29/09/2011 at 11:10 CMaster says:

    Not in the last year. 2-3 years ago got a HD4850 for ~£120

    What do you hivemind types do with all this market research you collect?

  101. 29/09/2011 at 11:10 SonofSeth says:

    Got a whole new box in september last year, i7, HD5850, 8GB RAM…

    Needless to say, I’m quite happy with it, especially since my last box before that was from 2005 and even then it was below average.

  102. 29/09/2011 at 11:11 gornmyson says:

    finally got round to building a PC this year, after a gaming hiatus.
    Today is my birthday (thank you!) and ive got a lovely MSI GTX 570 (£250?) … and yes its for BF3.. havent installed it yet, but the BF3 Beta is looking lovely already.

  103. 29/09/2011 at 11:11 PoulWrist says:

    Upgraded last time on january 2nd 2010, I plan on doing the same in jan 2012. Back then I bought a Radeon 5870, it cost 2700dkkr, or £316 / €362 / $494.
    I consider this relatively cheap for a highend card. Socioeconomic comparisonpoint; it’s about 1/3 of what you have after taxes a month if you’re on “the dole”.

    I plan on upgrading because I upgraded my monitor, from 1920×1200 to 2560×1440, and while it was doing just splendidly at the old resolution, it’s now starting to bog down a bit in titles using fancy tech.

    I also do plan on upgrading my entire main-infrastructure; CPU, mobo, RAM, because it’s getting a tad old (socket am2+, ddr2, x4 965), and while still perfectly healthy hardware that many would probably envy, hardware IS something I enjoy fiddling with, and a hobby of mine. Also to such an extent that it’s all I spend my money on :p

  104. 29/09/2011 at 11:12 michaelfeb16 says:

    No upgrade here. I am still using my good old 4870×2.

    That said, the upgrade itch is starting to eat away at me. I haven’t been able to justify it for the past year because I made much better improvements by getting my solid state drive and other hardware, but I’m falling too far behind the cutting edge, I think.

  105. 29/09/2011 at 11:14 Oozo says:

    Geforce GTX 460 Cyclone, earlier this year for The Witcher 2. Set me back around 200 £ (taking the recent currency madness into calculation).

  106. 29/09/2011 at 11:14 wccrawford says:

    Video card, $150. But I also bought a $500 3D monitor to go with it.

    For Portal 2. It was totally worth it.

  107. 29/09/2011 at 11:15 Derppy says:

    Bought 6950 at the start of the year, then I bought another when I switched to 2560×1440 screen. Running 2500K, since I don’t need hyper-threading.

    Crossfire and SLI stuff is just so damn handy, when you run out of juice, you can just add another GPU and the performance boost is getting near 80% in many games.

    Can recommend the card and the processor to any gamer, had 0 issues, except for some crossfire-related stuff in brand new games, but it’s usually fixed very quickly via new drivers and/or application profiles.

  108. 29/09/2011 at 11:15 alm says:

    o/ (~£250) Got an MSI GTX 570

  109. 29/09/2011 at 11:16 sfury says:

    My 4850 got 3 years old this summer – still found no need to upgrade it. :P

    Next summer – probably the whole PC goes as my motherboard is very outdated, and dual-core seems pretty weak these days.

    But still if I manage to buy a mid-range system and hold off another 2-3 years I’d consider it a success. I’m pretty proud I haven’t had the need to upgrade for so much time now. :)

  110. 29/09/2011 at 11:17 El_MUERkO says:

    I bought an AMD 6970 at launch and sold a pair of 4870′s to pay for it.

    I’m plotting an upgrade to AMD’s new Bulldozer CPU some time after it launches and I’ll likely pick up a replacement for the 6970 along with it.

  111. 29/09/2011 at 11:20 Lewie Procter says:

    My newish PC came with a pair of 5870s.

  112. 29/09/2011 at 11:20 Snidesworth says:

    I spent £169 to get a Radeon HD 6870 1024MB a few months ago. I did buy an entirely new PC with it as well, mind you.

  113. 29/09/2011 at 11:20 RakeShark says:

    Upgraded from a GTX 295 to a GTX 560 Ti on Monday. The graphics card was the only “weak” part of the computer I got back in mid-2008 which continues to perform well, and with Arkham City/Rage/Skyrim/Prey 2/ Diablo 3 coming out soon, I don’t just want to play the games, I want them to sing sweet art into my retinas like some pornographic ejaculatory pun.

  114. 29/09/2011 at 11:21 necrozim says:

    EVGA GTX 570 – £213 in April – I bought it through a friend at reduced price though due to him owning a pc store

  115. 29/09/2011 at 11:22 Flaringo says:

    I bought a Geforce 570. It’s not working properly (artifacts) and now I’m dreading sending it back to get a new one. It’ll probably take several weeks and it’s a bunch of effort. :(

  116. 29/09/2011 at 11:22 HexagonalBolts says:

    HD 6950, must have been about the £200 – £210 mark, and a GTX 560ti for ~ £160ish I believe?

  117. 29/09/2011 at 11:22 nabeel says:

    Kind-of-stopgap upgrade to an nVIDIA GTX 460 1GB a few months ago, for ~£150.

  118. 29/09/2011 at 11:23 sgt. grumbles says:

    Last month I picked up a new Geforce GTX 560 ti for about $180 USD after a $30 rebate. Also came with codes for 3 games that I might be able to sell for a few buckazoids to further defray the cost.

  119. 29/09/2011 at 11:28 mrpier says:

    Bought one this winter, don’t remember the name though.

