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[nenjin]

previous experience has taught me its almost always worth it to spend a little extra on a better video card. $15 over your original budget is small enough the gains outweigh the cost

[Tellemurius]

previous experience has taught me its almost always worth it to spend a little extra on a better video card. $15 over your original budget is small enough the gains outweigh the cost

At this point the graphics industry is just how much are you willing to spend on performance.

[Vendayn]

Well, thus far I've been told about/found

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-SUPERCLOCKED-Graphics-02G-P4-2662-KR/dp/B00966IREK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369269574&sr=8-1&keywords=geforce+gtx660

and

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-PCI-Express-Displayport-Graphics-GV-N660OC-2GD/dp/B00942TK8I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369269574&sr=8-2&keywords=geforce+gtx660

It seems Gigabyte is a bit more favorable in the reviews. A bit more than the EVGA one, but I'm not techy enough to know the differences between them. I'm guessing Gigabyte is better? It is more expensive.

and

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BZB0I3W/ref=s9_psimh_gw_p147_d0_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=098QH5ZN1ZP0GJ7CAQA7&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

Which I linked in my opening post. That is the one my dad found.

[Knight of Fools]

Both Gigabyte and EVGA are good manufacturers. I typically go EVGA, since they tend to overclock a little and do a good job of it. My OC'd GTX 560 EVGA card's a couple years old, but it still pumps out the pixels on modern games (30 - 60 FPS) without any heating problems or performance degradation.

In the end, though, I doubt it will matter which one you go with. Their specs are almost identical.

[Tellemurius]

Both Gigabyte and EVGA are good manufacturers. I typically go EVGA, since they tend to overclock a little and do a good job of it. My OC'd GTX 560 EVGA card's a couple years old, but it still pumps out the pixels on modern games (30 - 60 FPS) without any heating problems or performance degradation.

In the end, though, I doubt it will matter which one you go with. Their specs are almost identical.

about 200 more processing cores is still enough for a good chunk of performance, plus the Gigabyte has some good cooling

[nenjin]

previous experience has taught me its almost always worth it to spend a little extra on a better video card. $15 over your original budget is small enough the gains outweigh the cost

At this point the graphics industry is just how much are you willing to spend on performance.

Truth. When I was a teenager, it was all about "what's the best I can get for paying the least?" End result: mid-spec PC pretty much until I was in my mid 20s. I'd get what looked like a good compromise on paper, but someone with way more technical knowledge would always say something to the effect of "Oh but that model actually only has half of [pipes, shader clock, yadda yadda] as the next tier up. If you'd spent $20 to $30 more you could have had all that." And I'd have to run most games at mid-spec to have them be playable, and even that was often dipping below 30 FPS. A half-assed upgrade to the next gen of hardware results in you having a half-assed next gen system.

Now I have a job and stuff and don't necessarily need to get the most out of the least. I'm not a graphics wonk by any means...but being able to play all major releases at "High" settings with no loss of frame rate is really, really worth the money if you consider yourself hardcore about enjoying your games. I won't spend $300+ on a video card....but I'm certainly willing to spend a bit more if it gets me the best model card in that price range.

[Vendayn]

Both Gigabyte and EVGA are good manufacturers. I typically go EVGA, since they tend to overclock a little and do a good job of it. My OC'd GTX 560 EVGA card's a couple years old, but it still pumps out the pixels on modern games (30 - 60 FPS) without any heating problems or performance degradation.

In the end, though, I doubt it will matter which one you go with. Their specs are almost identical.

about 200 more processing cores is still enough for a good chunk of performance, plus the Gigabyte has some good cooling

Which one has the more cores? Guessing you are talking about the Gigabyte one? Don't see the cores listed on Amazon, but I guess once I get home, I can always just google That is one I'm leaning toward right now. But I'm still doing research. I'll definitely go for the 660 series though, it isn't that much more than a 650 (210 usd currently for the Gigabyte one, instead of 180 for the 650 I was looking at). So might as well go for what gives better performance. Its still within my income as well.

[Tellemurius]

if i were you i would use newegg.com, they post all of the tech specs on parts plus they got deals with gfx card purchase, nvidias get 75 bucks for F2P money, and AMD cards get free games including Farcry 3 BD, Tomb Raider, and Bioshock Infinte

[Aoi]

Nothing wrong with a mid-spec system as long as that was the compromise you accepted and your tastes work with it. I have a pretty solid rig right now (660OEM, i7-3770K) and find that, despite being able to max out the settings on pretty much anything I play, I'm consistently lowering the settings and setting frame rate caps. I just don't like the design aesthetic and see little need to burn the extra power to run at 90FPS when I see absolutely no difference from 30 onwards.

Slightly more to the point though, I believe that the ATI 7870 is superior to the GTX660Ti at the low 200s pricepoint and can be overclocked to beat it handily. Not that we really need to add more contenders to the ring. =P

Even more unrelated: Got about getting a GTX Titan? It exceeds the budget slightly, but it's sure got some shiny specs...

[Tellemurius]

Even more unrelated: Got about getting a GTX Titan? It exceeds the budget slightly, but it's sure got some shiny specs...

slightly is underestimation

Honestly a HD 7970 is much cheaper and will get you top performance for gaming plus free games.

