Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card 290
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."
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.
Those 8800GTs (Score:3, Interesting)
This has worked for me all the time in fact... (Score:2, Interesting)
Craigslist much? (Score:1, Interesting)
A friend and I have been scouring our local craigslists for 8800gt's. They pop up more often than not for ~$80-100 and almost match the performance of the new 'high end' GTX260. So they wont play Crysis @ 1920x1200? No big deal.
They still beat the heck out of most anything else you can get for that price. The little niche they have may not last more than the next year or so, but for the time being, if you dont mind buying used hardware, it's a great deal that can hardly be matched by the deals they have listed in TFA
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.
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:3, Interesting)
If $170 is cheap... (Score:2, Interesting)
power consumption (Score:1, Interesting)
I had a lowly GeForce FX 5200 in my system for five years. Then one day I went in to look at something while the PC was on and noticed that the fan had seized on the GPU. That sucker was HOT, while just displaying the Windows desktop. Yet somehow it had managed to not fry itself. I believe this is only a 15W card. And when I went about removing the bad HSF and replacing it, at first I tried a medium-sized heat sink (from an old Pentium 100) thinking that might be enough. It still seemed dangerously hot, so I added a fan.
The cards that TFA refers to as cheap, low-end are up around 60W. IMO that's way too high for anyone who doesn't use their PC for mostly gaming or some other 3D/GP-GPU task. It's more than my CPU. And I could play 720P video on the FX 5200 (couldn't play 1080P, but that could just be CPU speed and not a video card limitation) so what do these more power hungry cards offer aside from 3D?
Are there any truly low-power cards that offer decent 3D performance? I did a little research on this recently but it seems that some of the cheaper GPUs use an older manufacturing process compared to their higher-performance siblings, so energy efficiency isn't that great. Also, low-end cards sometimes have a narrower memory bus which cuts performance but doesn't reduce power consumption by much at all. I was mainly looking at nVidia cards since I had good luck with them previously, but the only answers I could come up with were the 5700LE and the 6200. Both low-power like the 5200, somewhat faster (and good enough for HL2 and the like) but still very slow on the 3D front compared to the latest cards.
Re:Failing the spork test? (Score:1, Interesting)
Powers of 10 are also completely arbitrary, any base other then the most basic seems flawed IMHO. Since boolean algebra is the simplest form, I think it should take precedence. After all George boole and other mathematicians were trying to simplifiy all of mathematics to it's most simplest and basic form. The expression of math we've inherited is a higher order math, it is not the simplest math by a long shot.
http://www.boundarymath.org/papers/BLogic-intro.pdf [boundarymath.org]
http://www.lawsofform.org/ [lawsofform.org]
Re:What is this bullshit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, I guess you might be unlucky. I have had lots of nVidia cards over the years, and I have found them to be literally 100% reliable. I have never had to throw one out, which is why I have a lot of them sitting in a crate in my garage, since they always outlive the architecture that supports them. Who makes a motherboard that will take a Riva TNT any more?
But the thing I like best about them is that they are so active in their Linux support. Having, over many years, been subject to the line that "such-and-such is not supported under Linux", I find it gratifying that one outfit at least isn't going to cause me any grief like this. Sure, from time to time, new versions of the kernel do break their drivers, but on every one of these occasions nVidia have already had a fix in place before I found that out.
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (Score:2, Interesting)
- $70 or $170 is a GREAT price for a graphics card.
$70 is great, $170 is a little high.
I mean, think about it, a console can debut as high as $600 (thank you Sony), and computers cost as little as $300.
I think it's great that the time has finally come when I can seriously find a deal on a computer for $300-400, spend $100-200 on a graphics card and have a system that can honestly play damn near any game on the market at my monitor's maximum supported res.
The other $600 between what I'll actually spend and the best card on the market is for the insane people that just have to turn every single goody the graphics engine supports up to the maximum setting.
Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? (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 :(