  120. 29/09/2011 at 11:29 garlandgreen says:

    Still rocking a 7950 gx2.

    But i thinking Bat won’t run so i’m looking at a 460.

  121. 29/09/2011 at 11:30 arlips says:

    o/ $490 (GTX 580)

    ……As per usual, a simple article asking about a GPU purchase has turned into an e-peen waving session of listing all other recently bought parts that weren’t asked about.

    • 29/09/2011 at 14:36 Obliter8 says:

      ….or people have put their purchases in context? I can’t say I’ve noticed any e-peenery whatsoever, unless you count peoples’ sense of self-satisfaction at good value hardware purchases!

  122. 29/09/2011 at 11:30 abagofair says:

    Build a new PC in the beginning of August 2011.

    Bought a: MSI GeForce GTX570 1280MB TWIN FROZR II

    o/ 2409 DKK ~ £282,23

    Edit: Minor factual change

  123. 29/09/2011 at 11:31 PoulWrist says:

    Upgraded last time on 2. January 2010, got a Radeon 5870, 2700DK, £316, or 340ish €, or 490ish $. Consider that relatively cheap in Denmark for a highend GPU. I remember paying 3700 for aHercules Radeon 9700 pro ^^

    Anyway, I plan on upgrading again in january 2012. Or possibly a little later. I upgraded my monitor to 2560×1440, and the 5870 is struggling somewhat in some situations. Will also ugprade the rest of the system infrastructure; cpu, mobo, ram, to more modern stuff. X4 965 on Am2+, ddr2.

  124. 29/09/2011 at 11:32 Juuuhan says:

    My previous one was an HD 4870, which I bought a couple of years ago, but due to instability with the drivers I traded up to a GTX 570 for about 350 €.

  125. 29/09/2011 at 11:33 SquareWheel says:

    $170 CAD for an MSI 460 “Hawk Talon Attack”, the coolest sounding card on the block.

    But seriously manufacturers, you make me embarrassed to repeat your card’s name.

  126. 29/09/2011 at 11:33 Anarki says:

    I bought a 6870 in November last year, was about £195 then. Partly because my old 4830 couldn’t keep up with Black Ops when it was released, but mainly wanted to get better performance in GTA4 and future games. Really happy with the card, great value and happy to see lots of other people using it.

  127. 29/09/2011 at 11:33 DevilSShadoW says:

    Bought a GTX 470 when i built my new rig last christmas. Then i OC’d it to gtx 480 clock speeds. With some minor fan tweaks, it’s stable and tearing up anything i throw at it. I’ll be holding on to it at least till next year

  128. 29/09/2011 at 11:35 Shortwave says:

    I bought a 6950 2GB by Sapphire in the past year and I paid 289.99 for it.
    Which is 212EUR..

    I felt as if it was a fair price for a card that would “put me over the top and on the edge”.
    As I’ve usually always only been able to afford the card, just behind the times but still okay..
    Also I wanted a multi-monitor environment for not only gaming but for my music studio.
    Mostly for simulators thankfully as FPS support is terrible beyond a few games.

    I figured in a year when the price drops on them I would drop a second in and hope this lasts 3-5 years before some game rapes them.. But on a bright note.. For some reason Crysis 2 runs waaaaay better maxed out with tess and high res textures now than it did before on this single 6950. (Single monitor, though it runs on high on 3 fine) Before soon as I got near water it died down to 15fps and was laughable. Tried it again just recently after a friend said to and I was blown away at how smooth it was now, always. So that sorta’ made me optimistic that I got what I paid for. Witcher 2 is definitively a game you wanna’ play maxed out also, it’s so beautiful… Can’t wait for RO2 to work properly, currently having huge issues with micro-stuttering and huge framerate drops and graphical glitching.. Also it doesn’t properly support eyefinity yet as they said it would, sadly.. I know it will take time but it’s just sad. I was hoping RO2 would be the game to kick me out of the gaming dead season.

  129. 29/09/2011 at 11:39 Dominic White says:

    My Radeon 4870 died a horrible death earlier this year. It took TWO MONTHS for Dabs.com to initiate a return under warranty, so in the end they just gave me a full refund and told me to go away. I did, and got an Geforce 560ti for about £10 more than my refund costs.

    It’s the stock-overclocked, extra-cooled, tuned and tweaked version of the 560. Cheap but really beefy DX11 card. Clocks only a hair slower than a stock 570. It’s a pity my old CPU is holding it back now, and I don’t have the money for an upgrade.

  130. 29/09/2011 at 11:42 Nissanthen says:

    o/ £380 ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum, my HD4870 X2 unfortunately died.

  131. 29/09/2011 at 11:44 MikoSquiz says:

    I’m still on a GeForce 7950 (a card from 2006, fact fans!). On the other hand, I absolutely do not give a wet wank about whether a game is running at 1024×768 and 1920×1080, so maybe I’m just weird.

  132. 29/09/2011 at 11:46 Harlander says:

    Got a 5670HD just over a year ago, as a replacement for my older graphics card which was destroyed by APB. 80 quids. It’s starting to feel the burn a little bit these days.

  133. 29/09/2011 at 11:47 Dasos says:

    I Bought a 1GB 560ti hot off the press at £203 :)
    Don’t regret it at all :D

  134. 29/09/2011 at 11:49 Jigowatt says:

    Bought an EVGA GTX 580 back in January for £425 – the most I’ve ever spent on a graphics card (or any pc component for that matter), but it was definitely worth it!

