Graphics: The Ever-War Continues!

For most systems, graphics hardware is the star of the show.  Sure, you need a processor and RAM, but that's all integers and floating points and blah, blah, blah, booooring.  For the purposes of gaming, the rest of your system is mainly an effort to get out of your video card's way.  The price of a solid video card reflects that; for gaming PCs the video card will be the most expensive single component you purchase.

Because the video card is so important to the performance of a gaming PC, and because you'll be spending a healthy chunk of change on one, you need to know what you're looking at.  The consumer graphics market is (for the moment) a continuous competition between AMD and NVIDIA.  Both of these companies design cards and create drivers and other software, then license this to other vendors who actually assemble and sell cards to consumers.  These vendors tend to produce at least 1 model each of the various card designs, and often more due to having factory overclocked versions, and/or versions with "non-reference" (that is, different from the standard design supplied by AMD/NVIDIA) coolers.  It's easy to get confused by all the different models, and having multiple vendors and versions of each card doesn't help.  Below I've included a basic breakdown of the models currently on offer from each company.

AMD Radeon HD Cards

• Current Generation: 7000 Series Cards
• 7900 Series: Best Enthusiast performance.  Preferred for multi-monitor setups and/or high resolution monitors (~1440p).
• 7800 Series: Strong Enthusiast performance, but significantly more affordable, excellent for full HD (1080p) resolution and similar.
• 7700 Series: Basic Enthusiast performance, powerful enough to provide acceptable FPS with lowered detail at 1080p, with stronger performance at 1680x1050 and other comparable/lower resolutions.
• At the moment, there aren't any lower-end 7000-series cards available for retail.  It may be possible to find one, but they would be resold OEM cards, so support would be limited, if not non-existent.

Nvidia GeForce Cards

• Current Generation: 600 Series Cards
• GTX 680: Best Enthusiast performance.  Preferred for multi-monitor setups and/or high resolution monitors(~1440p).
• GTX 670: Best Enthusiast performance.  Slightly lower performing than the GTX 680, but still excellent for multi-monitor setups and/or high resolution monitors.
• GTX 660 Ti: Strong Enthusiast performance.  Excellent performance at or around full HD (1080p).
• GTX 660: Strong Enthusiast performance.  Similar in performance and price to the Radeon HD 7870.
• GTX 650 Ti: Basic Enthusiast performance.  Stronger performance than Radeon HD 7770, but lower than Radeon HD 7850.  Acceptable performance at 1080p.
• GTX 650: Basic Enthusiast performance.  Stronger performance than Radeon HD 7750, but lower than Radeon HD 7770.  Acceptable performance at 1080p.
• GT 640: Strong general performance.  Acceptable budget gaming performance at low resolutions, strong performance in general applications and media playback.
• GT 630: Good general performance.  Unimpressive gaming performance, good performance in productivity applications and media playback.  Preferred for for media playing (Home Theater PC) and slim PC applications due to availability of passive and/or low profile versions of these cards.  Multiple versions of this card exist, based on differing architectures, with differing memory configurations.
• There are some lower end cards available, but for the most part I'd say those cards aren't worth your time unless you wanted to keep a backup/testing video card for trouble-shooting purposes, or need a passive or near-passive card that can support multiple monitors (maybe in an office environment) and you anticipate little to no demands being made of it.

This is an exciting generation of video cards.  Nvidia has reversed, in commanding fashion, a somewhat distressing trend toward hotter, more power hungry GPUs.  Kepler (their new architecture) is very efficient, along with being extremely powerful.  AMD is staying in the game as well, much like a few years ago, when the 5000 series cards were so well regarded, the 7000 series cards are competitive both from a price and performance perspective, along with continuing AMD's recent efforts of keeping heat and electricity usage at reasonable levels.

Below are some individual recommendations:

Extremely high end:  If you have a 1440p monitor, you'll need muscle to drive it.  The GTX 670 and Radeon 7970 (non-GHZ version) strike the right balance between price and performance.  Both have the large amounts of VRAM and pixel-pushing muscle necessary to drive your games at 2560x1440.

High end:  Most people game at or around 1080p (1920x1200 isn't as common as 1080p, but it's still out there) and the best cards for this come in at around $300, the Radeon 7950 and the GTX 660 Ti.  Both should give you eye candy to spare at 1080p.

Mid-Range:  As I said, most people game at or around 1080p.  Most people also don't want to spend $300 on a video card.  Fortunately, great performance at these resolutions can be bought for less.  The GTX 660 and Radeon 7870 are great cards that often retail for close to $200.

Low end:  The economy being what it is, who wants to spend 2 Benjamins on a video card?  For people with lower resolution monitors, or who are willing to turn down the detail settings a bit, there are still great cards to be had for less than $200.  Prices on the Radeon 7850 are plummeting, some are available for around $175, a spectacular value (in my opinion).  If you're looking to spend less, the GTX 650 Ti is probably now your best option

Generally speaking, most people won't need to spend more than $300 for great performance, because most people game at 1080p.  People with 1440p monitors will be well served by the cards recommended above, but may have to compromise a bit on detail settings in some games (1440p is so many pixels).  If you have a high resolution monitor, or are interested in a multi-monitor setup, you may want more horsepower than is accounted for above.  If so, drop by the thread and we'll see what we can do for you.

Video Cards: Yes, they can run Crysis

12-25-2012: Some of this information is still useful in a general capacity, but much of it is somewhat outdated.  You can find a more recent version of the post here.

Ah, Graphics.  The vast majority of you will spend as as much (or more) money here as you will on any other single part of your build.  That's a good thing, most games these days demand more from your graphics hardware than they do from anything else in your system.  If you want to encode/transcode video, or edit photos, or render 3D graphics, you need CPU horsepower.  If you want to game, you need just enough CPU not to hold your GPU back.

