Top 5 graphics cards under Rs.15,000

There’s nothing quite like a good ol’ summer vacation, but sadly, all good things must come to an end. We still have about a month before schools and colleges re-open and if you’re back from your summer trip, then here’s how you can occupy yourself till then - gaming! With big titles hitting the PC this summer, you need to be well-equipped to tackle these games, if you want enjoy the experience with all the eye-candy dialed to max. Thankfully, this is easier said and done, thanks to most games being developed for consoles, which makes them running on even modest gaming PCs a sinch. While this has stifled the progress of graphics and effects on the PC a bit, the silver lining here is that even older hardware can easily handle the newer games without having you upgrade every six months. Today, we look at Tech2’s top 5 picks of graphics cards under Rs.15,000 across different price segments.

Sapphire HD 6670 1GB DDR3 - Rs.4,700
We start off with the best card under 5K and this was a bit of head scratcher, since you have two good cards from AMD here - the HD 6670 with GDDR3 memory and the older HD 5670 with GDDR5 memory. The HD 6670 has more shader units, but the GDDR5 memory on HD 5670 has more bandwidth for textures. Now since you won’t be gaming above 1600 x 900 resolution (and we recommend you don’t), we decided to go with the HD 6670, due to the newer architecture and more number of shaders. The higher bandwidth memory comes in handy at higher resolutions, but since this card won't handle games smoothly at such resolutions, it didn’t make sense going for it.

Your best bet under 5K

The Sapphire HD 6670 comes with 1GB of GDDR3 memory, their custom cooler, supports DX11 and doesn’t need a 6-pin PCIE power connector.

MSI R6790-PM2D1GD5/OC - Rs.8,400
We now move to the 5K - 10K price bracket, where we have two options for you to choose from, depending on how tight your budget is. Our first pick is MSI’s R6790, which is based on AMD’s HD 6790 chipset. Between this and NVidia’s GTX 550 Ti, which also retails in the same price range, we recommend the AMD card, as it’s faster. MSI has tweaked the card quite a bit and you get a nice overclock right out-of-the-box. The custom cooler should also help keep temperatures in check. With this card, you should be able to game at Full HD resolutions, but just make sure you tone down the eye-candy, especially with newer games. Also make sure you have a good 450W PSU from a reputed brand to start with.

A strong performer

We would also like to give a special mention to the HIS HD 6790, which also retails for the same price as the MSI, but due to the to slower clock speeds, it only needs one PCIE power connector. If you don’t feel like upgrading your PSU, then you might want to get this card instead as it also consumes a bit less power in games.