Graphics Card Advice

[shaglio]

NOTE: I know this isn't the correct forum for this, but I didn't know where to post it so that it will actually be seen by other people. I'm sure the Moderators will move it to the appropriate place eventually.

First off, I’m not 100% computer literate. I only have a rudimentary grasp of computer terminology, so don’t be afraid to talk down to me.

The fan on my graphics card crapped out on me recently and I need a new one. I currently have an ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series, but I was thinking about going to an nVidea GeForce.

1) I would like my new card to be at least as good as I currently have, if not better. I don’t remember the specs for my card, so hopefully somebody here will be more familiar with it.
2) I want to keep the cost down so my wife doesn’t flip out. Maybe under $100 if possible. Basically, I want to get the most bang for the least buck.
3) I searched a local electronics store’s website (Best Buy) for GeForce and noticed that other brand names came up besides nVidea (EVGA, PNY, Galaxy) and I was wondering how these compared to the nVidea ones (I thought GeForce was only made by nVidea, but I guess I’m wrong).

Does anyone here have any advice for me in my search? I would greatly appreciate the help so I can get back to playing Civ ASAP (I’m going through withdrawal).

 

[Adjuvant]

Radeon HD 7750 or 7770 or GeForce GTX 650 SE(the latter 2 might be 120ish, and the gtx might be hard to find). All 3 give comparitive bang for buck at lower power consumption, reliable choices especially if your machine is 2 or more years old. I'm guessing you have a 500-550 watt power supply?

 

[shaglio]

Radeon HD 7750 or 7770 or GeForce GTX 650 SE(the latter 2 might be 120ish, and the gtx might be hard to find). All 3 give comparitive bang for buck at lower power consumption, reliable choices especially if your machine is 2 or more years old. I'm guessing you have a 500-550 watt power supply?

If my BIOS date is any indicator of how old my computer is, then it's just over 3 years old (10/29/09). I'm not sure how to tell what my power supply is.

 

[Adjuvant]

there's a sticker on it...

 

[shaglio]

there's a sticker on it...

Oh, ok. I'll have to check when I get home from work today. Thanks for all your help thusfar.

 

[Adjuvant]

If your psu is 400 or 450, stick with the $95ish Radeon HD 7750. It recommends 400, but also I don't know what you have in your case otherwise. Guessing nothing crazy.

 

[Ktulu]

FWIW I just recently upgraded to a XFX Radeon 7770 BESDD and am quite happy with it. It runs CIV 5 (direct X 11) with maxed out settings smoothly. It's also very power efficient and quiet. The fans get a little loud when CIV 5 is making it work, but that's to be expected.

There are better options if you play a lot of FPS or more intensive games, but if you want low power consumption and noise and just play CIV then this is a very nice card. You can probably find it for around $120-130.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

3) I searched a local electronics store’s website (Best Buy) for GeForce and noticed that other brand names came up besides nVidea (EVGA, PNY, Galaxy) and I was wondering how these compared to the nVidea ones (I thought GeForce was only made by nVidea, but I guess I’m wrong).

...er...
There are 3 big companies, which produce graphic card chips. These are ATI (Radeon), Nvidia (Geforce), and Intel.
These graphics chips are then manufactured into cards, by different companies like EVGA, PNY, Club3D, Asus, etc.


Now, to that:

1) I would like my new card to be at least as good as I currently have, if not better. I don’t remember the specs for my card, so hopefully somebody here will be more familiar with it.

Geforce cards are currently in the 600 series, and the series before was the 500 series.
Civ doesn't need the latest, even a 400 series should do it.
In thes series, the second number should be a 6 or higher (or at least a 5). So a 460, 470, 80, 90, a 560, 70, etc., and these should all be better than your current one. (just my rule of thumb; not really a pro in that area)
You'll probably not get a 600 series with the right performance below 100$
...checking...seems the decrease in the prices is not very fast, even the 500 series is still pricy, but it seems a 460 for 100 bucks could work.

 

[timtofly]

PNY Nvidea cards have been decent for me.

 

[tokala]

Radeon HD 7750 or 7770 or GeForce GTX 650 SE(the latter 2 might be 120ish, and the gtx might be hard to find). All 3 give comparitive bang for buck at lower power consumption, reliable choices especially if your machine is 2 or more years old.