When recommending a gaming PC build, I generally advise a CPU/GPU combination with at least a 1:1 ratio in terms of expense.  For example, if you're going to run an i3-2100, I'd recommend at least a Radeon 5770/6770.  If you're going to run an i5-2400, I'd recommend at least a Radeon 6850/nVidia GTX 460 1GB.  If you're going to break with that ratio, do so in favor of the GPU. That is, go with an i3-2100 and a 6850, not an i5-2400 with a 5770.  Don't worry about your CPU bottlenecking your GPU, even a relatively lowly Core2Duo can still crunch enough numbers to avoid restricting most modern GPUs.  More recent budget processors are significantly more powerful, and even less likely to restrict your graphics hardware.

With all that said, it wouldn't be a GPU discussion if we didn't cover what I'm going to refer to as "The Ever-War".  Since what seems like the dawn of time, ATi (eventually bought and then absorbed by AMD), nVidia have been battling it out over the graphics card market.  The conflict has caused some collateral damage to less worthy combatants (3dfx, Matrox, S3...) but serious competition has bred serious horsepower.  The current generations of AMD and nVidia cards are well matched, relatively efficient, and impressively powerful even at lower price points.  I would advise prospective buyers to leave their biases at the door when choosing hardware here.  I've heard complaints about nVidia hardware, ATi/AMD drivers, and on and on.  What it boils down to is performance, choose the best performing hardware you can afford.  If you're looking at comparable AMD and nVidia cards, find out which one does a better job running the games you want to play.

In my recommendations below, I've highlighted what I think are some of the best options at various price points.  Where possible I've included both AMD and nVidia options. At times, there is simply no comparison, and you'll only see cards from a single manufacturer.  Prices are mentioned only in general, as video cards come from various manufacturers in many different models, and go on sale frequently.  I've noted some cards that seem to frequently price drop into a different range where necessary to make sure people are on the lookout for good deals.

~$125 - AMD Radeon 5770/6770: This is really the only option at this price range.  Nvidia's competition, the GTS 450, simply isn't as good as the 5770.  The 6770 is a cynical OEM rebadge of the classic 5770.  If you can find it for a comparable price to the 5770, go for it, but there's really no difference between the cards.

~$150 - AMD Radeon 6790 / nVidia GTX 460 768MB: These two cards run neck and neck, generally, and which you choose comes down to specific game performance and price.  Keep in mind that, depending on sales/combos you might be able to find either the 6850 or 460 GTX 1GB for around $150.

~$175 - AMD Radeon 6850 / nVidia GTX 460 1MB: Much like the $150 category, both of these cards have very similar performance levels, and the differences are largely in whether a particular game was designed in such a way as to favor one manufacturer over another.  One significant difference is that most 6850 models require only a single 6-pin PCI-E connector, whereas the 460 1GB requires 2 and is more power-hungry in general.  Keep that in mind when purchasing.  Also, do not buy a 460 GTX SE, it's a lobotomized budget model of the card and isn't worth your money.

~$200 - AMD Radeon 6870 / nVidia GTX 560: The GTX 560 is generally the better performer over the 6870.  Not by an excessive amount, necessarily, but it's a more clear definition than at the $150 or $175 price levels.  Fortunately, the 6870 generally goes for less than the GTX 560, which makes the value comparable.

~$250 - AMD Radeon 6950 1GB / nVidia GTX 560 Ti: Here the 6950 1GB is the superior performer.  The 560 Ti is a good card, and can often be found slightly cheaper than the 1GB version of the 6950.  Either card is a good value, and both have similar power requirements.

~$350 - 2x AMD Radeon 6850 / 2x nVidia 460 GTX 1GB: Sometimes the best graphics card for the money is 2 of them.  Crossfire and SLI are no longer immature technologies with limited support and poor scaling, these days any game worth its salt supports both of these multi-GPU solutions, and scaling is very impressive.  These setups offer GTX 580 levels of performance for a significant discount, even when you consider the expense of an SLI/Crossfire capable motherboard.  If both the 6850 and the 460 GTX 1GB are selling for roughly the same price, the 6850 CFX is the cheaper option, due to its lower power requirements.  If you prefer a single card option, then look at the GTX 570, the GTX 560 Ti w/ 448 Cores, or the Radeon 6970.

Options on the low and high end: Lower end GPUs are numerous. Let us know your intended resolution in order for us to offer the best price/performance option. Higher end GPU setups are largely a matter of deciding how much you're budgeting on the GPU(s) and then purchasing the appropriate multi-GPU setup (~$400, 2x 560 GTX / Radeon 6870, for example). It's generally not worth it performance-wise to go with a single card vs. a similarly priced SLI/Crossfire option, unless you have some kind of space/PCI-E slot restriction that demands it, or you intend to upgrade down the line to a SLI/Crossfire setup. Be realistic about the latter option, many times that impulse goes by the wayside, or you wait too long to drop in the 2nd GPU and suddenly you're better off just upgrading wholesale.

Recently, we've seen the release of AMD's Radeon 7970 card, and some of the lower-end derivations of their new platform. The 7970 is a fantastic card, the best single-GPU card out there, so if you're in the market for speed, and price is no object, there's no better option. The rest of the lower-end cards have begun trickling out, starting with the 7950 (another great card) and the 7770. Pricing is a bit off at the moment for the latter, as it's a bit more expensive than the 6850, but a bit less impressive. Once prices stabilize and the range of cards is closer to completion, you should expect to see the above recommendations change, at least on the AMD side. Kepler (NVIDIA's next big thing) is likely a month or more away.