  135. 29/09/2011 at 11:49 Earl-Grey says:

    Not sure if this is entirely on topic but I bought a new laptop with an AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6970M card in it.
    -One of those Clevo P150 notebooks, to be precise.
    Calling that thing a laptop could be misleading though, I certainly would (or indeed could) not keep that monolith on my lap for any length of time.

  136. 29/09/2011 at 11:52 Degor says:

    o/ MSI GTX580 Twin FROZR II/OC 2weeks old 450euro

  137. 29/09/2011 at 11:54 Laak says:

    GTX 570, around 250 GBP

  138. 29/09/2011 at 11:54 Shadram says:

    Bought a GT460 about a year ago. Can’t remember how much it cost, but seeing as I live in New Zealand, probably about 4 times whatever I’d have paid were I still living in the UK…

  139. 29/09/2011 at 11:56 tungstenHead says:

    I put down 490 $CDN on a 580GTX back in April along with a new computer. I could actually afford this because pwntato planting season was about to start.

  140. 29/09/2011 at 11:56 Bradderz says:

    2x Voodoo 2′s at 125quid each… wait that was a while ago now….

    Due to my job i stick with a gaming laptop, always travelling around and need my gaming fix on the move.
    out of curiosity are there many more people with laptops as opposed to rigs?

    currently rocking the Toshiba Qosmio from last year (picked up quite cheap from Kandahar of all places)
    runs everything quite well, except Cliffs of Dover, but that games broken.

  141. 29/09/2011 at 11:56 _PixelNinja says:

    o/ GTX 570 (300€) back in march.

  142. 29/09/2011 at 11:56 Strife212 says:

    I bought two GTX 480 1.5GB for SLI mode about 8 months ago. They were £200 each in a sale, so that makes it exactly £400.

    They’ve proven their worth in BF3 Beta so far though. 70-120FPS on Metro at 1920×1200 Ultra 4x AA.

  143. 29/09/2011 at 11:57 Aninhumer says:

    Pretty old Nvidia 9800GT in mine. I often find I can’t play newer games well now. I was considering upgrading, but I don’t actually get much use out of it due to university at the moment.

  144. 29/09/2011 at 11:58 Zonejeu says:

    o/ 375£

    Battlefield 3 and a way-too-laggy experience on The Witcher 2 were the two elements that lead me to by a new and very high-end GC, and I’m very happy about it so far.

  145. 29/09/2011 at 11:59 Tobev says:

    £170 for a 1GB 460GTX in January.

  146. 29/09/2011 at 11:59 Kazz says:

    £1 more than Jim did on a MSI 460 1GB Hawk, a very nice upgrade from the card I’ve used for the longest time yet, the 8800GT.

  147. 29/09/2011 at 12:05 Vandelay says:

    I built a new PC at the start of the year and got a 2gb 6950, which was £191 before VAT. Runs fantastically, but still struggles with DirectX 11 effects in some games (namely Metro 2033 and Crysis 2.)

    This was an upgrade from a 4850, which, to be honest, still performed very well, excluding the extreme heat that came off the thing and the very noisy fan, as did the rest of the system. I just had never built a computer myself before and had the money to do it. I’m sure my old system would probably still be running without too much difficulty now.

  148. 29/09/2011 at 12:06 coldvvvave says:

    Gigabyte Radeon HD 6950 for like 400$

    Not to mention, I built a completely new PC.

    0/ ?

    More like 07 where 7 is a hand. And a gun.

  149. 29/09/2011 at 12:06 narcomensajae says:

    Bought a MSI GTX 480 Lightning for £480 about in Nov ’10. Absolute beast.

  150. 29/09/2011 at 12:07 Mungrul says:

    I have a new machine arriving on Saturday (squee!).
    My current box is running an old AMD Phenom II Black Edition, a BFG 275GTX OC, 4GB RAM, a 500GB system hard disk and a 1TB library hard disk, all sat on a Foxconn Destroyer motherboard.

    My new one will be a luvverly top o’ the range i7 (no overclock though; never trusted it myself), 16GB RAM, a 120GB SSD system drive, a 1TB library hard disk and a GTX 580 all on an Asus P8Z68-V. Got it from Aria, as I was pricing up similar systems at Overclockers and Eclipse, but they were more expensive for comparable specs.

  151. 29/09/2011 at 12:09 Paul says:

    I got MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II along with Sandy Bridge 2500K (clocked to 4ghz) and 4giga ram in february.

    Dont remember what it cost and I am too lazy to check.

  152. 29/09/2011 at 12:12 kimded says:

    I wish I could upgrade but as I would need an entire PC (currently running and old dual core) I cant really afford the amount I would like to spend, the curses of self employment

  153. 29/09/2011 at 12:13 Flappybat says:

    Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti SUPER OC 1024MB for £220.

    I ordered a regular Gigabyte 560 OC first but it kept crashing when working hard (Shogun 2) so I had to send it back.

  154. 29/09/2011 at 12:15 Jaffo says:

    6850 for £110 at the start of February.

  155. 29/09/2011 at 12:15 neolith says:

    GTX460 GHL OC, 220€, September 2010

    I am very satisfied with the card – it’s silent, doesn’t use that much power and is really fast. And by now you should be able to get it for less than 170€.

  156. 29/09/2011 at 12:17 Njordsk says:

    gtx 580, febuary. Around 500€.

    I know. shhh

  157. 29/09/2011 at 12:18 Sinomatic says:

    New system at the start of the year with an overclocked GTX460. Really happy with it so far, seems to have handled most things I’ve thrown at it, though I don’t have a huge screen, so I imagine that helps.

