My EVGA GTX 285 fried 2 weeks ago.

Been using nvidia for the past few years.

I was told that Radeon is better and costs less

However, searching through google gives mixed results.

What would be the best option for a 100$-200$ gaming GPU?

And whats a better bang for the buck? nvidia or radeon?

Is there even any major difference between the two?


EDIT:

I would like to thank everyone for helping with opinions and tips.

Especially darko55 for dedicating alot of time explaining and researching things

I think I will go with NVIDIA after all. Especially since it has Physx.

Probably GTX 560 or 650.


EDIT2:

Damn, with the flow of new comments about Radeons being superior and cheaper I'm tempted to try radeon since I've always been with nvidia.

And I'm almost tempted to try to cook the card back to life like MerkabahPT suggested, sounds crazy though.


12 years ago*

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the radeons perform better or on par with their nvidia equivalents for less money, and come with free games like crysis 3, tomb raider, bioshock infinite, etc. but coming from an nvidia gpu it might just be less hassle to go with an nvidia card. if you have value for money in mind though, radeons are objectively far superior. the nvidia brand comes with "prestige", and their cards cost accordingly more because of it.

12 years ago
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Oh no, I'm too late. Seriously, go with this HD7850.

It's ~$140 with free shipping. Plus you get the Never Settled bundle (Tomb Raider + Bioshock Infinite + Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon)

12 years ago
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f'in HELL you americans get a great deal on technology! that would be 140 in the uk too. £140, so around $215... T_T

12 years ago
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It's their lack of vat, so everything is 20% cheaper over there. Sucks for us when buying tech, but we get healthcare and stuff instead.

12 years ago
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Wait americans dont get health care? 0.o

12 years ago
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I think they get the really really really basic stuff since a few months. Not entirely sure. I heard it was quite a big deal to get it through the senate... Having health care limits your freedom or something. 'Murica.

12 years ago
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Uh... no.

12 years ago
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We have yet to get rationed healthcare. Obamacare will get repealed when the costs ends up being in the trillions and as unsustainable as Socialism.

12 years ago
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Unsustainable socialism, like public roads? Power lines, cable lines, clean water? These are all due to socialism. All seem sustainable.

Remember that Medicare and Medicaid are already social programs. They're paid for already, albeit underfunded due to a mismatch between automatic increases and even greater inflation.

We pay taxes for these socialist programs, so we get them back. Any time a public collection is taken to pay for something, this is socialism. That some portion of those who paid will not benefit from is a frequent argument against working together.

12 years ago
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haha true. i'd hate to have to go to hospital in the states.

12 years ago
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I've used the hospital and it was perfectly fine. I'm not sure where you are getting your information or what it has to do with videocards.

12 years ago
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you'll notice that my comment is nestled (i.e. it's a reply), to someone else's. i was following the natural flow of conversation, like any well-adjusted human being would do. Zephyrv was responding to my surprise and lamentation about high prices of electical goods in the uk by attempting to explain the phenomenon, and then offering a conciliatory fact to alleviate my apparent dissatisfaction with living in the uk. so no, healthcare is not directly relevant to the topic, but human interaction is more often spontaneous than structured by arbitrary rules and logic.

now that you mention it, i don't know much more about american healthcare than what gets reported here, but a cursory google search shows americans pay dearly for healthcare. in fact the american healthcare system is apparently the most expensive in the world. nobody was offering a qualitative statement about american healthcare. actually without looking into it i'd assume you have some of the most prominent medical researchers and facilities in the world (and thus presumably good doctors and medical service), while i can tell you from experience that the uk's healthcare system is free but highly flawed as a result due to limited resources (and consequently, it's somewhat lacking in quality). i've no doubt your hospital stay was very pleasant, but Zephyrv and i were talking about money/costs.

12 years ago
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It's cheaper because they are American products being sold domestically. I don't know what taxes and healthcare have to do with selling tech because they are totally irrelevant.

