gkkiller on 13/10/2014 at 09:56
I'm long overdue for an upgrade. The card I have now is a Radeon HD 6450, so almost anything will be a step up. I don't intend to be playing many games from this decade, but if I do, I don't need to have to max them out. I just want something that can give me close to 60 fps at 720p and still look good (oh, and it has to run Crysis. :P) Budget is not really a problem: since it's the festival season, the online retailers I usually buy stuff from have discounts on everything, and I also have a coupon for a good $26 discount. I'm looking for $165 or less, though. In case it's important, I don't know exactly how much my power supply is, but I think it's ~400 W since that's the recommended supply for my 6450. I'm looking for 2GB cards, and I have been told that for gaming purposes, I should search for Nvidia Geforce cards with DDR3 or DDR5. (Does it make a significant impact whether I get a DDR3 or a DDR5 card? And are those different from GDDR3 and GDDR5?) I'm also hoping for something that supports Shadowplay, if possible.
These cards are the ones I've found that seem to match my criteria.
- GT 610
- GT 730
- GT 630
- GT 640
- GT 740
- GT 650
- GTX 650 Ti and GTX 750 Ti (slightly over budget, but not too much)
So, which one of these would be best? I'm assuming a higher number is better, which would mean my no 1 option is the GTX 750 Ti, but what about the others? Any other cards I should consider that I haven't listed here?
zombe on 13/10/2014 at 12:02
The card numbers are quite misleading to ascertain how good the card is - equally misleading can be the asked price. I would recommend you take at least a cursory look in:
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_600_series#GeForce_600_.286xx.29_series)
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series#GeForce_700_.287xx.29_series)
The easiest to understand metrics would be
* GFLOPS (you won't care about double precision) -> rough estimate for computing power
* TDP -> heat generation aka watt usage (GFLOPS/W -> is it a radiator or computing powerhouse)
Since GFLOPS are meaningless when the bandwidth is not there to feed it - you can assume thous details are at least somewhat adjusted accordingly. Still might look at the Bandwidth column for comparisons (GDDR5 is way better than DDR3).
That way you have something to compare the asked price with.
To give an idea of the variability and relative uselessness of the GT #number (listing GFLOPS):
- GT 610 - 155
- GT 730 - 134-693 (3 variants)
- GT 630 - 311-336 (2 variants)
- GT 640 - 414-803 (5 variants)
- GT 740 - 762 (2 variants)
- GT 650 - 812
- GTX 650 Ti - 1420
- GTX 750 Ti - 1306
Can not say which one is the current sweetspot etc - so, i wont. Also, do not know any significant tech changes well hidden behind code names. Do not know the current ATI vs NVIDIA comparison either - i still suspect that the usual generalization still holds: nvidia is better, but unfortunately pricier.
GDDRx is much better than DDRx and since you can expect games to get ever hungrier on bandwidth - it is something that you should value. Perhaps even more than computing power.
voodoo47 on 13/10/2014 at 19:58
bit late to the party, but what he says. unless you have absolutely no way of supplying external power to the card, that is.
bikerdude on 14/10/2014 at 10:14
Quote Posted by voodoo47
unless you have absolutely no way of supplying external power to the card, that is.
Ah yes, well spotted. Another good reason why the 750 might be useful, no external power needed.