  158. 29/09/2011 at 12:19 LTK says:

    o/ Asus GeForce GTS 450, discounted at €80. I proceeded to build an entire PC around it. Originally I was upgrading for Crysis 2, but that left me unimpressed. I realized I did spend my money well when the Witcher 2 came out.

  159. 29/09/2011 at 12:23 James Allen says:

    ATI Radeon HD 5770 for USD 160 about a year ago. Works great in Battlefield 3.

  160. 29/09/2011 at 12:24 Lemming says:

    This year (June) I’ve upgrade my PC with:

    GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB (£162+VAT), upgrading from a Geforce 8800GTS

    Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium (£89.93), upgrading from Vista 32bt.

  161. 29/09/2011 at 12:25 RustyBotGames says:

    Scrolling through the comments I feel a little off from the graphical hardware perspective.
    Bought a HD5670 in 2010 for 85 EUR after my HD4670 entered failure mode. I’m still really happy with this low energy cards. Doesn’t need extra energy from the power supply and runs the games I play in decent quality on a 24′ screen. More money remaining for games, too.

  162. 29/09/2011 at 12:25 Wahngrok says:

    When the HD 5770 died on my old rig and the old replacement (8800 GTS) also gave up soon after I got myself a new PC in June. For this I bought a HD 6950 1G for about 200€.
    Since the old card was still under warranty I recently got a HD 5850 as a replacement so now my wife has my old rig and she finally doesn’t complain that websites take soooo long to load anymore. ;)

  163. 29/09/2011 at 12:26 Dr_Nick says:

    I just upgraded to a Radeon HD 6950 2GB recently. My 9600GT was failing so I wanted to replace it with something new. Also got a PCI-E sound card with it. Spend $350 total.

  164. 29/09/2011 at 12:28 Pidesco says:

    A PNY 460GTX 1GB OC for 160€.

    November of 2010.

  165. 29/09/2011 at 12:29 skyturnedred says:

    Haven’t updated anything in almost four years. Deus Ex: HR has so far been the only unplayable game. Funny enough, some games that look better work fine.

  166. 29/09/2011 at 12:29 Bluerps says:

    Jup, half a year ago. An expensive one, too: I left 350€ in that store (that’s a little more than 300 of your Britbucks).

  167. 29/09/2011 at 12:30 Nemon says:

    2 pcs Amd 6970 ~ $ 970 (bought at launch, then another one after a little price drop – Norwegian prices btw…)

  168. 29/09/2011 at 12:31 Squire says:

    Had a 3870 512MB GDDR5 and Q6600 since Nov ’07. Card cost 150 quid

    Witcher 2 is the first game thats unplayable at 1920×1200 without turning the graphics down til it looks like a game from 2003, even then its like 16-20fps.

    So I’m thinking of getting a 6870/6890 plus whole new rig soon, perhaps it can be supplmented by a fat white-bearded man in a red velvet suit [My dad]

  169. 29/09/2011 at 12:32 Sami H says:

    From 8800GT to 460GTX, £90 (not inc delivery) as it was on offer. Main reason was that the 8800GT was starting to die, and it seemed like a good time to upgrade now more and more games are actually using DX11 features.

  170. 29/09/2011 at 12:32 Sicky says:

    Radeon 4890 in September 2009 for me :( hoping to upgrade at christmas :D

  171. 29/09/2011 at 12:33 yhalothar says:

    I built a completely new system late this year, and for the card, I had chosen a Gainward GTX 570 (because it had a Displayport interface), for which I paid the equivalent of 275 pounds.

  172. 29/09/2011 at 12:36 Sildar says:

    o/ HD 6950 in April for $230 USD.

  173. 29/09/2011 at 12:36 nuh uh no way says:

    i bought a GTX 465 about a month ago for ~$130 USD

  174. 29/09/2011 at 12:38 Makariel says:

    o/
    Sapphire HD 6870 1GB with Dirt3 for 150€ in June.

  175. 29/09/2011 at 12:40 hobbity_j says:

    Got a GTX 580 for AU$600 last month, replacing a 3 year old GTX 280.

  176. 29/09/2011 at 12:40 phenom_x8 says:

    My first upgrade since 2008 was my HIS HD 6850 1gb on November 2010 (its still around US$180 back then)! Doesnt have any problem running any game at max setting until now (although it was paired with my old and clunky athlon x2 4800+ that sometimes cause bottlenecks)
    I hope that I’ve got enough money to upgrade towards new mobo,processor and RAM at 2012 (bulldozer FTW, cause its cheaper)

  177. 29/09/2011 at 12:42 nn0r says:

    Upgraded to Asus HD6870 DirectCU, which was around 155€ four months ago, and i5 2500k.

  178. 29/09/2011 at 12:44 Lifebleeder says:

    GTX 580 – $520 or £332

  179. 29/09/2011 at 12:48 GenBanks says:

    I haven’t, still good with my radeon 5870. Will probably buy a new one once the 7000 series or nvidia 600 series comes out.

  180. 29/09/2011 at 12:48 Boarnoah says:

    I brought a pre built computer …… it make with an ancient Nvidia 7100 Does this count?

  181. 29/09/2011 at 12:54 TormDK says:

    It’s a bit over a year that I bought my 480GTX for about 3200DKK (~350 quid)

    But since Battlefield 3 seems to require more I’m just going to build a new rig instead, but I am going to wait for ivybridge and the 600 series from Nvidia so it’ll likely not happen till end of Q1 next year.

