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Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card
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."
Um, to me at least, $170 for a graphics card is not "cheap"...
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.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Prices on graphic cards have been plummeting, both due to the overall memory prices dropping fast and because of the huge saturation of inventories in the market. Cards that few months ago were going for $300+ have been getting blown up for under $100. So before you compromise, make sure you do your due dilligence and check price engines like google shopping or pricewatch, you will be surprised how far your buck travels these days. Also, don't bother with brick and mortar retailers, they turn their inventory slower and their best deals are still month or so behind and usually involve some mail in rebates.
My Radeon X1650 has no trouble playing 1920x1080 movies, and it cost around $50.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
My 8800 GTS (512MB G92) was $330 almost a year ago. This card can run pretty much anything out there on max or near-max settings and should be good for 3 or 4 years minimum. You're going to be buying at least three of those $100 cards to keep usable performance over that period as new games come out that that's just "usable" performance. With a card like mine at least I get to enjoy a couple years playing with high-end settings before newer stuff starts crushing it. With $100 cards you never get to do that (at least not with new games).
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.
I don't thing $70 is cheap for a graphics card, but I'm a tightwad and don't play a lot of games. (I do a bit of graphics programming, but it's all ray tracing and the GPU doesn't help for that.)
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.
Who's going to be shopping for budget graphic cards on any system with a Blu Ray player?
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The 8600GT 512 has been available for a while now, I have one myself, and it was ~$120. They're even cheaper these days. That card can handle about anything you care to throw at it, unless you're running Vista, at which point you shouldn't care about the cost, because you're already paying Mistress Xanthia hundreds per month to kick you in the beans.
I don't really keep up with video cards except when I'm trying to buy one ever 3 or 4 years, but those 8800GTs are like $100 and can run just about anything. $100 isn't cheap but for a card that will let you play every game out right isn't bad, especially when getting that last 10-20% performance increase bumps your price up a few hundred dollars
$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?
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
that is perhaps one luxury of not caring about gaming graphics. you KNOW that companies will try to crank things up to the highest and it WILL continue to do so. so why bother with some hardware that will eventually go obsolete within the 3 months just to enjoy some game that will wow you for a short period of time? if the game has its appleal. it will stay.. i still play some of the old games because it's well designed; and by now, i am able to crank the graphics up (i have to as a matter of fact).
For those who can read Russian IXBT has graphic card roundups updated quite regularly.Among other things it compares performance/price and potential longevity of the cards. To understand the comparison tables you do not even need Russian.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
appropriate timing to be thinking about cheap graphics cards... as the entire world economy swirls down the toilet because of bad mortgages...
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.
Before i switched to ppc-mac/xbox 360 few years ago, i owned a self-built PC with cheapest functional hardware. what i did was getting a used parts from ebay. i got new graphics card for $30 in order to play WOW because the old one couldn't render 3D graphics so WOW looked like a mozaic slush. I was never fond of spending too much money on gaming so i looked for alternative; XBOX 360. Cheap. no upgrade required. no installation. being a busy university student and having number of part time jobs going on , i barely find time to play games and money to buy new titles. Yet, this has made me to be the best player around me because i play one title for long time. so, even if i suck at most of the games, i have name among my friends. being a fan of game doesn't mean that you need latest $4000ailienware pc. and i have tone of things to make up for and brand new pc comes least priority on my list. in fact, i didn't have that in my list.
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.
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 external boxes except the speakers and amp.
PS: Get at least DDR2 1066 memory so this part will not hamper your overclocking effort
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
A friend and I have been scouring our local craigslists for 8800gt's. They pop up more often than not for ~$80-100 and almost match the performance of the new 'high end' GTX260. So they wont play Crysis @ 1920x1200? No big deal.
They still beat the heck out of most anything else you can get for that price. The little niche they have may not last more than the next year or so, but for the time being, if you dont mind buying used hardware, it's a great deal that can hardly be matched by the deals they have listed in TFA
When it comes to games, hardware has been outpacing the ability of software to actually ustilize it for several years. That's why when I started my game, I decided to actually use everything I had; and sure enough, I've overheated a few cpu's and graphics cards of unsuspecting players (not permanently, of course!).
:-)
It's very high poly and is a "big room" game, which takes lotsa gpu and cpu both. And one day, when it's finished (in a decade?) it'll be playable on a modest machine
expandfairuse.org
I'd like to see more graphics cards with passive cooling. Every time I see one of these cards with a big honking fan on it, I wonder how long it will last and whether it is even possible to replace the fan if it fails.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I just got myself an ATI HD 3850 AGP card from Sapphire and I daresay that this card is the best AGP card ever made. It costs 125-130$ on newegg.com. I upgraded from an X1950Pro and the frame rate bump is noticeable in many games.
