Finding a good (and affordable) graphics card

[mikey186]

Yes, I know I posted a thread of the same thing a while back, but now that I have got a new 1080p monitor (from HP) since x-mas, apparently, with my 7 yr-old nVidia GeForce 8400GS, it's been slowing me down, I had to ether tune-down the settings to it's LOWER conditions, or to set it to windowed and size it to 1360x768 (or lower like my old monitor). Apparently, my dad thinks using the game on a full screen takes up a lot of 'data' and thinks I should upgrade my ram, but I DON'T believe him because even if I upgrade the ram, it WON'T HELP. 4GBs is enough for me. Besides with now most modern cards between $300 to over $500 or even up to 1.5 grand, it's IMPOSSIBLE. I only want to find a good affordable graphics card that can run simulation games (TS12, FSX (uninstalled for now), Train Simulator 2015). And I AM NOT a intense gamer (like i DO NOT play with GTA, Call of Duty, Halo etc.). I also want to use it for Adobe Creative Cloud as well as for DAZ Studio renders as well (especially LuxRender).

Now fortunately, I have looked all over Newegg and Amazon for the best video cards/GPUs as I can find at a affordable price (under $100), one I found is a MSI/GeForce GT 740 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127853&cm_re=Geforce-_-14-127-853-_-Product but no reviews so far so I cannot manage to afford it if it has no reviews (like if it's working, not working, pros, cons, whatever). I can't just buy a GPU with no reviews and predict like it's not working, it'll be a waste. And my b-day is on March 9 (2 days away) so I'm trying to find a good one as fast as I can (or maybe by a week).

If you really like to see the real deal of my system.....well, here it is:

ASUS Essentio CM6730
intel i3 quad-core 3.30Ghz
4GB Ram DDR3
nVidia GeForce 8400GS

more specs can be found here - http://www.sysprofile.de/id101510

 

[John514]

I would suggest the GTX 750.
Its cheap for its specs and it will also come in handy for the new smoke effects in TANE, since it supports Nvidia Physx.

 

[malikrthr]

Hi Mikey186,

Your system specs are okay for the most part. For games, rendering and train simulation, I think you should upgrade your DDR3 RAM to 8GB to allow for running more programs at once without the system slowing down. I agree with John514, The GTX750 or GTX 750Ti would probably be the graphics card where you can get the most bang for the buck. I am still using my 5th generation GTX graphics cards so I have no experience with the 7th generation GTX graphics cards but I have read reviews and comparisons and have seen game play videos of the cards and the GTX 750 and 750Ti cards seem to have similar performance compared to cards like the 550ti and the 570, which I think is pretty good for an older card. I think the 750 or 750ti would be the better option though because they are newer and there are variants of the cards that come with 2 and 4GB of RAM which means that you can use more high resolution textures and the 7th generation GTX cards runs on the Maxwell architecture so it will run much cooler and probably quieter than the 5th generation cards.

 

[LNERlover5]

You are correct in assuming the issue is the 8400GS. Like everyone above said, just opt for a Geforce GTX 750 Ti, you won't be disappointed.

 

[mikey186]

Thanks for the tip! I would guess a GTX 750 would come in handy (with a Power supply I would upgrade after installing the graphics card), but what's the difference between a 750 and 750Ti? And what VRAM I should get? Most I find is 1GB or what spec part should I look for like Core Clock, Boost Clock, CUDA cores?

 

[cascaderailroad]

All I could afford, several years ago, was a video card that will work on a 300Watt LightOff PS :hehe:

I bought a GT430 for $129 at Best Buy ... the same video card costs @ $49 on mail order houses ... I ripped myself, off by buying at a BigBox Store

 

[nicky9499]

Ti is one of their marketing gimmicks (short for Titanium, which is strange because their cards are made of no such thing), although generally speaking Ti versions have more CUDA cores and are clocked faster. In the interests of future-proofing you'll be better off with 2GB or more of VRAM because 1GB is around the upper limits for gaming at 1080p.

 

[ish6]

Hi,

I just bought a video card from tigerdirect.com, but before I did that I did research and found the right video card for my pc -- Sometimes a powerful video card might require a much needed power supply, in my case, I got lucky -- But it's a great habit to make sure!

So, not sure if you pc will be review here, but my pc was displayed, and it guided me to what I needed!

visit: http://www.computershopper.com/ .... in the search type in your model! If it's there it will detail everything about your pc, even how it looks inside the case, etc .... Your pc will be review, and recommendation will be already noted on their comments, including expansion options, etc ...

Regards
Ish

 

[mikey186]

I would suppose a GTX 750 or a Ti would be a good use. I would hope to find from a cheaper brand (like EVGA which is know to very good quality and reviews). I look at Best Buy and it looks like for $114, would be possible. And I'm NOT a 4K gamer, I only view 4K on my GoPro. Or I guess MSI is the way to go, what do u think?

 

[malikrthr]

I think EVGA is good. My Nvidia cards are EVGA brand and they have not let me down. I'd say EVGA is a pretty good graphics card brand.

 

[pdkoester]

GTX 960 or greater, that is my suggestion.

 

[nimec]

In preparation for T:ANE I've just replaced an nVidea GTX275 896Mb card that handled Ts12 very well with an nVidea GTX 760 4 Gb card. I was going to buy the later model nVidea GTX 960 2Mb card which also had a lower power consumption but I floated the specs past a tech friend who said the bus bar was only 128 Mb on it which could be a bottleneck in some situations and for trainz I should have a video card with a bus of 256Mb. I would image the GTX 750 has the same spec as the 760. There is also a web page somewhere that lists the best video card for the different games and for Trainz the nVidea GTX cards seem the be the card of choice.