  182. 29/09/2011 at 13:01 Yargh says:

    My fantastic if aging GTS 8800 gave up the ghost a couple of months back so I got 2 Asus GTX 560 Ti cards from ebuyer (Approx £300).

    I had to get 2, not for SLI but because Tweetiti demands a PC as good as or better than mine and I know what is in my best interests…

    A month or so later I finally got tired of watching my 4 year old MBD slowly destroy any HDD I plugged into it and upgraded the rest: Intel i5, 8Gb of DDR, ASRock Z68 MBD and a 2TB HDD.

    I’m hoping this will do for a bit though I expect an SSD drive will be added in eventually.

  183. 29/09/2011 at 13:08 samsharp99 says:

    Bought my 5850 in Jan 2010 for £231 inc VAT. Probably the longest I’ve had a card without feeling the need to upgrade – has served me very well and should hopefully have a few months (if not longer) left in it anyway.

  184. 29/09/2011 at 13:08 ata says:

    o/ £280 for a GTX 570

  185. 29/09/2011 at 13:10 Ubernutz says:

    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti – plays anything I throw at it. May well explode when I play BF3. I think it was around £200

  186. 29/09/2011 at 13:12 Freud says:

    When I will upgrade within a year, the main reason will be to get a SSD. Getting a new graphics card is less important (although I obviously will).

    I don’t have any problems with my old graphics card. I can handle most games in 1920*1200, while sometimes wanting me to turn off some of the options. If it was just about graphics, I’d wait a while longer.

  187. 29/09/2011 at 13:18 Ian says:

    I spent about £150 on a new’un.

  188. 29/09/2011 at 13:23 Snakejuice says:

    o/ (GeForce GTX 570, 280€)

  189. 29/09/2011 at 13:24 cpy says:

    I’m still keeping mine NV480GTX. Can’t say a bad word, except noise, but any high end is the same, so next time i’m getting some nice aftermarket cooling even for GPU.

  190. 29/09/2011 at 13:32 db1331 says:

    I bought a 6950 2GB during the BF3 alpha a couple months back. Set me back $270.

  191. 29/09/2011 at 13:32 WickedDeeJ says:

    I upgraded to a GeForce GTX 570 back in January, which set me back around £300

    Lavish but I wanted something that wouldn’t hold back the new i5-2500k CPU/motherboard combo I had just purchased. The BF3 beta is *singing* on this system…when I’m not getting stuck in terrain that is.

  192. 29/09/2011 at 13:33 PeopleLikeFrank says:

    o/ Radeon 6950, $300

    About three months ago, upgraded from an 8800GT.

  193. 29/09/2011 at 13:35 genonist says:

    Bought the 5770 last year around november but recently upgraded to a 460 GTX since it was cheap but gave a very reasonable upgrade to my system

  194. 29/09/2011 at 13:35 RiptoR says:

    I’ll soon upgrade to 2 x MSI GTX580 Twin FROZR II/OC (can get my hardware cheap thanks to my dayjob).

    My trusty old 8800gtx has served me well over the years, but it’s really starting to show it’s age and dares to lock up from time to time while playing recent games.

  195. 29/09/2011 at 13:40 Darko Drako says:

    I built an entire new system around april last year.

    It has a ATI 5850, which seems to handle everything more than fine an 1920, 1080.

    I cant see myself needing to upgrade any time soon.

  196. 29/09/2011 at 13:49 Ovno says:

    Upgraded my old 8800gts to a Ati 5770 when I got my new monitor and as long as I keep up with the drivers, it runs pretty much everything at max or just off it.

  197. 29/09/2011 at 13:52 MSJ says:

    I never had anything more that a laptop for games in the past 8 or so years. My last laptop had a Geforce 9300M GS, which was fine for some games but most had to be played at minimum settings. Just a few weeks ago, I bought a new laptop with a Geforce GT 540M. This is a far superior graphics processor for modern games, with most playing perfectly at max settings.

  198. 29/09/2011 at 13:54 Screamer says:

    o/ R 2895 ~ £ 241 (Oct 2010)

  200. 29/09/2011 at 14:09 roy7 says:

    My PC budget is very limited, so I just upgraded my 8600GT a month ago to a used GTX260 I found on craigslist for $50. A very nice performance boost for the money. A used 460GTX for $100 would have been even better, but didn’t have $100 to make that big of a step. :)

  201. 29/09/2011 at 14:13 sassy says:

    o/ ($230 I think)

    Went from an 9500 GT to a GTX 460 SE, now using the 9500 GT as a physics card which has really boosted the framerate on the couple of games where that use them … not that I needed an increase in framerate.

  202. 29/09/2011 at 14:13 mogofogo says:

    You do have a point though.
    There was a period of time in my country Singapore,
    where people were dumping their perfectly serviceable quad cores for the new i5 and i7′s.
    I could’ve gone down the same road, but I cashed in on a Q6700 for about 44gbp.
    That coupled with a GTX 570 has had me running the batch of current games quite happily.
    Maxed out the BF3 Beta settings.
    I had to turn down AA to 2xMSAA, because I was getting random crashes for some reason.

  203. 29/09/2011 at 14:30 step21 says:

    I’m planning to get a Sapphire 6850 soonish, going on Amazon for 130 €. Might spend more but faster cards would likely get too hot for my relatively small case (Lian Li V 351).

  204. 29/09/2011 at 14:37 D3xter says:

    Around last Christmas I got a 460GTX cause my 8800GTX I’ve had for ~4 years fried and it was out of warranty.

  205. 29/09/2011 at 14:42 yamnivek says:

    im still chugging along on an old Radeaon 3850.

