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Upgrade question Graphics Card and more heh
Laughing-man
Member RarePosts: 3,655
I have a rather old machine now, about to upgrade it this year at some point (tax returns maybe?) anyway my primary question is this.
I have a 9400 GT Nvidia graphics card, I really want to upgrade this BEFORE I upgrade to a new machine, for obvious reasons, yet I want a card that will work in a new machine, on a new motherboard, AND work in my current one.
I have a PCI express slot... not PCI express 2, yet I was probably going to get a new board that featured 2...
Any tips on what sorts of cards in the "about 100 dollar" range (ish) would be a good card to tide me over until I get a new rig?
I'd prefer Nvidia, ATI is cool and all but it seems most games still prefer the former over the later.
Thank you for any help!
Comments
If you're willing to go a little over $100, then the three modern cards that give about the same performance and the highest in your budget are the Radeon HD 6770, Radeon HD 7750, and GeForce GTX 550 Ti:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600083901%20600150232&IsNodeId=1&name=Radeon%20HD%206770
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600286767%20600298541&IsNodeId=1&name=Radeon%20HD%207750
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600094002%20600122953&IsNodeId=1&name=GeForce%20GTX%20550%20Ti%20%28Fermi%29
You talk about games preferring Nvidia to AMD or vice versa. Saying the cards have about the same average performance takes that into account. If every game prefers Nvidia to AMD by 20%, then you'd say that the Nvidia card was 20% faster on average than the AMD card.
There are a few notes there:
First, a few of the cheapest 6770s are underclocked, which is why they're the cheapest. The stock clock speeds are 850 MHz core and 1.2 GHz shaders, so you might want to skip the cards clocked lower than that.
Next, the Radeon HD 7750 is a generation newer than the others, so it has a significantly better feature set, with PCI Express 3.0, DirectX 11.1, and probably most importantly, PowerTune. It's also a newer process node, so it will use much less power than the other cards (and incidentally, a 6770 will use significantly less than a GTX 550 Ti).
Additionally, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the first video card in a long, long time (and possibly ever) to mismatch the memory channels. That cripples the memory bandwidth, and hence performance, if you use all of the memory. So I'm highly skeptical that you can use the full 1 GB of video memory. Nvidia isn't talking about this, but my best guess is that their drivers treat it like a 768 MB card, and the last 256 MB of memory is there for reasons of marketing, not engineering.
Finally, the Nvidia cards are a lot more expensive than the AMD cards. It's like that most of the way up and down the lineup, because if Nvidia builds a card, AMD can build a card that gives the same performance but is a lot cheaper to build. AMD won the last two generations in a rout, partially on that basis (much better performance per watt and bringing cards to market much sooner played a big role, too), and arguably the generation before that, too.
So if you really want an Nvidia card, you can get one, but you're paying sigificantly more for an arguably inferior card.
What case do you have, and what power supply? If those are significant restrictions, then it's possible that the Radeon HD 7750 would be by far the best option due to the much lower power consumption.
Thank you so much for your reply. Very helpful info you've given me sir and I am greatful!
I'd go for a hd6670 in your situation, it seems like you want a more simple drop in card rather than having to replace the power supply ect. It should run most games fine (it'll run gw2 medium at 1920x1080 and high at 1366x768). It is very unlikely you have a power supply with connectors for anything more than a hd6670 as you have a 9400GT.
Obviously if you don't mind replacing the power supply you can go for a more powerful GPU but it will increase the cost well beyond $100
Again, what case do you have, and what power supply? Depending on what you have, you might be able to drop in whatever card you want, or be sharply restricted, or even have upgrading be impossible.
I'd bet that it was a pre-built and very likely doesn't have any pci-e 6 pin connectors. Just a hunch.
you should get the gtx 460 it`s a very price owth graphicscard.
Graphics:Gtx 560
memory:8gb
processor: intel core i5 3,3ghz
Hdd: 1tb
Most of the real GTX 460s are long gone; New Egg only has two in stock, one of which costs well over $300 and has WHDI as the main purpose of the card. The relatively cheaper GTX 460s that you can find today (1 GB with a 192-bit memory bus) are different cards entirely (probably based on defective GF114 chips, not GF104), and about the fifth or sixth different cards that Nvidia gave the GeForce GTX 460 brand name to. And they never seemed to get sent to review sites, presumably to avoid getting the cards blasted for being markedly inferior to a Radeon HD 6850 while costing more.
You should get a Radeon 7770. Bang for $ they are awesome. When you further upgrade your system you can buy another for crossfire. The 7770 crossfire reviews are awesome. 580gtx performance for 300ish.
AMD must have some bandwidth special sauce to get the performance out of 128 bus
Sorry i just wanted to help
Graphics:Gtx 560
memory:8gb
processor: intel core i5 3,3ghz
Hdd: 1tb
Sorry i just wanted to help
Nothing wrong with wanting to help, but sometimes it takes a more qualified statement to actually accomplish that. The 460GTX was a nice card to buy in it's day, and is still a nice card if you can find one for the right price - it's just not really available any more.