I need help choosing a new Graphics Card!!

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Davis Goertzen

New Member
I'm planning a new build, and don't know how big of a graphics card to get. I don't play many new games (FS 2004 and Cabela's Trophy Bucks), but I do some video editing, and I want something that will be powerful enough to last for a few years; at the same time, I don't want to over-pay for power I won't use.

I'm also undecided whether or not to go NVidia or AMD; could those of you who actually know (i.e, NOT fan-boys saying "everybody knows *** is better and always has been") give me some input on the pros and cons, and different capabilities, of each? I don't know, maybe they're aimed at slightly different consumer targets, is that possible? Just looking for information.

Thanks in advance, guys.

Davis
 
Davis Goertzen said:
I'm planning a new build, and don't know how big of a graphics card to get. I don't play many new games (FS 2004 and Cabela's Trophy Bucks), but I do some video editing, and I want something that will be powerful enough to last for a few years; at the same time, I don't want to over-pay for power I won't use.

I'm also undecided whether or not to go NVidia or AMD; could those of you who actually know (i.e, NOT fan-boys saying "everybody knows *** is better and always has been") give me some input on the pros and cons, and different capabilities, of each? I don't know, maybe they're aimed at slightly different consumer targets, is that possible? Just looking for information.

Thanks in advance, guys.

Davis
Click to expand...

Budget?
 
Those don't sound like very demanding games, you might do well with a mid level card. Some things that I want to ask you are budget, resolution/monitor size, and what kind of motherboard you will get.(intel or amd based) I have an AMD motherboard, so I would get amd/radeon cards if in the future I wanted to crossfire. Some talk i've heard on the two companies' cards-

Radeon cards:
-Fastest dual gpu's
-Pricey
-Eyefinity- multiple monitor support from one card
-Scales better in Crossfire
-Less power/heat
-Unreliable drivers, so not as stable

Nvidia cards:
-Fastest single gpu's
-Less costly
-More graphics technology(physx, 3dvision)
-More power/heat
-Doesn't scale as well in Sli
-Reliable drivers, stable cards

Desktop graphics cards- architecture designed more towards games
Workstation graphics cards- architecture designed more towards graphic design
 
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Russ88765 said:
Those don't sound like very demanding games, you might do well with a mid level card. Some things to I want to ask you are budget, resolution/monitor size, and what kind of motherboard you will get.(intel or amd based) I have an AMD motherboard, so I would get amd/radeon cards if in the future I wanted to crossfire. Some talk i've heard on the two companies' cards-

Radeon cards:
-Fastest dual gpu's
-Pricey
-Eyefinity- multiple monitor support from one card
-Scales better in Crossfire
-Less power/heat
-Unreliable drivers, so not as stable

Nvidia cards:
-Fastest single gpu's
-Less costly
-More graphics technology(physx, 3dvision)
-More power/heat
-Doesn't scale as well in Sli
-Reliable drivers, stable cards

Desktop graphics cards- architecture designed more towards games
Workstation graphics cards- architecture designed more towards graphic design
Click to expand...

No offense, but I would disagree with a fair portion of that information. Recently AMD GPUs scale better, but thats only the 6XXX series. 2 8800GT's in SLI was a superb set up a few years back. AMD tends to offer better price/performance ratio, mostly at the mid-low range of cards, while nVidia competes much more strongly at the higher end of cards. Power and heat consumption vary a lot between specific cards. The GTX 470/480 ran incredibly hot and power hungry, but the new 570's and 580's run very efficiently for their performance levels. I am also inclined to disagree with AMD having poor drivers. I've heard of an awful lot of people from both sides of the fence with driver issues, its a headache a computer user just has to deal with from time to time. AMD does seem to have a bit of a bad rap as far as drivers are concerned, which may be valid to an extent, but nVidia is a far cry from perfect in that category too :P Finally, as far as the "stable" cards thing goes, I'd say each are equally likely to fail. There is nothing wrong with the production of either brand's cards, and lemons on the consumer level has a lot more to do with the quality control of the company selling them (Sparkle, Asus, Gigabyte etc.) Unless you're referring specifically to stability in the sense of software, in which case, completely disregard that. Again, I'd like to emphasize that I'm not trying to argue with you here, just that my understanding seems to differ from yours and I'm trying to share what I know.