    I can play most games, i just have to resort to turing the shiny down a lot.

    It manages F1 2011 on medium and Bad company 2 was very playable.

    DAMN MY LACK OF FUNDS!!!

  206. 29/09/2011 at 14:47 Muzman says:

    Got an Asus GTX 560ti 1gig for A$260 about a month ago. But I built a whole new machine too. Hasn’t really had a games workout yet.

  207. 29/09/2011 at 15:00 Olero says:

    I bought a Gigabyte Geforce 580 SOC two weeks ago for awholeloddamoney: 450 Euros. And so far I like the thing quite a lot. It’s quiet, not too power hungry and laughs at my currently owned games (including Arma II). Can’t wait to test it on something like Skyrim!

  208. 29/09/2011 at 15:11 Gaz says:

    Jan 11 EVGA GTX 570 SC about 270.

  209. 29/09/2011 at 15:16 Severn2j says:

    Bought a Radeon HD5770 in March for £120.. Also, upgraded everything else in the PC as well, as it hadnt been done in 4 years. Runs sweet atm, but think I may have underspecced the GFX card and may have to either upgrade it soon or buy another one and Crossfire it..

  210. 29/09/2011 at 15:17 tstapp1026 says:

    o/
    2011 is the year remember as “The year I decided to catch up with the rest of the world”

    i7 2600k
    ASUS Sabertooth P67
    16G GSkill Sniper 14900 (1866)
    Corsair AX-750
    EVGA GTX 570
    CoolerMaster Hyper 212+
    WD Black 1TB
    OCZ Agility 3 240G SSD
    Corsair Graphite 600T case
    ASUS 25″ HD Monitor
    G-9x mouse
    Saitek Eclipse III keyboard
    Logitech G930 wireless surround headset

    so… yes. I DID buy a new graphics card :)

  211. 29/09/2011 at 15:45 drewski says:

    About this time last year I bought a second hand 7600GS AGP on eBay for about £20.

    #probablynotrelevant

  212. 29/09/2011 at 15:50 StenL says:

    I bought a 460 around the time that Icelandic volcano erupted, can’t quite remember when that was.

  213. 29/09/2011 at 15:59 Potunka says:

    When I built my new PC in May 2010 (Out of bounds!) I spent/saved money buying a $80 Geforce 9800 GTX+. Ran BC2 relatively well (the only game that had FPS problems).

    This year I bought an open-box HD 6970 for $300. It is mighty.

  214. 29/09/2011 at 16:03 sinister agent says:

    I have, back in March or thereabouts. It’s nothing to do with new games coming out though. It’s just that it was the first time I’d ever been able to afford a PC that wasn’t second hand and several years behind the curve. I was working a hateful job for incompetent twats and was piling up money fatster than I could give it away, so figured I might as well splash out on something for myself, so that I could go on a virtual office rampage instead of a real one.

    Oh, I spent about £800 on the lot. I forget what went on what, but the video card has some numbers in and at least two letters.

  215. 29/09/2011 at 16:13 Necroscope says:

    2 months ago I bought a 560gtx [£140], 4gb of extra ram and windows 7 which improved my system tremendously. I wasn’t expecting The Witcher 2 to be so demanding at the time of its release and I played through on mid/low settings but it still looked gorgeous! One day I will get the satisfaction of playing The Witcher 2 on max settings, one day next year when I buy a shiney new PC. I would’ve bought one this year but the cost of 3d sculpting software and training is steep so I went with the cheaper short term benefits of upgrading rather than totally revamping. I had to budget accordingly. As for Battlefield 3 I am interested as to how it will look on my system. I don’t mind toning down the high fidelity graphics in favour of smooth performance essential for online fps :)

  216. 29/09/2011 at 16:19 raylinth says:

    MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti. Waited until I graduated college to built a PC. It’s been awesome.

  217. 29/09/2011 at 16:26 nailbunny says:

    I upgraded my PC in late spring around an I7-2600K, and picked up a Sapphire HD 5850 Xtreme for ~$140.

  218. 29/09/2011 at 16:27 Strontium Mike says:

    GTX 460 SE for a hundred odd quid a few months back, first time I’ve upgraded this machine since it was built 3 years ago.

  219. 29/09/2011 at 16:30 Azhrarn says:

    Nope, bought a ATI HD5870 in December 2009, so quite a bit outside your time-frame. However it still gets the job done more than adequately. :) The newest games usually still max out (or almost) and run smooth.

  220. 29/09/2011 at 16:40 Buemba says:

    Last year I bought a Radeon HD 5770 for $ 250.00 and a Corsair TX 650W to accompany it for an additional $ 280.00.

    Electronic components are ridiculously expensive where I live.

  221. 29/09/2011 at 16:40 Ubik2000 says:

    Wow, lots of comments going on. I’ll chime in. I’ve been an Nvidia loyalist for the last few generations, and my 8800GT served me well for YEARS. But then came Witcher 2, and the justification for an upgrade (and it really had been years). Thus began my nightmare. I ordered a Geforce 560 Ti and spent days fighting with it, trying to get some decent framerates. It was not a happy time.

    In hindsight, it Witcher 2 probably wasn’t optimally patched and the Geforce drivers to deal with the game were still coming out, but it was MASSIVELY frustrating (if I’m in Safe Mode for any reason, I’m angry). I even overclocked my processor for the first time ever, which necessitated going out and buying an aftermarket cooler too.