12 years ago
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In the UK we have something called VAT (Value Added Tax). This means you have to pay an extra 20% tax of the value of the product you are buying. America does not have this tax meaning that everything is at least 20% cheaper in America compared to in the UK. They are not 'American products being sold domestically' because they are not manufactured in the US. Gigabyte for example is a Taiwanese company. The additional taxes we pay in the UK go towards things like free health care. Since the US does not have these taxes, they don't have the same range of healthcare available for free.

12 years ago
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Government services are never "free". You get an increasingly high number of taxes because people don't want to pay for stuff.

12 years ago
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have you tryed the "oven trick", a reflow? if the card is dead you have nothing to lose. My 9800gt got wierd glitchs and then stoped working, did a oven reflow and it came back to life, 2 times! i will by a new pc, and i will have a 7770, way better than a 560 ti or non ti, and it costs only 90€ here in portugal.

12 years ago
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Good ol' "cooking" :P. 8XXX,9XXX and i believe some 2XX had problems with cold solders and proper oven heating was proven to temporarily solve the problem. Still we don't know the nature of problem - it could be heat or physical damage, dead capacitor and all kinds of funky stuff so suggesting an oven trick without enough information and some research/preparation is ill adviced.

12 years ago
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My XFX 285 died, i removed all the plastic and heatsink. put it on some balls of tin foil (on the screw edges) so none of the things moved, baked it at 200c for around 10 minutes then turned the oven off and let it cool in there for a few hours. Worked again for another 10 months, until about 2 weeks ago when i started to give me driver errors again. I got a replacement card, as even the 560ti out performs it in modern games now. I'm going to re-cook it, just for CUDA encoding as the card is silly fast still.

From what I read when I first did it, it was a known problem in the gtx 280/285 runs on the XFX cards with a poor BGA flow. Anyway, it fixed the card for me for a while. Probably long enough for OP too, to get a bit more money together and get a faster/better card as a replacement.

But like MerkabahPT said, nothing left to lose, if it still doesn't work, ebay it as spares.

For me, my card was booting to windows with a purple screen. Later on, I was having to reset the PC a few times to even get the card to display on POST.

12 years ago
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Waitwhat... you can cook your card back to life?
You're kidding right? My friend told me he did that once and it worked i thought he was joking.

12 years ago
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If it's a solder separation then maybe. If it's a cracked trace or failed component then no, but if the card is trashed already then it doesn't hurt to try.

12 years ago
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Exactly! If the card is already dead you have nothing to lose (while doing it the first time one of the caps flew out of the card, but nothing new solder can't solve. it happened because i followed the steps from various guides, 180ºc 8minutes. The secound time time it was only 165ºc and 6,5minutes and it worked like a charm).

The oven trick melts all the solders on the card and fixes cracks on them.

12 years ago
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uh... and it works after melting all the solders?

so at what temprature and for how long should I do this?

12 years ago
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It can work, but only if the problem is from separated solder. The problem with modern solder is that due to environmental regulations it's now "Pb-free" (lead free) which makes the solder more brittle and more likely to separate from components. This can happen over time when the board warms up and then cools down, causing flex from heat expansion and contraction.

The original models of the Xbox 360 were a classic example of this. Microsoft made the unwise decision of speccing the 90nm ATI Xenos GPUs to run too fast with insufficient cooling. The chips worked but got extremely hot and would then cool when the unit was off. Over time the chip would start to separate from the mainboard and cause the red ring of death. Microsoft tried to fix the problem in a new board revision by adding a larger heat sink to keep the GPU cool. It didn't work. The problem persisted for 3 years until the GPU was die-shrunk to 65nm.

It was estimated that this would cause Microsoft to lose over $1 billion in warranty service over the life of the console, all because an engineer forgot to compensate for the use of lead-free solder.

Good luck!

12 years ago
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Id hate to dissapoint you but 560 Ti still has more juice in it Benchmark1 Benchmark2 benchmark3

12 years ago
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You absolutly right, i mistaken the 560ti for the 550ti.
Some games the 55ti still wins, but that happens on games optimized to nvidias.
Still, amd=more bang for the buck!

12 years ago
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or some time away in the sunshine :P maybe it was a sign :D

12 years ago
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Real life has the best shaders and anti aliasing.

