Prefer the Red Team over the Green Team? We've got your back
There was a time when a dozen different companies were selling video cards and vying for your hard-earned cash. But, at least when it comes to gaming, the field has narrowed to just two: Nvidia and AMD. If you're just doing spreadsheets, surfing the web, and playing the occasional Flash game, you'll be fine with integrated graphics. But if you spend a lot of time shooting, racing, and flying, a dedicated graphics card is the way to go.
We covered Nvidia a couple of days ago, and now we're turning our crosshairs to AMD. What follows is a streamlined buying guide. No benchmark charts, diagrams, or spec sheets. We'll link to places where you can get that stuff if you want, but here is where we condense the product line into a few pages of advice. Dig in!
Options #1, #2, and #3: Radeon R7 260, 260X, and 265
First, we're looking at the cards in the $100–$130 range. Overall, AMD has a denser collection of options than Nvidia. This creates some overlap, so we're combining these cards into one tier that's roughly equivalent to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti tier. Like that pair, these AMD cards are fine for playing at 1080p most of the time.
We'd recommend the R7 265 with two gigabytes of VRAM to get the best performance. Naturally, you'll find those at the top of the price range, but we think it's worth the extra bucks. These three Radeon cards also need only one 6-pin PCI Express cable, so you should be fine with a power supply in the 400–500 watt range. If you have around $200 to spend, though, there are better options from both AMD and Nvidia.
Options #4 and #5: Radeon R7 270 and 270X
These cards are roughly equivalent to the Radeon HD 7850 and 7870, and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 and 760. So their price range is about $130–$180, if you include mail-in rebates. Like the other R7 cards, we recommend 2GB of VRAM for the best gaming experience at 1080p. These GPUs also will let you use higher visual settings than the R7 cards mentioned earlier. However, the 270 and 270X need two PCI Express power cables, and that's rare to find with power supply units that are rated for less than 500 watts. So, you may need to upgrade your PSU or factor a more expensive one into your budget. Overall, we'd go with the 270X for a little extra oomph, unless you can afford something even speedier.
Options #6, #7, and #8: Radeon R9 280, 285, and 280X
The 280 and 280X are basically respun versions of the Radeon HD 7950 with Boost, and the HD 7970 GHz Edition. Which are also roughly comparable to a GTX 680 and 770. The 280 and 280X have 3GB of VRAM, which is a lot for 1080p, but not unwelcome. In fact, it's enough to handle 1440p fairly smoothly, though you might want a second card in a Crossfire configuration to keep up at that resolution. The 285, however, has 2GB of VRAM and uses a newer, more power-efficient GPU core. Its performance falls in between the 280 and 280X, but because it generates a lot less heat, you can find it in sizes designed for a mini-ITX case.
It can also be much quieter, with some versions not even spinning up their fans until the GPU hits a certain temperature. It uses one PCI Express cable, while the 280 and 280X need two. Overall, our favorite at this tier is the 285, despite having less VRAM, because it can run cooler, quieter, and in a wider variety of cases.
Options #9 and #10: Radeon R9 290 and 290X
These are AMD's top-performing single-GPU cards, and their performance will be within spitting distance of a GeForce GTX 970 and 980. The GTX 980 is a consistently faster card overall, but some gamers still opt for the 290X because it's about $200 cheaper. However, the 290 and 290X need a lot of watts. We'd recommend 600 or more watts for one of these cards, and 850 watts or more for 2-way Crossfire.
We'd also definitely avoid the "reference" cards, because they run quite hot and noisy. Cooling designs like Sapphire's Tri-X or Vapor-X, ASUS's DirectCU II, Gigabyte's Windforce 3X, MSI's TwinFrozr, and XFX's Double Dissipation are highly recommended to keep these cards running quietly and relatively cool. If you're okay with those stipulations, the 290 and 290X will give you a lot of bang for your buck—about $250 for the 290 and about $350 for the 290X.
Option #11: Radeon R9 295X2
This card is basically two R9 290X GPUs on a single card. Since these GPUs need a respectable amount of cooling, it should come as no surprise that the 295X2 has a closed-loop liquid cooler (CLC) built into it. This uses a 120mm radiator (bundled with a fan) that you must install on a fan mount somewhere in your case. The card is also 12 inches long. And it's got the break-neck performance to justify all this.
So while it will get you more performance than a single GTX Titan X, for a few hundred dollars less, it needs a lot of real estate and a lot of power. As we mentioned earlier, an 850-watt power supply (or more) is highly recommended when dealing with multiple 290 or 290X GPUs. That said, the card runs pretty quietly, thanks to the CLC, and it takes up half as many motherboard slots as a 2-way Crossfire config. Like the Titan X, there are no third-party cooling designs, but the "reference" version here is quite good.
You may sometimes see this card listed as having "8GB," but Crossfire, like SLI, mirrors your VRAM, instead of letting you add the two card's VRAM together. In practice, you will have a capacity of 4GB, just like the R9 290 and 290X, and the GTX 970 and 980. The GTX Titan X has a whopping 12GB, but we haven't encountered a game or screen resolution where that felt like a necessity. 4GB is fine even with a 4K display (though you'd still want multiple GPUs to smoothly game at that point).
And the Winner Is...
Like Nvidia, AMD has a wide range of options that make picking a single winner difficult. The R7 265 is our pick at the entry level, and the R9 295X2 packs a ton of performance into about $700, enough to get decent frame rates at 4K and definitely plenty for 1440p. If there were a happy medium here, we'd go with the R9 290X as the best overall AMD GPU, provided that you get one with a large heatsink and multiple fans, and you have a sufficient power supply unit.
As far as PSUs go, we've had good experiences with EVGA, Corsair, Antec, Enermax, Silverstone, and SeaSonic. That's not an all-inclusive list, just the brands that come to mind most often when we need a reliable PSU. The Rosewill Hive and Capstone have good reps too, but we haven't had as much direct experience with those. You should expect to need two 8-pin PCI Express cables, and possibly an additional 6-pin connection if you want top-end cards like MSI's "Lightning" edition. But if you can manage that, we think it's worth it.
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