    Finally I gave up, sent the 560 back to amazon, and ordered a slightly more expensive (but with another gig of memory) Radeon 6950 from circuit city for, apparently, $273. Jesus, what was I thinking. I’m an idiot. Anyway, that worked a bit better (a BIT), although I think my Core 2 Duo 8[something hundred] is the probable bottleneck.

    So, all’s well that ends well, I guess. Buuuuut…..new processor inside a year (hey, it’s been YEARS).

  222. 29/09/2011 at 16:53 ChromeBallz says:

    Bought an entirely new rig a few months back. Core i5 2500k, radeon 6970.

  223. 29/09/2011 at 16:58 rocktart says:

    I got a MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III for £199.99
    It came with Deus Ex and Dirt 3 as well, which did spur me into upgrading, as I’d have bought Deus Ex anyway. Not played Dirt 3 though.

  224. 29/09/2011 at 17:07 Hypocee says:

    I bought essentially a new computer this summer.
    i3 540
    Some mobo
    4GB some RAM
    GTX460 (Zotac)
    ~USD500 all told

    I’d been running happily on an Athlon X2 and dual, then one, Radeon 9800 for…six years? Brink was the primary catalyst. ‘Your graphics card must support shader model 3.2′. Mine does what? 3.1. Grrr. Get that installed and the intro movie chugged and crashed; apparently it’s already running the engine when it shows that, and the engine needs moar flops than I had.

    This is a stopgap; it handily handles the stuff I want in the next couple years, and I’m taking the gamble that my i3 is one of the majority that overclock like fiends, but I expect to want a new CPU suite in a few years when 64-bit computing matures a bit more. If streaming cloud gaming hasn’t killed off all the home boxcrushers.

  225. 29/09/2011 at 17:09 qwertyacme says:

    January 2011
    Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB Vapor-X
    $200AUD

  226. 29/09/2011 at 17:16 MattM says:

    I got 2x Galaxy GTX 570s in the spring of 2011 which cost about $600 (after rebate) but I sold my 2x EVGA GTX 260s for about $175.

  227. 29/09/2011 at 17:45 nimzy says:

    o/ $250 for a MSI 560 Ti. HAWX edition, natch.

  228. 29/09/2011 at 17:49 westyfield says:

    Someone else might have already said so but I’m damned if I’m reading six pages of comments to find out.
    MSI Nvidia GTX 570 Twin Frozr, a few months ago. About £240.

  229. 29/09/2011 at 18:01 Zealuu says:

    Upgraded from a 2008 nvidia 9800 GTX+ (I think it was called) to a GTX 580 in august. It was part of a larger system upgrade including my first SSD and 64-bit CPU/OS, and 2 extra gigabytes of ram (now a total of 6gb). The GPU was around 3500 NOK (388 £ / 445 € by today’s exchange rates) … That sounds like a lot now.

  230. 29/09/2011 at 18:12 LintMan says:

    I’d still be using my 4 year old Nvidia 280 GTX if it hadn’t started crapping out on me last week. It was getting a fair bit long in the tooth, and I had to stick with mid-range or lower settings on the more demanding games, so I was already planning a major upgrade as part f overhauling my entire (4+ year old) system.

    The breakdown forced my hand before I had the funds together for a top-end card, so I now have an AMD 6950 2GB card. I’ve been playing Civ 5, now with higher settings on the new card, and honestly I haven’t noticed much difference in performance or appearance.

    I did pop back into DXHR, and with the new card that game looks much nicer and doesn’t badly stutter while looking around in the first room of the game like my old 280GTX did.

  231. 29/09/2011 at 18:16 kickme22 says:

    :-D. Newegg is absolutely great. Got a GTX 460 1024Mb NEW 4 months ago for 130 dollars. It easily runs my crysis 2 torrent at over 40 FPS WITH DX 11 and high res texture pack. (Also easily maxed out bf3 alpha).

  232. 29/09/2011 at 18:44 Davie says:

    Radeon HD 6850 here, for $185. Boy is it a beauty. Strangely, though, in situations that require more RAM than my computer can say it possesses, for example, gimondo-huge battles in Shogun 2 or M&B Warband, the framerate stutters a lot. It’s just weird because about half the time it runs perfectly smoothly in these situations, and then suddenly slows down for a while for a period where nothing obviously different is happening.

    Also, it gets really hot, for every game. I checked the specs and the temperatures it’s in are apparently well within the acceptable range, about 50-60 degrees Celsius, but you can still burn your finger on it if you touch it while running anything more advanced than Spelunky, which seems strange to me.

  233. 29/09/2011 at 18:59 AmateurScience says:

    I built a new PC from scratch in April ’10 (I know more than a year ago but I demand to contribute).

    The graphics card was an ATI HD5770 and it cost £129 ish. It works splendidly but I may be buying another shortly to xfire depending on how well the comp can handle Skyrim and BF3 etc.

  234. 29/09/2011 at 19:04 El_Emmental says:

    EVGA GTX 460 768 Mo (because of 1650×1080 max monitor), 6 months ago iirc (was a good choice back then, don’t know about now)

    Basically it’s “Fermi, fixed version”, it can run most games from 2010 (and before) at pretty high settings, which is fine for me

    early 2011 games can run fine at high settings (if you lower AA and similar stuff a little – maxed out/”ultra” settings is not really for you)(speaking of 1650×1080 of course).

    nb: since most games have to fit on consoles, the GTX 460 works fine for most games before Q3 2011.

  235. 29/09/2011 at 20:25 Navagon says:

    I just installed a new card within the past hour, so this question could not be better timed. I suffered a system ‘splode earlier this year. The GPU survived, but not much else did (or was incompatible with an up to date motherboard). So that left me with a GPU that was something of a bottleneck.