12 years ago
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Nvidia, you get what you pay for!

12 years ago
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

12 years ago
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Personally I would go with a 7850 or 7870 if there is a sale.

You get a multitude of free games with AMD GPUs and they are the best cost to performance cards currently out.

Or you could wait for the new Nvidia 700 series to release to get a good deal on a 600 series card.

12 years ago
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i got a geforce gtx 660ti and i LOVE it

12 years ago
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Simply put, for that price you can get two cards. An AMD 7870 or a gtx 660. There is an XT version of the 7870 available, which makes it perform better than the 660 for the same price as a regular 7870, but nvidia has physx so it depends on whether you want more power in a 7870xt or a slightly less (maybe about 10-15) power and instead the added fanciness of physx. Oh yeah, and the free game bundles with AMD at the moment. Alternatively, wait a few months for the new AMD 8000 (possibly going to be called 9000 for some odd reason) and the nvidia 700 series, and see how they affect the prices of the old cards, and how good the new ones are.

12 years ago
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you could check it out several cards here, which one will suit your budget the best

However, new card like HD7790 should be in there too, because It simply outruns 650 Ti with better price as well

12 years ago
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what cpu do you have? and what resolution is your monitor?

i assume you won't encounter a cpu bottleneck and are gaming at 1080p. in that case the cards with the most bang for your buck in the 100 to 200 USD price range are the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Edition, GTX 660, and AMD Radeon HD 7850

the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 is worth the extra 20 USD over the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Edition because the minimum nVIDIA GeForce series graphics card to receive the free bonus game Metro Last Light is the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660. the minimum AMD Radeon series graphics card to receive free bonus games in AMD's never settle bundle is the AMD HD 7770, however the AMD Radeon HD 7850 includes an upgraded version of AMD's never settle bundle. AMD's equivalent of the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Edition is the Radeon HD 7850. the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 performs between the AMD Radeon HD 7850 and 7870.

in conclusion, if can spare around 188 to 200 USD, buy the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660. if not the AMD Radeon HD 7850 is a good alternative.

12 years ago
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Hmm I think that its posible to find a 7870 for about 210$ and you get 3 games with it for free

12 years ago
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You will have better expirience with Nvidia GPU's

12 years ago
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7850 is good from newegg because it comes with bioshock infinite

12 years ago
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Also comes with Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon and Tomb Raider.

12 years ago
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You should really read rewiews and look the performance for those games you play.. PhysX is kind a useless feature for low budged cards. I have had HD5770, HD5850 and loved both and now i have GTX670 and GTX670MX and love both, so cant say AMD or NVIDIA.

12 years ago
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I used ATI on my first 3 machines and always had issues with games that weren't resolved until patches came out, sometimes a month after the fact. I switched to nVidia on my current machine and one game at the time I couldn't get to run well with my ATI ran perfectly with the Nvidia. I haven't had a single problem as far as drivers go with my Nvidia card and am sticking with them on my next build. ATI is great when it comes to power per dollar but what good is the power when you have to wait weeks, sometimes months, for developers to put out a patch for the game to run well on ATI?

12 years ago
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well i have nvidia and amd amd live longer then nvidia that i can say from my own experience all my nvidia card bruning like hell but amd still work nvidia have better drivers then amd chose is yours

12 years ago
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Every AMD card I have ever had, has had horrible driver issues. I've tried on multiple builds to go back to them - but it's just not in the cards for me. That said this is a single solitary experience there are far more informative and better posts below.

12 years ago
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Not buying Radeon anymore. Yes, they are cheaper and yes, you probably will be able to squeeze a little more juice out of them and yes, most games are AMD optimized first BUT they break fast and their drivers suck.
The current card I have is a 6950HD and it broke 1 week after I put it in without overclocking, max temp was 60°C and had a sufficient PSU. They replaced it with a new one which is shutting down some games after 20 min of play (and no, 60°C is not overheating).
I'll be buying Nvidia from now on (the 560TI was on the same level as my 6950 and it was actually cheaper).

