What are the most important video card stats?

Question

I need a new video card for gaming on my computer. I've been looking at clock speed mostlybut I hear that the number of bits (i.e. 64, 128, 256) is an important factor as well. It seems any card with 256 bits has a huge jump in price compared to say a card with the same DDR memory, but will have 200 or so less clock speed. My question is, what should I be looking for if i want to play modern computer games? If possible I'd prefer to pay around 150 bucks for a decent card! Any help is appreciated!

Additional Details

thanks elliot, actually if I remember correctly a Tom's Hardware article suggested the exact same card!

the question is, which gtx 460, there are a bunch of them with multiple third party builds... aka evga, zotac, etc.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Actually, the only thing that matters is the actual performance of the card.

If you think that the core/shader/memory clock makes a difference, take an 8800GTX and a HD2900XTX. The HD2900XTX has significantly higher clocks than the 8800GTX. Does that make the HD2900XTX a better video card? No! In fact, the HD2900XTX has more shaders, a higher bit-rate, DDR4 memory (compared to the 8800GTX's DDR3 memory); and yet the 8800GTX smokes the HD2900XTX in benchmarks. There's just more to video cards than the statistics.

To answer your other question about which GTX460 you should get: it doesn't really matter. The only difference between the brands is the different warranties. I, personally, like eVGA and XFX because they have really good warranties.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

GPU clock
Memory
Memory clock
shader version
DX version
Memory Bandwidth
Benchmarks

For that money get a 5770 but just pay a tiny bit more and get a gtx 460 you wont regret it.

HEY well It doesn't matter what one you choose. I like ones that have casing and blow air out the back of the case. But It really doesn't matter which one. 768mb model is the best bang for buck as well. The 1gb one costs too much more for the small amount of performance increase. If you are gaming at higher then 1080p which I think you will not then just get the 768mb model. Have fun with your new card.