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Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:11 PM
from the time-value-of-money dept.
from the time-value-of-money dept.
theraindog writes "High-end graphics cards get all the glory, but most folks have a difficult time justifying $300 or more for a single PC component. But what if you could get reasonable performance in all the latest games from a budget card costing as little as $70? With game developers targeting the relatively modest hardware available in current consoles and trickle-down bringing cutting-edge features down to budget price points, today's low-end graphics cards are more capable than ever. To find out which one offers the best value proposition, The Tech Report has rounded up eight graphics cards between $70 and $170, comparing their game performance, Blu-ray playback acceleration, noise levels, and power consumption, with interesting results."
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Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:4, Informative)
It's the high end of cheap. $170 is going to get you a midrange graphics card, which, while not cheap in an absolute sense, is cheap compared to other graphics cards out there.
Cheapness always has to be compared to other objects in its class. Would you say a $170 car is not a cheap car? Of course not, because most cars are far more expensive than that. The idea is the same here.
Parent
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, it's not my fault if you don't understand how this concept works. A Ferrari, Maserati, or Bugatti is so much more expensive than a normal car that they make the price curve look exponential. Graphics cards, by contrast, tend to have a pretty damned linear price curve. Price comparisons against the most expensive member of the class fail when that member is so expensive it completely fucks up the curve.
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For people who only use computers for school works, occasional videos, audio sequencing, and 2d games like wesnoth, even a $70 graphics card is an overkill. I don't see how that would be a "shitty" performance.
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:5, Informative)
Then don't spend 70$ on a graphics card like this when you can easily get by spending 10-25$ at Newegg for something that suits your needs.
Price:
$10 - $25 (27)
$25 - $50 (125)
These are cards that are far more than you need for the tasks you mention.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
$70 or $170 - it's still too high, and the companies are being greedy. I'd rather just go to isohunt.com and download thee graphic cards for free, until these companies set FAIR and reasonable prices. Think of it as a silent protest.
(tongue firmly planted in cheek)
(yes I'm making fun of the entitlement generation)
(stop being so darn cheap - $70 or $170 is a GREAT price for a graphics card. I remember paying twice that amount just to buy a freakin' 2.4k modem)
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)
A LAMP stack is pretty damn lightweight, just like WAMP. Apache just listens on port 80 and processes accordingly, and MySQL/PHP/Perl/Python are only called on a subset of those apache requests. It's not like they're constantly under heavy use, unless you're running an active server in which case a P3 with 256MB of RAM won't come close to cutting it.
Yeah, in order to get any reasonable amount of graphical flair, you need a bit more horsepower, but 2GB/dual core/standalone graphics are overkill for a lot of people's needs even on Vista, though they'll certainly see some added benefit. The biggest speed issues on Vista are caused by all of the bundled crapware you'll find on off-the-shelf systems and bad drivers. Of course, dual core is standard these days and really has been for a decent amount of time now, and RAM is so stupidly cheap that you'd be absolutely foolish not to get at least 2GB, but that doesn't make it necessary by any means.
For all of the problems I did have with Vista, speed was never one of them. I think there were some very poor choices made in terms of the UI (I like Aero, but they took a mile hike backwards with everything that they rearranged, going from illogical in XP to completely nonsensical in Vista) and one of my systems (which was fairly high-end at Vista's release) still can't run Vista stably thanks to nVidia, but even my retired fileserver box has no problems with speed in Vista.
And this is coming from the Mac fanboy. I switch well before Vista came out, but I've got plenty of experience with it - I spent more than enough time dabbling with the old betas, RCs, and of course the actual shipping versions. So could we just get past this? You can't legitimately expect to run a year-and-a-half-old OS on decade-old hardware, and the fact that you can run some very non-demanding apps on that same hardware isn't surprising in the slightest.
Parent
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:5, Funny)
It's a choice - spend big and get great performance, or spend small and get shitty performance.
Not like it's fucking rocket science.
Let me get this straight -- in rocket science, you can spend small and get great performance?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite. Rocketry is not unlike cars in this respect. There are three choices: price, performance and reliability. You can pick at most 2.
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I buy a laptop each two years. around $700 each. I play video games occasionally. Those "cheap" laptops and desktops form the core of the PC market.