In priciple correct, but specifically for Civ5 the 7xxx's have a slight edge. More detailed comment in the other thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11975748&postcount=4

 

[shaglio]

In thes series, the second number should be a 6 or higher (or at least a 5). So a 460, 470, 80, 90, a 560, 70, etc., and these should all be better than your current one.

Interesting. Is that because, when they first release a new series it starts with x00, and as they work out the bugs and kinks along the way they release the x10, x20, x30, etc.? So a 460 would be better than a 600 because it is more "stable."

Based on Adjuvent's comments I was originally eyeing a 610 that I could pick up for $30 (it's on sale for $70, but I have a $40 Best Buy Reward coupon). But taking your comments into consideration, I may go with the 440 that I can get for $34.

I wish I new more about the other specs like Video Memory, Clock Speed, and Number of Processors. I'm not sure what is important and what I can live without.

To answer somebody else's question, I mostly play Civ 5 now. I used to play WoW, but I couldn't justify the subscription fee now that my baby is in day care, so I play LOTRO (for free) whenever I need to satisfy my MMORPG cravings. EDIT: Nevermind, that was in the thread I originally posted in the Computer Talk section of the Colosseum forum. I then posted here because I didn't know how frequently people visited that forum. EDIT 2: Actually, it was Ktulu in this thread.

 

[tokala]

Interesting. Is that because, when they first release a new series it starts with x00, and as they work out the bugs and kinks along the way they release the x10, x20, x30, etc.? So a 460 would be better than a 600 because it is more "stable."

No, that's complete nonsense.

Based on Adjuvent's comments I was originally eyeing a 610 that I could pick up for $30 (it's on sale for $70, but I have a $40 Best Buy Reward coupon). But taking your comments into consideration, I may go with the 440 that I can get for $34.

Any desktop video card with a "4" or less as a second digit is not really suited for gaming, the lower the number, the worse it gets.

I wish I new more about the other specs like Video Memory, Clock Speed, and Number of Processors. I'm not sure what is important and what I can live without.

Nevertheless you appear to be in the process of going ahead and buying some rubbish based on guesswork

What about actually listening to the guys who do know? There are some sensible suggestions in this and the other thread


If you are limited to best-buy, and want to get by as cheaply as possible, this appears to be the least expensive card worth buying:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+...Card/3086103.p?id=1218377115905&skuId=3086103

On a related note: What size is your computer's case? Depending on the answer, your options might be severely limited (to low profile cards like the one I linked above).

 

[The_J]

Interesting. Is that because, when they first release a new series it starts with x00, and as they work out the bugs and kinks along the way they release the x10, x20, x30, etc.? So a 460 would be better than a 600 because it is more "stable."

Like tokala hinted: No, that's not the case.
They produce cards in different performance classes. A 610 is the weakest in the 600 range, the 690 the most powerful (with some diffusion in between; a 680 with a different setup, different memory, etc. might be more powerful than a weaker 690, as example).
But newer is not also better.
A 610 is NOT faster than a 590, the increase in performance is not so fast.
e.g. a 660 is faster than a 560, probably also faster than a 570, but if you come to a comparison between 660 and 580, then you'd really have to ask somebody with more knowledge to see if that makes really a difference.

 

[tokala]

Especially NVidia has become very proficient in cluttering up it's nomenclature, to the point where it's almost impossible to keep track of the variants without a handy overview like this:
http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/grafikkarten-marktueberblick-oktober-2012
(sorry, but I don't know anything comparable in English)

As a rough guideline (ballpark numbers):

Anything below $50 is crap.

Between $50 and $100 there are still a lot of lemons, but with some good stuff in between. Be especially wary of cards with a lot of video memory and/or low spec video memory in this region. A lot of offers here are borderline fraud.

Between $100-$200 is a sweep spot where you (mostly) get what you pay for, with an almost flat performance/price ratio, but for the cost of correspondingly increasing power consumption. Here you need to start to worry about your PSU.

Above $200 the performance/prize ratio starts to decline, and above $300 the law of diminishing returns kicks in for real.

Typically a newer generation is less power hungry at a given performance point, and has improved architecture better suited for state-of-the-art games, but frequently "new" cards are just slightly souped up variants of old designs, or even a simple rebranding.

