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QOTW: Which graphics card would you buy on a £140 budget?

by Parm Mann on 4 November 2016, 16:31

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadar3

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2016 has been a busy year for graphics card launches, with both AMD and Nvidia introducing an entire suite of new products across multiple price points. Over the course of the last few months, both firms have turned their attention to the entry-level segment, where 1080p gaming credentials and keen pricing is key.

AMD was first out of the gate with its smallest Polaris GPU, the Radeon RX 460, and Nvidia has since fired back with the GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti.

Each GPU is intriguing in its own right, but at this end of the market you could argue that presentation and form factor are just as important as performance. In a tightly contested market, everything from card dimensions, display outputs, noise, power requirement, memory size and warranty comes under close scrutiny, and with so many partners creating custom boards, it isn't easy to pick out a diamond in the rough.

Doesn't mean to say we can't try. For this instalment of the question of the week, we're asking: which graphics card would you buy on a £140 budget? And to make things a little trickier, we're going to set a few criteria. You must pick a specific card, not a GPU, the chosen card must be in stock and available from a UK retailer for less than £140, and don't forget to tell us why you chose that particular model.



HEXUS Forums :: 34 Comments

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Probably a Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 460 4G. Decent amount of ram for Skyrim mods, Freesync for when things are fluctuating around 60fps (and cheaper monitors ta boot). Also having been alternating green and red for years, I generally prefer AMDs approach.
The GTX1050 2GB as long as it can be had for only slightly more than the RX460 2GB would be my choice below £140. AMD gimped the RX460 too much by making sure it had only 14 CUs active.

They are not far apart in performance/£ though and the RX460 does have the advantage of FreeSync but the GTX1050 is bus powered and the lower DX11 overhead will be useful for systems with weaker CPUs IMHO.


If I had £140,I would find some money and spend £165 to £180 on a RX470. 40% to 50% faster in more intensive games and 4GB of VRAM is worth the extra.The weakening pound has not helped the fact last year you could GTX960 4GB and R9 380 4GB cards for around the same price as a GTX1050TI 4GB which is realistically not much faster,so me the GTX1050TI is really only a sidegrade over my GTX960 4GB,and my GTX960 4GB is starting to get pushed in games.
If I seriously had to buy a cheaper GPU would go for the MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GAMING X 2G which is currently 139.99 on amazon - only because I used to have an MSI GTX 960 and I like the look and performance of the cooling design. Obviously 2GB in this day and age is a joke even at that price, but if I was forced to buy a card at this price range I wouldn't be expecting to play new games at 60fps anyway in all honesty. In fact, I'd forget the whole thing and buy a console a month later instead on that type of budget.
Hmmm, tricky. Scan have a GTX 1050 Ti on pre-order at just a shade under £140, which is probably where the smartest money would go - faster than an RX 460. OTOH if I had to buy one I could take home/get delivered today, a 4GB RX 460 is the only sensible option. Ebuyer have a 4GB Gigabyte for just over £110, so one of those and a few beers? ;)
scaryjim
Hmmm, tricky. Scan have a GTX 1050 Ti on pre-order at just a shade under £140, which is probably where the smartest money would go - faster than an RX 460. OTOH if I had to buy one I could take home/get delivered today, a 4GB RX 460 is the only sensible option. Ebuyer have a 4GB Gigabyte for just over £110, so one of those and a few beers? ;)

Didn't realise the 4GB model had plummeted in price soo much - OK,I think I would take a RX460 4GB for £110 over a similarly price GTX1050 2GB I suspect.

Having said the GTX1050 2GB apparently has some decent clock headroom from what I have been hearing. Need to see if the chap on OcUK who said he saw 4GB of VRAM on his,was not actually mistaken.