Instead of developing games for this core market, they develop games for the tiniest fraction (ie hard core gamer) ready to spend $400 on a video card.
Horsepower of those cheap computers? Well mine runs flawlessly vista and all its 3D gimmicks.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because compared to the 'good' cards, it's less than 1/2 the price people pay to game.
I guess it's a matter of perspective but I don't consider a review of cards that cost arround 2-4 times what I paid for the last few graphics cards I bought to be a review of cheap cards.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"How else do you want them to compare graphics cards?"
Actually since you asked.....
How do they compare to my CURRENT card :) That's the one i want to see.
All the $100 are similar, got it. How much better are they than the $150 card card i got 2 years ago? Any old reviews tend to use different test rigs and different benchmarks :(
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It's also the low end of expensive. Not expensive in an absolute sense, but expensive compared to many other highly capable graphics cards out there.
Your analogy fails me... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Would you say a $170 car is not a cheap car?
If a $170 graphics card can handle my 60 mile commute as well as my van, I'll order two tomorrow.
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Would you say a $170 car is not a cheap car?
I'd say it was asking for trouble.
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This is why graphics for linux is adequate, but not great: the developers think $300 is a good price for a graphics card, and get tired of them and upgrade when they age to under $200.
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:5, Interesting)
Luckily, for people like you and me, there are cards closer to $70 than $170.
I actually read that Tech Report article earlier today, and I've read a couple of other reviews of the 4670. It looks really good, especially considering that it's a small card with no extra power connector.
Of course, my needs aren't very high- the #1 game I'm looking forward to is Starcraft 2- but I'd still like to be able to play at the native res of my 24" monitor.
Parent
$70 is cheap? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, I'd say $170 is pretty cheap considering a $170 video card is designed
who gauges what acceptable performance is? (Score:4, Informative)
It's subjective, and I can't really justify spending $500 on a video card, but I still want to.
I have bought high end cards for over a decade. I've been happy with all of the except the first. I originally bought an ATI Rage128 card before they came out from buy.com. The product didn't ship on time, and so I waited six months (buy.com was happy to take my $160), and I got an obsolete product. After that I got my first geforce 2 card. And the rest is history. I'm an nVidia fanboy and I'm not ashamed of it.
Those who spend that much money on a single component are usually going to spend a lot more on the rest. There's nothing worse than a yugo with a chevy 350 big block in it (to use a car analogy).
If you don't want to sped that much, you will get far less performance than me. And that makes a lot of difference to the experience of gaming.
A Yugo w a screaming smallblock Chevy is awesome. (Score:2)
Vacuum cleaner...Mouse.
Garbage disposal...Mouse.
Golf cart...Mouse.
Lawn mower...Mouse.
Go Cart...Mouse.
350SL gull wing...Mouse.
Mini cooper...Mouse.
Real Car or truck...Rat.
Granted your going to replace the whole drive train.
It will wind up with RWD like God intended it to be.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
a 350 can also be a 32 valve Lotus-designed mercury Marine-built engine whose outside dimensions is as large as a rat motor, that found its way into 9,939 production Corvettes. =)
Do a little more price checking first! (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
My Radeon X1650 has no trouble playing 1920x1080 movies, and it cost around $50.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I bought an AGP Powercolor ATI 3650 card two months ago. It cost me $90. I can play most modern games at 1280x1024 at good detail w/ 2x AA. As a really casual gamer, this is more than adequate. I can't tell much of the difference anyways. HD video is pretty good but some of it is CPU/memory bound - which is my problem 2.4 Xeon, 1 GB Ram. Still not bad when you consider an AGP card can still run most modern games.
Failing the spork test? (Score:2)
I guess, technically, I should say it's a "512 MiB" card, but I'd rather claw my eye out with a fork.
Wow, MiB is failing the spork test.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
512 MiB would be an awe-inspiring sight. They look so damn bad-ass in those black suits!
And yeah, MiB is a fucking retarded term for storage capacity. The old way has worked beautifully for forever, and I'm not about to change my habits because some metric purists got upset about it.
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That, or hard drive company apologists who are trying to make it okay that we buy 200 gigabytes and get sold 200000000 bytes.
Either way, I hate the MiB.