Back when the 6800gt came out, I paid 325$ for the card. I'd call what I paid for the 3850 cheap. Considering it will be the last midrange-highend AGP card that will ever be made, yes there are cards that are cheap and you can get away with.
And you're a cheap knock off spammer asshole. The fake Steve Jobs was kinda clever, you are just a scum sucking asshole. Get a real job. You fucking wannabe chair slinger.
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.)
~ C.
Zork achieves 18.425 +/-0.500 fps on my Hercules!
Am I the only person who found this to be a *really* strange turn of phrase?
I want to run 2 monitors.
I currently just use the onboard (intel) graphics chip & no I don't play games and yes I run linux.
Options a) a dual head video card
b) can I cheap out and use a cheap ass card to drive the 2nd monitor & still use the onboard chip?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I managed to pick up an HD4870 from Newegg this week for $200 with a combo deal on a motherboard that I was going to get anyway. If the high end is only $200, I think that they'd be hard-pressed to call $170 a budget card. Then again, maybe it was just a really good deal.
Shoplift it.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
July last year saw me splurge out on a new box. At the time I got an MSI GeForce 768MB O/Clocked 8800GTX. It cost me a decent chuck of the final PC price ($820 AUD).
This card was beautiful. It just ate up every game I threw at it smoothly and perfectly. Running at 1920 resolution on my 26 inch Acer.
A year later my PC died whilst playing HL2. Turns out that between my GFX card and Sound card was a small little firewire chip that controlled the 1 firewire port at the back (that I had an external HDD plugged to with all my mp3s).
The poor little chip got so worked up after 6 or so hours of gaming and simultaneously listening to music that it burnt out.
Needless to say it fried a few components in my system. Graphics card, RAM and motherboard.
It took many months for Asus to replace my board (as they didn't sell them anymore).
However MSI quickly replaced my video card. Upon handing in the card I learnt that it was old stock and no longer produced.
I was quite anxious to learn what I would get back. However 4 weeks later (ok so that part wasn't great) they returned to me a brand new 1GB MSI GeForce 9800 GX2 (SLI on the one board).
I was extremely happy as I got a great, more powerful, newer generation of card replaced for my faulty card for free.
I'm out of the house 13 hours a day 5 days a week. I get home and I have chores and a new born to deal with.
When I get to play a game, I don't want to play the crap games at 640x480. Also my game genre of choice flight simulation. Sure you can get away with a cheap crappy video card...if you like stick figures.
If you buy a cheaper car, it usually still gets you from A to B. However you don't buy a cheaper car if you're planning o haul a large boat. Its not suitable. Likewise light weight graphics cards aren't suitable for some tasks. Cheap graphics cards are fine if you're not into games or high end CAD/Photo/Video editing.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Overclocking is the Key to successful gameplay on a cheap. Overclocked 9600GSO beats the crap out of 9600GT for example, but you cant see that in this crappy "test" :(.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
It's not out yet, but Lucid's GPU-agnostic load balancer should work wonderfully with a couple of 8800GT cards, better than SLI in many cases since it extracts much more parallelism.
I wish these reviews would give comparisons to older cards so people thinking about upgrading could tell how much of a performance increase they're getting for their money. As it is these data are pretty meaningless to me.
i dont get it. just 20 difference, over 170. get a 4850 and enter high mid range.
Read radical news here
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.
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.
Maybe if all that idle rigid silicon could be programmed to do other tasks than rendering shaded polygons on screen in a very limited rigid way, it could almost be justified. It has nothing to do with "justifying 300$ or more for than a single PC component". You don't think of a machine that way, but rather what level of functionality you need to have. Still, noone in their right mind but hardcore gamers shells out more than 300$ for a video card. It's the most useless brick you would ever cram in your computer case. It's essentially a brick. When it starts to let itself be programmed for generic logic, then perhaps the price will be justified. Until then, it is just an expensive toy. Funny thing is, even the very job it is supposed to do, especially considering bold claims by manufacturers, is done often by the CPU. Like 3d artists still render their hi-fi shots with the CPU. The GPU is only used for previews. Pity.
