Loyal readers will know that I often speak of the importance of a dedicated graphics card with enough power for pixel pushing. While these cards are promoted heavily for gamers, it is important to have a good card if you work in the world of graphics. You don’t necessarily need the bleeding edge, but relying on the motherboard for graphics just won’t cut it.

You may also find that a flaky video driver could be the cause of an unstable system. My experience over many years of using various nVidia-based cards has shown the cards and drivers to be very solid. In short, I just rarely see crashing!

Today I’m featuring the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti card. While it is not the bleeding edge, it is only a small step back. Is it cheap? No, it sells for just under $300 on Amazon. Yet if you were to step up to the bleeding edge, you may pay twice that much or more.

Why do you need the power? Screen resolution is getting higher and more users have multiple monitors. This card can drive multiple high-resolution monitors without blinking.

One of the biggest issues with the high-end cards is heat. This card has two huge fans over a bunch of aluminum fins to dissipate heat. Even with those huge fans, the card runs quieter than other cards based on the same nVidia chipset. Not bad since Gigabyte has overclocked it to run faster than stock speed!

While you can get faster cards and you can get cheaper cards, this one gives you the best bang for the buck!