A proper high-end GPU at a price you can (possibly) afford

Price: around £220

if you want a simple rule for buying graphics cards, it's this. Grab a slightly cut-down version of a flagship GPU a year or so after it goes on sale. That way you get all the high end features for both less than the price of the very top model and after the original launch price has inevitably cooled off. Enter, therefore the AMD Radeon R9 290. It's one rung down in AMD graphics hierarchy after the mighty 290X. But it's still a proper high-end bruiser, complete with a monster 512-bit memory bus and 4GB of graphics memory – all the better for running at high resolutions providing a bit of future proofing.