Tom's Hardware publishes a list according to price ranges every month, updating it with new cards and new performance marks.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Best-Graphics-Card,2011.html
The prices they list are "retail" prices, so you can typically find them about $40 cheaper on the high end, maybe $20 or so cheaper in the $100-170 end. I just took their advice on picking up a card for my AGP system (Radeon HD3850) and couldn't be happier with the results.
You must be a riot at parties. Can I be your friend?
That is a horrendously bad review, and this is just a free promotion for an otherwise unremarkable Web site. This is one of those times Slashdot deeply disappoints for its lack of discretion.
Which you don't want to mention because you don't want there to be a reason for any decision that you don't agree with, correct?
Binary computers. 1/0
Binary addresses. each bit to address increases the addressable memory twofold (not ten)
Binary numbers. each native number is a certain number of bits, not decimal digits
So putting memory in that is on a decimal word boundary (like million 1,000,000) means you've wasted a couple of bit lines for addressing and you have to have the decoder work out how to detect the end of the memory so that it can check mapping it to address lines without signalling outside the address scope.
Or you could use powers of two and then each bit is fully used and you don't need "the third address bit cannot be 1 if the 18th address bit is set" in the address decoder.
HDD and network (ADSL/Cable) speeds aren't in powers of ten either. You don't buy a 200GB HDD that says it is in powers of ten gigs and yet have 200,000,000,000 bytes of storage (note: byte is 8 bits, so not a round decimal number, either). why? because each sector is a power of two size (direct addressing with the computer again) and has to be made up of these power-of-two sector sizes times an INTEGRAL number of tracks per cylinder and an integral (and not a power-of-ten) number of platters.
So the HDD isn't displaying the disk size in powers of ten either, so they are lying by your definition too.
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.
I just overcome these problems by using my imagination. No anti-aliasing? Well, just pretend it is anti-aliased. It works for me. :)
Until Vim does crazy 3D rendering, I think I'm going to be in the market for something closer to $7 than $70.
Here's an interesting thought for you. What if your definition of playing games actually is *just* surfing the web? What type of graphics card do you need for that?
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
The cheapest possible Intel motherboard graphics chipset is more than enough for anything you could use a computer for, with two exceptions:
* High-end 3D games
* 3D modeling packages (Maya, etc.)
And that's it. There's such a relatively small number of people with the ultra-high end cards that pushing those cards to the limit is hardly within the realm of consideration for almost all game developers...except for the the few that know they have a doting fanboy following that's into dropping $200 or more on a video card every six months.
Any recommendations on a fanless (i.e. silent) one for AGP?
but in the nVidia world, older cards seem to be great. For example my cousin had a celeron system with an integrated "AGP" Intel card, but there wasn't an AGP slot, and to say the least Intel Graphics suck rocks. I put a PCI Geforce 5000 series card in, he was rocking along on UT2004 just fine. Granted, I've seen better graphics, but it beat the integrated crap.
His sister on the other hand, I gave her a leftover 1.6 Ghz Athlon system. The only available card I had was my old PNY GeForce 2 Pro, the first card I've ever seen with DDR2. It was fine, she was playing 3D Lord of the Rings games and some 3D Harry Potter games with no complaints, not to mention both of systems were doing fine with DVD playback. (Especially when using the nvDVD player)
Seems to me someone on a budget doesn't need to buy a brand new off the shelf low end card, they should look at their budget and look backwards in time, and maybe find a friend with leftovers.
When it comes to ATI I got one of the first gen Radeon cards, it looked fine at first, but I found out I couldn't make it work worth a damned in Linux and they card went screwy on me and I had to do a warranty trade, that's what caused me to get my first GeForce card (the afore mentioned GeForce 2 Pro). Thanks ATI for setting me on the right path for a Voodoo replacement. I haven't messed with them enough since then to say an older Radeon would be fine also, but my guess is you would have similar results, vs. on-board anyways. I deployed one in my grandparents old machine but I replaced it with onboard GeForce graphics because the integrated nForce was better, and my sister is still using her really old Radeon, but they're not using it for much either.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I found that interesting that some of the lower numbered cards like Geforce 8800 gts was not included as it is now in that price range and the performance is very good. Looking at my receipts for my Vista build I paid around 129 for that card with 384 mb of ram and it plays anything I have thrown at it. I used to use ATI but NVidia has really gotten alot better with drivers. Also in Linux the NVidia cards are better supported so ATI will not be an option for me. Good article but as someone who has built PCs for over 10 years I suggest to anyone I build a PC for not to scrimp too much on the GPU. You may not think you want a higher end GPU now but wait a year or two and you found a game you like. You will regret not paying just a little more for that card instead of the lower end one. I use Toms Hardware for most of my hardware comparisons prior to building but now will use this website as well. More information to the people!!!
