Building on a budget: Need some video board advice

VooDoo_Papa

Im building a $600 PC for one of my friends kids. Hes 14, plans on playing things like WoW, Elder Scrolls Online, EQ Landmark etc.

I've only built PC's with nVidia boards for about 10 years now so I'm completely unfamiliar with AMD other than my past experiences. If the budget wasnt so tight, I really wouldnt consider other options than nVidia but I figured what the hell, lets see what I can put in this thing.

The system I'm building is AMD powered, running windows 8.1 (his choice) with 8 gigs of ram. I need to keep the GPU purchase below $150 at the time of purchase, so rebates do me no good.

Since the person I'm building it for is not a builder, a tinkerer or anything I need a solid and stable card that doesnt require a lot of tweaking which has been my previous experience with AMD.  Compatability is vital as well as quality.

Here are the three boards im looking at

GTX 650 ti (which is the one im most comfortable with)

HD 7870 GHz Edition (how current is this board?)

Radeon R7 260x

so, any input would be nice but just keep in mind this is for someone who needs something stable which is widely compatable without suffering too much for performance.

Quizzical

The 7870 is a lot faster than either of the other cards.  It's still basically current generation, though it was recently rebranded as the Radeon R9 270X.  Nvidia demonstrated that renaming old cards can trick people into thinking they're new, so AMD decided to do so as well.

As for compatibility, any recent AMD or Nvidia card will be compatible with basically everything.  Sometimes there are driver problems for a while when a new card launches, especially if it's a new architecture, but the 7870 launched more than a year and a half ago, so those problems should be long since fixed.

fayknaym

Out of those three 7870 is the most powerful. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-280x-r9-270x-r7-260x,3635-13.html

I use a 7850. I've been using it for 1 and a half years now with no tweaking required as you mentioned. Currently I am playing FF14 on high settings with consistent 30 - 40+ fps. I've played a wide variety of games, such as Skyrim, SC2, D3 and WoW, but never had performance issues related to this card. Always on high settings with high fps. I think the 7870 would be the same way, but having little more power. r260x also seems like a good option considering the price. Sorry I can't give you a more technical answer, just my experience. 

VooDoo_Papa

thanks guys. ill go with the 7870

the r7 260 confuses me, but the advice has helped out a lot. thanks