    The new card is a Geforce GTX 560 2GB. It set me back £165 which is the cheapest I’ve seen it at.

  236. 29/09/2011 at 20:33 Dogsbody says:

    just noticing this now? my first graphics card came in Pentium 200, it was a 3dRage with 8 megabytes of memory. so long ago i don’t even remember, some Jurassic period known as the ‘nineties.’

    this year – dual Radeon 6870′s. little under 500 bucks, and they slay everything so far.

  237. 29/09/2011 at 20:59 AngryAmoeba says:

    I bought a GTX 570 in late January 2011 for $350.

    Fairly pleased with it, though I could certainly use more horsepower for some games like GTA IV and Shogun 2. I have a feeling my CPU could use an upgrade… and I’m also keeping an eye on SSD prices…

  238. 29/09/2011 at 21:04 Stinkfinger75 says:

    Like you say, a lot of us have been upgrading for BF3 and I’m no different. Just last night I bought a GeForce GTX 560 Ti from Newegg for $239.99 after rebate. That seems to be a pretty popular card based on the fact that they never seem to have it in stock, plus it hits a pretty nice price point for me. On top of that it came with a free download of Arkham City (yes!) and will ship with a free copy of NBA 2K11 (YES!!!, I mean NOOOOOOO!!!)

  239. 29/09/2011 at 21:11 roryok says:

    Radeon HD5770

    Guy in work tried to upgrade his Mac Pro with a Radeon 5770, but it proved too difficult. After buying two different adapter cable dongles off ebay he discovered he’d have to flash the firmware on the card with something the mac could pickup, so he abandoned the whole thing and sold me the card for €75.

    Before that I was using a 9600GT. I probably wouldnt have bothered upgrading but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

  240. 29/09/2011 at 21:17 CommanderZx2 says:

    GeForce GTX 580 last year November for around £440.

  241. 29/09/2011 at 21:19 MonolithicTentacledAbomination says:

    I bought an EVGA GeForce 560 Ti just before Witcher 2 came out. If I recall, it was about $240.

  242. 29/09/2011 at 21:55 Sente says:

    Got two XFXForce 1GB Radeon 6870s for about $450 this past May

  243. 29/09/2011 at 22:31 Solidstate89 says:

    Well I only built my first computer last November, however when I did I bought two MSI 470 Twin Frozr II’s to the price of about 670 dollars.

    Been maxing out every game I own ever since.

  244. 29/09/2011 at 22:56 omNOMinator says:

    I bought a Sapphire AMD 1GB Radeon HD 6870… or summin’. I also overclocked my i5 CPU from 2.67GHz to 3.0GHz. Fun times!

  245. 29/09/2011 at 23:18 mittortz says:

    Got a pair of Asus overclocked GTX 460 for around $200 apiece in November of last year. They’re awesome. I crank every game I own to around 95% settings (the other 5% being really high AA and such) and get 40 fps at the lowest, but usually a smooth 60 fps.

  246. 29/09/2011 at 23:46 Lycan says:

    Dec 2010. XFX Radeon HD 5770 1 GB. 220 Sing dollars.

    Sad, yes I know. But it was not a planned upgrade. I had bought a new iPhone the previous month and was cash strapped. Then 3 year old 8800 GT Alpha Dog (XFX also) went cuckoo and could only output coloured horizontal stripes. A month later the prices dropped 50 bux and I could have got a HD5858 for approximately the same money.

    Woe is me.

  247. 30/09/2011 at 00:19 jimbonbon says:

    My primary machine has three GTX 570′s currently, which did set me back some reasonable money at the time.

    Plus an i7 2600k at 5.2GHz for good measure :P

  248. 30/09/2011 at 02:20 Waltorious says:

    In September 2010 I bought a 1 GB 5870 for about $380 as part of a full system build. This was because 1) my old machine was having some RAM issues which meant I could not download or unpack large files without errors, and 2) I had just got a new job, so it was kind of in celebration of that. No specific games in mind when I built it. Whole system was just over $1000.

  249. 30/09/2011 at 02:45 UnsounderGnome says:

    I got a 5770 in March of this year. It’s been pretty good so far. Best part is that it only cost me $65.

  250. 30/09/2011 at 03:42 LimeWarrior says:

    Just upgraded a month ago actually. Had a trusty 9800 GT. Bought a superclocked GTX470, but that thing kept overheating and the frames per second weren’t that impressive.

    Returned that card and bought a HD 6870. Never overheats. Fantastic benchmarks. I’m glad I switched to AMD.

  251. 30/09/2011 at 07:59 leahcim says:

    Own HD5850 and HD6850. For 2 different E8400 based systems.

    I paid £200 for the HD5850 and £150 for the HD6850.

    Last upgrade was making one of them into i5 2500k HD5850.

    Not even bothering with Battlefield 3. Even with the above spec Bad company 2 has slow downs. Not worth it. Just like Crysis, it’s not a PC game.

    There are far better games, written by far better developers that fly on the hardware, I’ll buy them.

  252. 30/09/2011 at 08:31 Coren says:

    Up!
    I bought a 560Ti to play The Witcher 2, which was the only game to cause me trouble since I built my PC three years ago. Paid about 200€, I think.

  253. 30/09/2011 at 12:41 ColOfNature says:

    Palit GTS 450 Sonic Platinum Nov 2010 £109

  254. 30/09/2011 at 19:50 magnus says:

    A GTX 560 and it’s very nice indeed!

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