Graphics Card Buying Guide Spring 2015

I want the best of the best

So now we’ve come to what can only be described as the best. This is for those who want the best gaming experience money can buy from a single card. AMD tend to be weaker at this end of the market, whereas NVIDIA thrive at these performance levels. AMD can only offer one card here, the R9 295×2. This dual-GPU behemoth is two R9 290x GPU cores stuck together on a single PCB, giving almost double the performance power. NVIDIA have the Titan range of graphics cards, the most recent being the Titan X. The Titan X, despite only being a single GPU card, is around 75% as fast as the R9 295×2.

AMD R9 295×2 @ £599.99.

• Core Clock: 1018MHz
• Processing Cores: 5632
• Memory: 8GB GDDR5
• Memory Clock: 5000MHz (Effective)

This is all AMD have to offer. It is a spectacular card which we highly recommend, the performance is great and the water cooling keeps the card very cool. The only drawbacks being the size and power consumption, it is a very long card and wide with the water pipes sticking out of the top. As it uses dual R9 290x cores, you are looking at a high power demand; we recommend a 700w power supply to safely power this.

NVIDIA Titan X @ £899.99.

• Core Clock: 1000MHz
• Core Boost Clock: 1075MHz
• Processing/ CUDA Cores: 3072
• Memory: 12GB GDDR5
• Memory Clock: 7010MHz (Effective)

The newest Titan to be let out of the NVIDIA offices, this is a serious card. When you consider the performance difference between it and the R9 295×2 and then realise that it is only a single GPU, it will amaze. Yes, the performance is less and the cost is more; but I’m OK with that and you should be too.

NVIDIA Titan Z @ £1559.99.

• Core Clock: 705MHz
• Core Boost Clock: 876MHz
• Processing/ CUDA Cores: 5760
• Memory: 12GB GDDR5
• Memory Clock: 7000MHz (Effective)

This is it, the ultimate dual GPU monster that takes no prisoners. The price is still high, but the performance inside this is enough to play any game at 4k resolution at over 60FPS. Despite being the top dog, I wouldn’t recommend this; I would still recommend the Titan X. Due to the cooling solution on the Titan Z being less than adequate, it cannot fully cool two full-powered GPU cores. This meant having to cut down on the power requirement to keep temperatures in check; why pay all this money for two underpowered cores?