For certain values of "affordable". I am just a po' churchmouse. Can't afford a new card, even a generation or so old. Yet. Maybe come spring......

Roughly $200 will get you a decent 2GB GPU, (GTX 660 or AMD equivalent), maybe less than $200 these days.

Edit: actually you can get GTX 960 2GB for $200 or less.

I'm possibly wrong, but it was in 2014 where someone posted descriptions bout AMD's Mantle and Microsoft's DirectX 12 and it was highlighted in yellow the similarities of what AMD helped give Microsoft for DirectX 12.

Look it up on google.com if you want to find it. i can't find it I searched for it, but it's there somewhere.

As an engineering student, I find myself more impressed with nVidia and the superior energy efficiency of their cards and the apparent superiority of their high-end cards. As a gamer, I lean towards Radeon because at my price range, their cards seem to give slightly more bang for their buck. Either way, I hope that Radeon will step up their game, lest the lack of competition causes things to stagnate.

I bought my current Radeon 6670 back in summer 2011 for about $100 is probably the graphic card I've been using the longest, but it's starting to show it's age now and I will probably get a new card next year. If it will be a GeForce 1000 series or AMD Rx 400 Series I don't know, but I'm leaning towards AMD unless they are performing horribly bad. Not really a fan of Nvidia these days as I'm not fond of how they handle GameWorks and then thhere was the GTX 970 RAM issue. But actually, I haven't been fond of Nvidia since the Geforce FX series disaster over a decade ago, which I suppose makes me old-fashioned and out of time

That said, over the years I've been using 3 AMD cards, 3 Nvidia cards and 2 3DFX cards. So overall it's kinda even, even if I'm biased these days

Can't blame you either since the Geforce FX series was pretty bad. After my experience with the FX 5500 I went with an ATi x1300 for less than I paid for the Gf FX card. Then I went with the x1650 Pro. I went back with Nvidia with the 8800GS when they finally got their act back together.

Despite the GTX 970 VRAM design it performs better than a GTX 780 (non TI) for less cost, energy, and heat than a 780.