Or second life for that matter :-)
I've never been a fan of nVidia because of power consumption and price, but I have used a few of their cards. I have used ATI extensively under Windows, Mac, and especially Linux, and never had problems with drivers or backwards compatibility.
My son has a Radeon 8500 in his machine, and he plays OpenGL/3D games, plays movies, etc with no problems (Ubuntu). I still have a few machines with RageXL and Rage128 cards running Linux w/hardware acceleration enabled.
I became a fan of ATI back in the mach64 days, when nVidia's TNT cards blew chunks under Linux. They eventually fixed their drivers, and I started using them here and there.
Yep... but I believe I paid close to $200 for that same card back when it was the "latest and greatest" thing. (The big deal about it for me at the time was, it was still offered in an AGP version, and things were just starting to go to PCIe. I didn't want to buy a whole new motherboard just to upgrade my video card, so it seemed like a good alternative.)
They don't make an 8800GTS with 384MB ram. Perhaps you mean the 8800GS, which is the same chip and configuration as the 9600GSO.
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
What's worked for me so far is to wait 4 years. I'm now playing games that came out 4+ years ago, and they say "this card requires an advanced video card to run" and they run just fine on the embedded graphics card that came on my $60 mainboard.
The problem is, y'all are just too impatient. What's your hurry?
I don't start reading book series until the last book is published, either. Obviously, neither the high end graphics industry or the book publishing industry could survive on a population of "me".
I don't understand how people can honestly say they need three GeForce GTX 280s in triple SLI in order to get "acceptable" gaming performance. I do a lot of gaming, and the only time I've ever spent more than $100-$150 on a video card, I've regretted it.
Honestly, if a game only runs on a $500 video card, then it's not going to sell very well. $150 graphics cards are more than enough for a very enjoyable experience in every game released. (Short of something like Crysis, which I would argue was poorly designed, because it targeted hardware capabilities that didn't exist. I can write a game that nobody can play today, too.)
I run at my LCD's native panel res, and can even turn all the eye candy up on older games. I find 15-30 fps to be perfectly playable, while I get much more when my video card is newer.
And to my surprise, a lot of people do with a lot less, because they aren't serious gamers. I have to question the bona fides of gamers who require 240 fps in the latest id shooter to enjoy themselves. It seems like an unhealthy obsession with performance, not gameplay. I doubt it even helps them get more frags; I certainly never had much trouble being competitive in multiplayer shooters, back when I still played them.
If you are looking to buy an exotic car, the Jaugaur is cheap.
As the OP said, cheap is relative to what you are trying to purchase. If you want something with 4 wheels and an engine, $1000 is expensive. If you want something that'll make the Jones' take notice, $60,000 might not be so expensive. That's kind of the point.
It seems like I'm always on the wrong side of the ATi / nVidia fence when it comes to Linux drivers.
So a few months ago when I rebuilt my primary Linux box based on the "$500 gaming rig", I plunked down $250 for an nVidia 8800GT. Unfortunately, the current 173 drivers don't seem to be able to perform anywhere near the level of even 7000-series nVidia cards under Linux. See this post:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115916
The nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1 trick does do a lot to temporarily fix 2D performance. I'm starting to consider plunking down another couple hundred $ for a windows gaming box to put the 8800GT into for the time being, and getting a cheap PCIe card for my Linux box instead... but I'm not terribly excited about spending that kind of money just for entertainment value.
Five or so years earlier, I had bought an ATi Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder sometime just after one of those several times that ATi pledged to commit to open source driver development. That never really panned out, but at least due to the excellent work of the excellent GATOS project, I could at least use the TV tuner and rudimentary OpenGL acceleration (without any FSAA or the like). When ATi finally came out with their proprietary FGLRX drivers, I don't think they included TV tuner drivers, and my aging 7500 fell just short of the cutoff for supported cards anyway.
Anyway, looks like I can't win :P Hopefully newer nVidia drivers will fix these performance issues with Linux drivers, until then, I can't really recommend 8000 or 9000 series cards to anyone planning on using them for Linux.
Now, how about a list of decent graphics cards that will still work with my AGP 8x mother board? A Saphire Radeon HD 3850 was the best I could find; is buying one a mistake? (My GeForce FX 5200 with passive cooling crashes the computer in less than a minute running a Video Card Stability Test, so it needs to be replaced.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
which is the cheapest PCI Card that has an HDMI output?
Wanted : A Signature.