Quite impressed with Intel HD4600 Graphics.

So, my good ol' laptop, that's been my rig for 5 years, and ran some decent games better than I should have expected it to, for longer than it should have, finally shit out on me completely. I was forced to do a bit of an emergency budget build because I need a computer for reasons other than gaming. I went without a video card to save money, figuring I'd buy one later on when I could afford it. Put my new rig together the other day, with an i5 4570, with the HD4600 onboard graphics.

I decided to see what the Intel Video was capable of, and tried some old games that I figured would run just fine. GTA 3 and UT2004 at first. They ran even better than I expected, so I tried CSGO and Crysis 2. They run pretty damn well. 90+ FPS consistently in CSGO, and Crysis 2 runs smooth enough to play. Not great, but manageable. Probably around 30 fps. I was expecting to be doing very little gaming, and mostly old school gaming, until getting a video card, but the HD4600 is actually performing just as well, if not better than my laptop did. So I'm pretty damn happy about that. Gonna test some other games over the weekend. Probably STALKER, Dishonored, Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas, and Path of Exile.

I had intended on just buying a 750ti as soon as I could, because I didn't expect to be able to play shit with the onboard, but since it's working so well, I was thinking I might save up longer, and put something beefier in there down the line. What would you guys recommend for a solid midrange card these days?

TLDR: INTEL HD4600 RUNS CRYSIS 2 N SHIT, BITCHES. WHAT VIDEO CARD SHOULD I GET?

I always expect terrible things when I read "Intel HD graphics", but really I've actually seen some laptops that play games pretty decently with them. Nothing amazing, but it's surprising. Of course you'd need the higher-end versions. Pretty cool.

The R9 270x seems to be one of the best price/performance mid-range cards available. It's around $180-$200. I've had to put together a few computers with that budget in mind, and I've chosen the R9 270x for all of them. Not sure if you want to go higher end than that.

Hello.

Personally I would go for R9 270 (not the X one) cause you can find it for only $149.

The R9 270 is the same card as the R9 270X the only difference is that the R9 270X has higher clocks.

Same cores, same memory bandwidth, same memory amount.

You can even see this here that the R9 270X is only 5% faster.

Also about the HD4600.

I destroyed (trully bored to clean the fans and temps went beyond 95C) my GTX570 and I am currently waiting for Maxwell. So i use too the HD4600 from my i7 4770K. Its awesome. I can play almost any old game without a problem and some new games with details lowered.

I can play path of exile with lowered details at 1080p60fps lol...

Anyway if you don't want to wait for higher Maxwell (rumors talking about revealing at August 13th at Gamescom) then go for R9 270 or if you have more money you can go higher...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_nkw=hd%207950&rt=nc&LH_BIN=1&_udlo&_udhi=130

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=hd%207950&LH_BIN=1&_osacat=0&_udhi=180&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xhd%207970&_nkw=hd%207970&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_udlo

Pick your weapon.

If you're ok with your current performance waiting is a good option. The 750ti, while excellent in power consumption and decently powerful, is a roughly ps4-class gpu, and the 270/7870 isn't too much more powerful. Saving up more or waiting for Maxwell or AMD's equivalent should land you a more future-proof card.

Nvidia - GTX 760 / GTX 770
ATI - R9 280 / R9 280X