[Vendayn]

Yeah, a GTX titan is far outside my price range. That is what, 1,000 USD according to Amazon (newegg is blocked here for some reason, so I can't look stuff up on it currently. Strange library...but anyway). That one card is almost the total amount I have in the bank right now that would be nearly 100% of my money to rent.

[gimlet]

Here's how I shop, I try to find the "sweet spot" where I get a lot of bang for the buck, and enough power so I don't have to worry about changing anything for a few years. 

I start off with this for an overview: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html especially the Hierarchy chart at the end.  (Always look to see if there's a later one, it gets updated every couple months).  This gives me a starting point of a few cards to investigate in more detail - for those, I look up benchmarks on the games I care about and current/likely sale prices. 

Once I narrow it down to a couple, I google for problems with the games I am planning to run, and read any discussion about sufficient performance, incompatibilities, etc.  Make sure it's fairly recent, a lot of problems are solved by new drivers or game updates - if you see discussion of problems look for later mentions that it's solved.   Also get familiar with brand and model differences in cards - potentially different clock speeds, memory, cooling, etc from the "reference" model.  Read reviews, read benchmarks, look for direct comparisons discussions.

Now if you really want to save money and can be a little patient waiting for a deal, start haunting the sales - a couple times a day, check for the hottest sales on deal sites like
http://www.pricewatch.com/video_cards/
http://www.fatwallet.com/video-card-deals/ and http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/computer/
http://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?daysprune=7&vote=0&intagid%5B%5D=9&f=9&sort=lastpost&order=desc
 (I'm not sure the above will work - go to their "hot deals" forum, filter on the left to Include Computers and then Apply.  Alas you can't just pick "parts->video cards" because quite a few guys who post the deals don't set the categories that low so you'd potentially miss some hot deals)
http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=28
http://www.techbargains.com/catsearch.cfm/0_2_5
Sign up for newegg's deal newsletter to get promo codes for their sales: http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/latest/index-landing.aspx?cm_sp=emailsub-_-homepage-_-promo
If you live in a city near a Microcenter, check their site periodically/sign up for their emails.  They are better on cpu/mobo sales than video cards, but once in a while they have decent deals on other stuff.
Keep looking on Google Shopping for the various models you're looking for (but BEWARE buying from some dodgy shop - I'll pay a few bucks more to buy from Amazon, a few less bucks more for the 2nd but still pretty reliable tier of newegg, Tiger Direct, superbiiz and directron).

I have only been looking at AMD cards recently because I wanted something I can do bitcoin/litecoin mining on - (your parents might not go for that though, you have to leave the PC on all the time and it uses a pretty sizeable amount of power).

So from my research, for around $200 one of the newer 7870s is pretty good bang - especially the new 7870 LE looks really solid.  For the tiny price increase over the old 7870s a 7870 XT or 7870 LE would be the way to go, if you could find a good sale (don't see anything TOO exciting currently, although this one for $220AR isn't too bad: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131487 )
For just over  $250 AR you could get a 7950 which is a little step up but also has another 1G ram (that you def. don't NEED if you're running at 1080) - newegg has this one for $258 AR (if you use the promo code off the newsletter as mentioned above) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150590  or Tiger Direct has this one for $269.99AR http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8078201

I got a 7970, it was about $330AR at the time (SMOKING deal around Black Friday) and so far spend far more time playing roguelikes on it - I haven't even loaded the free games it came with :p

[Aoi]

I have only been looking at AMD cards recently because I wanted something I can do bitcoin/litecoin mining on - (your parents might not go for that though, you have to leave the PC on all the time and it uses a pretty sizeable amount of power).

Actually, if you don't mind sharing any info you've found regarding cost-effective GPU mining cards, I'd be interested. We don't pay power at my workplace, so I've been setting the rigs to do whatever they can. I rack up something like .5BTC every month. =P

If you're building the rest of your system too, you might want a look at http://pcpartpicker.com/. The prices that they have listed are usually outdated, especially if you look for deals, but it can help you spot incompatibilities or be a good way to show people what you're thinking of putting together when soliciting opinions.

[Tellemurius]

AMDs are currently the best cards for bitcoin mining, OpenCL runs alot more efficient on them and no one has built a CUDA version for nvidia (The titan chip is even slower than my HD7770). Same concept goes though, better card better mining speeds.

[Vendayn]

Well, thanks for the help everyone. With the tips/advice. While Radeon may be better, since money is kinda tight as it is...I'll be going Nvidia as that is what usually works for us. Even if Radeon may be overall better. Since dad has personally had bad luck with Radeon, and I've had a couple cards I've had to sent back for whatever reason. My best friend never has problems with them though and always has problems with Nvidia...so guess all personal experience or how a system is setup or something). However, what we end up going with exactly I'm not sure yet. I sent a lot of the tips posted here into an email to my dad. So, a bit closer to the time when we know we have the money for a card, we'll do a lot of research and reading up on particular ones that look good.

One thing is, 250 is pretty much the limit we can go (a few dollars extra doesn't matter). But, a 300+ card is still (as I think I may have said) a bit out of our price range. 250 is already rather a lot for us.

With that said, again, thanks. Its great to get peoples tips/advice/suggestions and what not. Hopefully others get help from this as well. Or have their own questions or whatever. But, I guess all that is left really is doing a lot of research, going through tips and what not...and just going what we think/sounds best for the price range.

Maybe someone can make like an official hardware support/question thread or something for things like this. Unless its already made and I just missed it in the search.