Video Card: Buyers Guide AMD VS. Nvidia

When it comes to GPUs there are a plethora of options to choose from scaling from $50 all the way up $1000. In this buyers guide we'll tackle all the price points to tell you where to spend your money from entry level cards all the way up to the ultra high-end enthusiast performance video cards.

Entry Level: $150 AMD Radeon 7790 VS Nvidia 650 Ti

Most people consider an entry level video card a $50-$100. Recently CPU graphics from both Intel and AMD have caught up to discrete video card performance and made it, so people don't need to buy a low end GPU anymore.

Anyways lets compare AMD's 7790 to the Nvidia's 650 Ti which are both around $140-$150 or so. When you look at the benchmarks the 7790 beats the 650 Ti in almost every benchmark that Ryan Smith from Anandtech ran on the two GPU's. The AMD GPU also came very close to the performance of the 650 Ti Boost which is currently a $170 video card. AMD's 7790 card won all of the compute tests beating out both Nvidia cards handily in synthetic benchmarks. What makes AMD's 7790 appealing is its $110 game bundle consisting of Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, and Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon.

Winner: AMD

Mid Range: $250-$300 AMD Radeon 7950 
VS Nvidia GTX 760

There are many options at this price point ranging from Super-clocked GTX 660's to stock clocked Radeon 7950's. The two card facing off here are the AMD 7950 at $260 VS Nvidia's GTX 760 at $250. The GTX 760 wins almost all of the gaming benchmarks run by Anandtech and when it does lose to the 7950 its not by much. Games where the GTX 760 killed AMD's second tier card were BF3, Portal 2, and Skyrim which the Nvidia card won beat the 7950 by around 10FPS or more in each of these games.

Winner: Nvidia

High End: 7970 GHz Edition VS GTX 770 $350-$400

The battle at the high end is insane as AMD and Nvidia as both companies are very close to each other in this price bracket. AMD offers their 7970 GHZ Edition here while Nvidia has their newly launched GTX 770 here. Both video cards are very close to one another when it comes to performance and power consumption. If you're at this price point and want the card that is the faster of the two right out of the box choose the 7970. However, if you're an overclocker you'll want to go with the GTX 770 as the video card overclocks well and pushes past AMD's flagship card handily after it's overclocked to 1200MHz.

Winner: Tie

Ultra: $1000 7990, VS GTX 690, VS GTX Titan 

When it comes to the Ultra category three cards stand out at the premium price of $1000 which include Nvidia's GTX 690 and GTX Titan along with AMD's Radeon 7990. Nvidia's GTX Titan beats the GTX 690, and 7990 single handily in this category. The Titan is a single GPU card where as the 690 and 7990 are both dual-GPU video cards and it performs the same if not better them in some cases. In Anandtech's review of the card the GTX Titan matched the 690 and 7990 in many of the website's benchmarks. However, the Titan did lose to both the 690 and 7990 many times in benchmarks, but the card's advantage is that you don't need to wait for Crossfire or SLI profiles to come out like you do for the 7990 or GTX 690.

Winner: Nvidia's GTX Titan