12 years ago
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That's a manufacture problem and not a chipset one.
The two are very different.

You don't blame Microsoft because you bought a crappy HP computer, you blame HP.

12 years ago
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you just got a bad card, my radeon card is 3 years old and runs fine and doesn't over heat and overclocks really easy.

12 years ago
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GeForce!

12 years ago
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I think you should get both.

12 years ago
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Why not Zoidberg?

12 years ago
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Ok I'm going to bake the card. only question now, at what temprature and for how long. Different guides say different things

12 years ago
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  1. Preheat an oven (170-190 C should work) - depending on preference :) and abilities of oven to get exact temperature.
  2. Put alluminium foil on baking tray.
  3. Remove cooling system from GPU and termal paste.
  4. Put card on tray on additional alluminium foil blocks so that card have no direct contact with tray.
    4.1. You can make additional shields for capacitors.
  5. Put card for 7:00-8:00 (7:30 should be enough) minutes into the oven.
  6. Assemble and test.
12 years ago
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And it wont fry my motherboard?

12 years ago
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For me it is a bit of IT Voodoo so i refrain from recommending this method but people get some results with it. Even if done 100% properly you either "fix" the card at cost of overall health of chipset,memory,capacitors (which means it may get you as little as few days,weeks,months)or you completely kill it. I haven't heard someone fry motherboard(this almost entirely happens because of faulty power supply unit) because of cooked card but if your card uses power directly from PSU via 6-PIN plug (GTX 285 uses 2 i think)there are some theoretical danger of short circuit. Inspect card after cooking. If solders are over-melted(as in flat or even totally gone) or there are visible heat damage on any element DO NOT PUT CARD INTO PC.

12 years ago
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Oh God Tzell. I hope you know what you're doing. That sounds scary as hell xD Well, I suppose it's fried anyway, so you have nothing to lose?

P.S: I actually have the GTX Geforce 560, and I see that's one of the cards you're thinking of getting. Just thought I'd let you know it's a fantastic card. You can check my profile for the games I own, and ask me how the card can run each of those individually if you'd like :)

12 years ago
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This actually works, if the issue with the card is related to either cracked soldering or old thermal paste. For thermal paste, I'd suggest replacing that and see what happens.

In any case, if you're just going to throw the card out you really have nothing to lose. And if it works, you get to tell your friends about this batshit crazy method from the old days.

It reminds me of how putting a hard drive in a waterproof bag and placing that in the freezer will let you read from a hard drive with damaged platters, depending on what sort of damage has been sustained.

12 years ago
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So how did it go? :P

12 years ago
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to risky just buy another card much easier then playing around with stuff and possibly damaging something else in the system if that card has some malfunction that effects other parts from say a short circuit .

12 years ago
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What main CPU brand do you have? If you have an AMD, kinda makes me want to lean towards Radeon. But, otherwise, I've always used nVidia since 3dFX died.

12 years ago
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enough of this, go 7970 for value/performance. Nvidia isn't worth going for just to get PhysX, when very little titles support it.

I own a GTX 560 Twin Frozr II and while it keeps load tempts (this model anyway) - It does quite well on recent games, couple with the exception though, I can't really pass high on BF3 without noticing lag and same as MOHWF, but majority it plays just fine.

12 years ago
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Nvidia forerever, have you heard something about microstuttering and fcat? GOogle it ;)

12 years ago
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It really depends on the game you intend to play.

For long-term stability, I would go with Nvidia if you can afford the typically higher price on the best cards.

For cards that are third or fourth best from each company, which is still plenty fast, look into Radeon for the same performance with lower price. Definitely go with Radeon when you have a 200 USD budget. HIS or Sapphire, both of those companies produce Radeon cards with great cooling.


You may be able to replace the cooler on your busted card, if heat is the problem. Get something high quality that you can use with the next card you want.

If you keep your old card running for a few more months, you can save up for a better than 200 USD card. Plus, you can move that high quality cooler to your new card and overclock like a fiend, effectively saving even more money compared to an even more expensive card.

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by Tzell.