I recently decided I needed a new graphics card at home. As I mentioned last month, a new version of SimCity is coming out soon (next week, as a matter of fact)
My previous card, a Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS with 256MB memory, was purchased in the end of 2006, and it was at that time considered a upper mid-range graphics cards. At this time, I built myself a new computer to play the brand new Flight Simulator X, which was a demanding game both for graphics and CPU. I think I paid $189 for it.
That card was nice, even if I still could not play Flight Simulator with smooth graphics in the highest resolution and with highest realism/quality settings. But I could not justify spending hundreds of dollar on a faster/better graphics card. I don’t play that much games, most of what I do at home is using Photoshop, video editing and programming.
But today — after some online research and comparison of benchmarks for different cards — I went to my local Fry’s Electronics during lunch and purchased the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti with 2GB DDR5 memory, at a price of $299. I also got a $10 mail-in rebate (which I probably will forget to send in) and a free download of Assassin’s Creed III.
Here is a comparison of the two cards. Amazing what have happened in 6 years…
Click on image for larger version.