Civ5 has an extremely modern graphics engine, to the point that cards older than nVidias 400 and ATI/AMD 7000 series perform not very well on it, compared to the avererage on other games.
The effect is only "noticable" on AMD/ATI cards, but older nVidia cards perform simply abysmally and have the nasty habit of running extremely hot while struggling with Civ5.

 

[shaglio]

Any desktop video card with a "4" or less as a second digit is not really suited for gaming, the lower the number, the worse it gets.

Does this go for the Radeon cards as well. They're 4-digit numbered so I wasn't sure which digit mattered

If you are limited to best-buy, and want to get by as cheaply as possible, this appears to be the least expensive card worth buying:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+...Card/3086103.p?id=1218377115905&skuId=3086103

I know I originally said I wanted a GeForce, but that was based on the last time I bought a Graphics Card (about a decade ago). After reading an article on Tom's Hardware, I discovered that Radeon cards have improved a lot and will give me a better "bang for my buck." So I've been contemplating either the Asus - AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 for $90.00 or the Asus - AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 for $108.00.

I'm not limited to Best Buy, but I noticed that they only run about $10 more than the AMD & nVidia websites. So with the $40.00 coupon, I'll be saving $30.00. And if I'm lucky and they have the card in stock, I won't have to wait to have it shipped to me.

On a related note: What size is your computer's case? Depending on the answer, your options might be severely limited (to low profile cards like the one I linked above).

I'll have to check this out when I get home. Adjuvent asked me how many watts my PSU is; wondering if I had a 400 or 450 or 500. Unless I'm misreading it (or I'm looking in the wrong place), mine said 460W.

 

[tokala]

Does this go for the Radeon cards as well. They're 4-digit numbered so I wasn't sure which digit mattered

Yes.

I know I originally said I wanted a GeForce, but that was based on the last time I bought a Graphics Card (about a decade ago). After reading an article on Tom's Hardware, I discovered that Radeon cards have improved a lot and will give me a better "bang for my buck."

For several years both ATI and NVidia have been basically on the same level of hardware capabilities. ATI used to have a bit more issues with their drivers, but that seems to be over, too.

So I've been contemplating either the Asus - AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 for $90.00 or the Asus - AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 for $108.00.

As already pointed out in the other thread, the 7750 is clearly superior, much more so than the 20% price difference indicates. If you have a standard case, this is a solid choice.

I'll have to check this out when I get home. Adjuvent asked me how many watts my PSU is; wondering if I had a 400 or 450 or 500. Unless I'm misreading it (or I'm looking in the wrong place), mine said 460W.

If it is indeed in the nominal 400-500W range, than it would indicate a standard sized form factor of the computer case.

Either a 6670 or a 7750 will work with (almost) any PSU.

 

[shaglio]

Thanks for everybody's help with this. For the record I ordered the Asus - AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 and I'll be back to spending too much time playing . . . just . . . one . . . more . . . turn . . . by the end of next weekend.

 

[Nite Owl]

I hate to dispel the logic in this thread but...

I have an NVidia GT 220 1GB card in my computer and it runs G&K just fine in DX11 mode with all the graphic options maxed out. Your mileage may vary.

 

[The_J]

Doesn't really contradict it, because your's is a single evidence, whereas the rest is general advice . And Civ5 is also not the only game on this planet .

 

[tokala]

And it depends on what is considered "just fine"

I seriously doubt that you manage to smoothly (>30 fps) scroll on a large, lategame map with that card on maximum settings.

Though I have to concede that the GT 220 is one of the few exceptions to my verdict that "anything before the nV 400s is underperforming", as it is one of the few nV DX10.1 cards.

The nV 200 series was a worst case example of confusing card designations, with several different chip designs in the same series.
The GT220 was ahead of the 9500 GT and not that far behind the (decent entry level) 9600 GSO 512 MB, which was rebranded as GT 230 (OEM).
The crappy cards of that series were the 210 and 205.

Given the weakness of the nV DX10 chips under Civ5, I wouldn't be surprised if a GT220 performs slightly better than a "recommended" 8800GT, roughly on par with a GTX260

And I can confirm that Civ5 is definitely playable with a GTX260 under max settings, but it is quite choppy.