The most critical part of a gaming PC is the graphics card. Graphics card prices range up to $1000 but that does not mean you have to save $1000 to get a good gaming experience. As with everything, at the lower scale of the spectrum, you are getting very bad performance (only slightly better than integrated solutions from Intel and AMD) and at the higher scale of the spectrum, you are getting diminishing returns. Midrange is where the sweet spot lies for most people. I said "for most people" because it is not always the truth. Sometimes you have to bend the rules and go for the absolute highest end cards.
AMD vs. NVidia - which one is better?
This is a sensitive matter. You cannot go wrong with either brand. Here's a comparison between the two, and I suggest that you match up your requirements with those and see which one suits you best.
Advantages of going with AMD
- Gives better performance for the money you spend. (Might not be true in some parts of the world.
- You get an amazing free games bundle with the card.
- Has less performance drop when Anti-Aliasing is enabled/increased the level as well as resolution is increased.
- All next generation consoles are using AMD GPUs, and the games will probably be more optimized for AMD's GCN architecture. This is just an assumption.
- Usually overclocks a bit better than NVidia cards.
- Has much better general purpose compute performance.
Advantages of going with NVidia
- SLI works much, much better than Crossfire (at least as of now)
- Adaptive V-Sync support
- Ability to overclock the Pixel Refresh Rate of your display (how far your can overclock, depends on your display. I've managed to increase it from 60Hz to 69Hz on my Iiyama 27" display.)
- Has a little bit better power efficiency.
- People believe that NVidia drivers are usually more stable. But both companies put out buggy drivers every now and then.
- GeForce Experience service, which automatically sets the graphics settings in each game for the best gameplay experience. On top of that, you are getting a cool feature called Shadow Play in a few days.
