Gaming on a Budget : Graphics Cards for Under R2500

When it comes to PC gaming these days, the GPU or Graphics Card plays a very important role in how the game will look and run. So in this post I want to look at possibly GPU options for people looking to upgrade, or wondering what to use in their planned new rig. Cards that won't break the bank but would still allow you to play newly released games on Medium to High settings with decent performance.

nVidia GTX750Ti

Both the nVidia GTX750Ti and the AMD R7 260X below offer similar performance on the same graphical settings on games like Metro Last Light and Battlefield 4. The purpose of this post isn't to decide which is best, but rather to share what both options may cost you. What I like about the GTX750Ti is that it offers great performance for relatively low power consumption, so you don't need a Large PSU for it, which does help quite a bit as Power Supplies can be quite expensive. Possible options you could look at for the GTX750Ti are the MSI nVidia GeForce GTX750 Ti Twin Frozr OC, the EVGA GeForce GTX 750Ti FTW w/ACX Cooling and the Gigabyte Nvidia GTx 750Ti Oc Black Edition

AMD R7 260X

While the AMD R7 260X offers similar performace to the nVidia GTX750Ti it must be noted that it can be bought for a few hundred rand less than the GTX750Ti. Thought it does require a bit more power. Possible options for the AMD R7 260X are the Gigabyte AMD Radeon R7 260X and the Asus AMD Radeon R7 260X DirectCU II. It is also worth noting that Takealot has the Gigabyte AMD Radeon R9 270 for under R2500.

Some other things to keep in mind is that both AMD and nVidia are planning to release new cards in the future, that may cause a price drop on the current cards. And there is always the option of buying a secondhand card from BidorBuy or Carbonite. PC International also sells Hardware Components at near wholesale pricing.