KitGuru Annual Awards 2013

Going back to the first time that Steam made its online survey of what hardware gamers are actually using to play its games, nVidia has generally enjoyed a healthy lead in market share.

The tables were temporarily turned when AMD (then ATi) gave away full game codes for Half Life 2 with its 9600 and 9800 cards – and again when the Radeon 58xx series cards delivered DX11 way ahead of the competition.

Access the Steam Powered Survey at the end of 2013 and it will tell you that 32% of Steam customers use a Radeon graphics chip Vs 52% using GeForce. That's a significant gap of around 60% more choosing nVidia over AMD, but ironically the two most popular products for gaming are actually made by Intel with the HD3000 and HD4000.

So, applying the same principals to nVidia as we did to AMD, how much do you need to spend in order to be able to play most games at HD resolution with decent image quality?

Without going back and researching the huge number of graphic card tests that KitGuru Labs has undertaken in 2013, we would have guessed that the best choice was a GTX760.

And we were right.

But we're actually going to be a little more demanding. We're going to choose a card that's a little unusual. Something a little different.

Many of us are working with limited physical space and so there has been an increase in Mini ITX based system sales.

The pathfinder here has been the BitFenix Prodigy. This gorgeous chassis is easy to work with, comes in an array of colours and the soft handles also provide protection should you drop it when going to/from a LAN event like Multiplay's Insomnia experience.

It looks like an awesome LAN rig, but what card can you fit inside?

Is there a high quality GTX760 card – in a Mini ITX friendly format – which can delver the beans without them being baked?

Enter the Asus GTX 760 Direct CU Mini at around the £200 mark – some £25 cheaper than when we first looked at it in September.

Crank Tomb Raider right up in HD and this card will still deliver an average of 47 frames per second, just a couple of frames behind a full sized GTX760. Yet, even in a Mini ITX chassis, you can still overclock it by 5-8% to really get the best possible performance for a small form factor PC.

Despite its size, it still managed to keep the noise down to a very modest 36 dBA while gaming, impressive given the reduced size.

Overall, this is a very interesting card that fills a great gap in the market for a mini mid-range card that's powerful and affordable.

You can read our review, over here.

KitGuru's choice for the Best Budget nVidia Card in 2013 goes to the Asus GTX 760 Direct CU Mini.

You can buy from Overclockers UK, from this link.

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