 

[mikey186]

So I guess a GTX 750 2 or 4GB of VRAM w/bus of 256mb? I guess so but I don't know which brand is reccomended for me, ether EVGA or MSI would be to good use. I don't trust Radeon since others say it has damn compatibility issues (even with a Intel processor)

 

[LNERlover5]

Don't go for more VRAM than the card is actually able to fill before the performance available from the GPU becomes a bottleneck. A 2GB 128bit GTX 750 from either MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS or EVGA will do you fine.

 

[johnwhelan]

So I guess a GTX 750 2 or 4GB of VRAM w/bus of 256mb? I guess so but I don't know which brand is reccomended for me, ether EVGA or MSI would be to good use. I don't trust Radeon since others say it has damn compatibility issues (even with a Intel processor)

nVidia make the chips and produce a reference design there isn't much difference between the different companies, occasionally ASUS will have a slight different cooler. Radeon don't do Maxwell they're AMD and to keep the power consumption down you need Maxwell. The cheapest Maxwell is the 750. Personally I quite like ASUS but its a preference only.

Cheerio John

 

[mikey186]

Well I have a ASUS machine. I have a Essentio CM6730. Does it count? I mean still others (mostly Trainz users) say that Raedeon has issues. I have a intel i3 3.30Ghz w/4GB of ram. Most it can take is 8

 

[johnwhelan]

Well I have a ASUS machine. I have a Essentio CM6730. Does it count? I mean still others (mostly Trainz users) say that Raedeon has issues. I have a intel i3 3.30Ghz w/4GB of ram. Most it can take is 8

nVidia has a program that assists companies such as N3V code to obtain the best results from their GPU. Having said that there are "two" standards for GPUs, OpenGL and DirectX. OpenGL allows proprietary extensions so you can expect nVidia will suggest code that uses these to N3V. It normally takes five years to get through as ISO standards process by the way so they're usually out of date before they arrive.

DirectX is a Microsoft standard, so a little more even handed and is designed to work well with Windows. AMD actually coded an early version DirectX directly on their GPU so price performance ran rings round nVidia. I still use an AMD GPU and TS12 Trainz runs fine. I haven't tried it with TANE.

These days Maxwell limits the amount of power drawn and is very energy efficient, nVidia have improved their DirectX so this week nVidia are the favoured cards. If you're buying a graphics card at the moment you should probably aim for a DirectX 12 compliant card. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html might be useful.

Basically what you're after at the moment is a graphics card that can fit your power supply and is DirectX12 compliant. Specific AMD cards are still cost effective and for DirectX11 and DirectX9 work well, however they are more power hungry than the latest nVidia cards.

Whilst the 750 isn't bad a GTX 970 or GTX 980 promise to run TANE at higher frame rates, however given your CPU is an i3 it might not be able to keep up.
Sometimes it might be better to wait until TANE ships then see what it needs.

Cheerio John

 

[mikey186]

True.......I don't see how my i3 quad core processor is not ready for the modern GTX cards. I thought most graphics card doesn't typically effect my ram in the CPU (according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbgvzVgfoSc). but if that's the case, then I guess a GT 730? http://amzn.to/1EyE3hu

 

[LNERlover5]

True.......I don't see how my i3 quad core processor is not ready for the modern GTX cards. I thought most graphics card doesn't typically effect my ram in the CPU (according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbgvzVgfoSc). but if that's the case, then I guess a GT 730? http://amzn.to/1EyE3hu

Let's clear some points. Your I3 is a dual core with hyper threading, which is an Intel technology that handles instructions prior to execution by the physical processing units. There is no RAM in your CPU, only small amounts of cache used for the storage of small, repeatedly used information. Finally, there is no reason that one brand of video card would not work in a particular platform, bar the lack of a PCI-E 16X expansion slot on the motherboard.

Let's forget the GT 730, this is the very low-end for Geforce cards and shouldn't really be considered for playing games since they simply don't offer any respectable performance in modern titles, or even older ones for that matter. Which is why we've been suggesting the GTX 750 as this should really be the bare minimum if you plan to play games, that or the AMD Radeon R7 250X (Radeon HD 7770). If the cost and power supply requirements weren't as they are, I would agree with John on this one, the GTX 970 is pretty much sweet spot in terms of price to performance at this moment, being about 10% slower than the 980 at a 40% lower cost.

Long story short, the GTX 750 is probably the best available card for you now based on cost and power draw, since I'm assuming that an Asus prebuilt has probably skimpt on the power supply (The I5 variant of your desktop is listed as only having a 300W PSU). You can always wait longer and see what the next generation of cards brings, however AMD will be late Q2 2015 with their lineup and expect another refresh from Nvidia to be next year.

Jack.

 

[johnwhelan]

True.......I don't see how my i3 quad core processor is not ready for the modern GTX cards. I thought most graphics card doesn't typically effect my ram in the CPU (according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbgvzVgfoSc). but if that's the case, then I guess a GT 730? http://amzn.to/1EyE3hu

Trainz runs on both the CPU and the GPU but in order to feed the GPU fast enough you need a certain amount of horse power in the CPU. It depends how much stuff gets off loaded to the GPU but basically a quad core i7 can do a much better job of keeping a high end GPU fed than a dual core i3. It's a sort of balancing act, you want enough CPU to keep the GPU fed and enough GPU to draw pretty pictures on the screen. Until we see the final cut of TANE we won't know where the balance is, TRS2004 for example did most of its graphic processing on the CPU so the GPU wasn't nearly so important but we can make intelligent guesses.

Cheerio John