Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card $360 at Newegg

Wow great No Rebate price, being that this is a "long board" with nice cooling, not a smurf reference card. Now I'd like to see it below $350, but this isn’t bad time to get a nice card with legs to keep you happy until Maxwell should show in 2014.

For bunch of reasons don’t see something like this dipping below $310 by end of year, so that works down to a $5 a week cost. I usually feel if you’re at or below $5 a week you shouldn’t be too upside down as pricing tappers down, this hits that mark. Although, I'm not saying to OC this, I'd use it as is then if sometime later your need to squeeze a little more it might provide that little extra while waiting it out.

The other side is a 7950 and for those with some average enthusiast skills grab a nice cooler 7950 like the Sapphire 100352-2L for $290 –AR$20. Finding 1025 MHz core and 1850 MHz Memory isn’t far from reason, and with that you see BF3 performance that’s above a any regular GTX670 and right on GTX680 territory. If that Sapphire reduces to $260 in the next 8 weeks your rental is just $3.75 on a card that cost you $290.

Wow, why does everyone pay so much interest on cooling? These cards overclock more than stock cards by a small fraction that in a real world scenario isn't noticeable. Plus, the stock coolers are better as they throw hot air out the case. If you're so worried about the longevity of your card, you shouldn't be- in a year and a half, this card will be useless. A year and a half ago , I bought my 6970's for the exact same price each; who cares about them anymore?

The only real advantage these coolers offer over the stock one is less noise.

^ Because if you're paying this much you ought to get the best cooler that'll fit w/o having to go to water cooling.

While they may not overclock further enough to impress you, they do so while also running cooler which IS important for card lifespan. It is not necessarily better to throw air out of the case, when looking at modern gaming cases they have so much airflow potential that you have to look at the weakest link in your cooling subsystem instead which is, since CPU has so much more area available for a heatsink, the video card if a performance oriented model.

In a year and a half the card will not be useless. Maybe you won't be able to play the most demanding games available at the highest eyecandy settings but so what? That in no way means someone should feel compelled to spend $300 every 18 months.

The advantages are less noise, cooler running, redundancy if one of the fan fails so you can keep using the system, the potential to cut out the shroud a little bit and slap a standard fan on if one of them fails, a flow-through heatsink fin design to keep the power subsystem mosfets and capacitors cooler, lower single point of entry airflow rate so dust building isn't going to clog it as soon, longer fan lifespan due to running at lower RPM, and probably another few benefits that aren't really necessary to think about because the ones already listed make it worthwhile to pick a card with a better heatsink when spending this much money.

Great card, at a great price. I have one in my PC and I'm very happy with it. Game at 2560x1600. May pick another one up for SLI.