Re:Failing the spork test? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, regardless of the fact they were coined rather abruptly, I find the whole Ki / Mi / etc prefixes to be a rather good move forward.
Parent
Re:Failing the spork test? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Byting off more than you can chew... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then quit calling then "bytes". I've used computers with 5 to 10 bit characters and 8 to 13 bit "bytes". The correct standardized term for 8 bits of data is an "octet".
So it's either MB (traditional) or MiO (formal). Never MiB.
What is this bullshit? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I've been buying GeForce 9500 GT 512s at work for ~$70 each, before rebates. Those things pack a great punch for the price...
Those 8800GTs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Those 8800GTs (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, I just bought a factory overclocked 8800GT (ZOTAC Amp! Edition, to be specific) for $117 a couple of weeks ago. It does indeed run Crysis, COD4, Assassin's Creed, etc. at very high quality and framerates. And NVIDIA just released driver update 178.13 today, with the following changes:
# WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6-series, 7-series, 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs, including the newly released GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, 9500 GT, and 9400 GT GPUs.
# Adds support for NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory (this driver package installs NVIDIA PhysX System Software v8.09.04).
# Experience GPU PhysX acceleration in several full games and demos today by downloading the GeForce Power Pack.
# Adds support for 2-way NVIDIA SLI technology with GeForce GTX 200-series GPUs on Intel® D5400XS motherboards.
# Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI(TM) technology* on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
# Supports CUDA(TM).
# Supports Folding@home distributing computing application. Download the high performance client for NVIDIA GPUs here and join the NVIDIA team: #131015.
# Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.
# Includes several 3D application performance improvements. The following are examples of improvements measured with v178.13 WHQL versus v175.19 WHQL driver:
* Single GPU increases up to 11% in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset)
* Single GPU increases up to 11% in Assassin's Creed DX10
* Single GPU increases up to 15% in Bioshock DX10
* Single GPU increases up to 15% in Call of Duty 4
* Single GPU increases up to 8% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* 2-way SLI increases up to 7% in Bioshock DX10
* 2-way SLI increases up to 10% in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX10
* 2-way SLI increases up to 12% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* 2-way SLI increases up to 10% in World in Conflict DX10
# Includes numerous 3D application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.
Parent
I never spend more than (Score:4, Funny)
$700 for a video card solution. Unless I'm going SLI, then it's like $1200 or so for two cards because you gotta get 'em the day they're released...NOT after the inevitable price drop. Of course, you gotta throw in extra for the water blocks and pump, and tubes, and reservoir and such, so in reality I never spend more than like $850 each...Unless I am buying for my Tri-SLI capable board...then it's like $2450, and add like $250 for a 1200watt PSU and like $550 for three water blocks and stuff, so it's like close to, but under $3000 for video cards...wait...why is there only Raman Noodles in the cupboard?
IXBT roundup (Score:2)
790gx and 780g with side port ram are good for bas (Score:3, Informative)
790gx and 780g with side port ram are good for basic video work / vista and you can add $50 card for a boost as well. Also they cost less then Intel board that cost more and are slower with poor divers that use system ram.
This has worked for me all the time in fact... (Score:2, Interesting)
Noise (Score:2)
One of the things that makes me shy away from the new top of the line graphics cards is the very loud cooling systems they put on them. Lower performance is actually more attractive if it means my computer doesn't sound like a hairdrier.
Built in graphics w/1080p HDMI performs great (Score:2)
I just bought a GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-DS2H motherboard with built in Intel G45 graphics with the 45nm Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale @ 2.53GHz.
The price is about $120 each and the system overclocks easily to 3.5GHz.
It has an HDMI 1080p output and digital surround.
Works just fine for gaming and HD movies. And best of all, with the money saved, I can buy a new computer every 6 month, rather than building an expensive computer and upgrade in 2 years.
This setup also works great with no HD receiver and other extern
Cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
No, there's cheaper ones. (Score:3, Informative)
I feel like I'm plugging myself, but the Radeon X1950 is a massively capable card, and is available for as little as $60-70. It's also fully accelerated with the open-source driver stack as of Mesa 7.1. (I'm currently on one, running Compiz Fusion with Xserver 1.5. It's good times.)