Sorry, back on topic lol. My friend recently bought a 5750 for his low end gaming needs, and the card performs much better than I expected it to. If you're running your games at a fairly low resolution, this card should have zero trouble running them at detailed settings smoothly :) If you're looking for a little more horsepower, the GTX 460 786mb version provides great performance in its price bracket.
 
Probably mid-range gaming card? GTX 460 SE? It should last you 2 years.
I was thinking high-end GTX 570 to last longer, however, it cost $350 at the moment. It may be better to buy new video card every 2 - 3 years
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. I appreciate your input; I'll just try to answer a few things here.

The monitor I plan on using is a 17" LCD, with VGA input (not to worry, I'm totally fine with getting an adapter, if the card doesn't come with one, or doesn't have a VGA output.)

You're right, the games aren't very demanding: FS 2004 is DirectX 8, and Trophy Bucks is DirectX9, so they should be pretty easy to cover.

I would be doing an Intel-based build, using an i7-950, so I don't want to cheap out on a small video card that would turn into a bottleneck. I would want the build to remain somewhat current for a couple years so I don't have to throw it away; but I want to balance that with not getting more horsepower than I'll make use of.

I don't plan on having a dual-card setup; I'd like a single-card solution

I don't watch Blu-ray movies yet, but it'd be nice to have that capability in the future.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Sorry I didn't give more direction with my first post. Keep'em coming!

Davis
 
Ok well you're sort of contradictory here. You don't want wasted power, but you also want something that'll be good for a while. The games you play could be played by the pretty low end GPUs in the modern card market. You also game at a pretty low resolution so that'll make even newer games easier to run. As far as the bottleneck is concerned, you have a pretty powerful CPU, so any card will basically be your bottleneck in games. Any card capable of gaming will be able to easily manage Blu-ray and other HD media, your biggest problem there is having a blu-ray drive and a high definition monitor.

Since you seem to be pretty concerned about your purchase becoming obsolete, so I think I'd recommend a mid-range card. The GTX 460 as I mentioned earlier is a great mid-range performer, depending on how much of a boost you want you may want to choose the 1GB version over the 768mb as I previously recommended. In the same cost range is the 68XX series, which are also fantastic mid-range cards with a little more oomph to carry you through the years. Any of these cards are HUGE overkill for your current games, so maybe that'll encourage you to look at some of the newer and more demanding games :)
 
The gtx460's are already outdated. If you're worried about future proofing, I would not start with previous gen gear even if it is a good card. The current gtx570 is a bit more but a better buy for futureproofing and will tear through games at that resolution. It will run cooler and uses less power than a gtx460, so it does have overclockability going for it. The thing about futureproofing, is that it's next to impossible:

Companies are releasing new cards all the time so you can expect to have a dated or obsolete card before long. It's not a bad card just because it's previous gen, but they do get improved and more advanced as time goes by. There is however, the advantage of getting better prices on older cards when they are replaced with new gen cards.
 
Russ88765 said:
The gtx460's are already outdated. If you're worried about future proofing, I would not start with previous gen gear even if it is a good card. The current gtx570 is a bit more but a better buy for futureproofing and will tear through games at that resolution. It will run cooler and uses less power than a gtx460, so it does have overclockability going for it. The thing about futureproofing, is that it's next to impossible
Click to expand...

GTX 460s are far more energy efficient than GTX 570s. The nVidia site says you need 450w and 24a on the 12v, the 570 requires 32a and a 550w PSU. 570s are fantastic cards, don't get me wrong, but they're total overkill for somebody who doesn't even have a DVI monitor at the moment, especially if they're not looking to break the bank. I'd also argue that release date is pretty irrelevant, I'm not suggesting a GTX 260 here :P. The 460 competes with the 68XX which was only released recently, so I'd say its the performance that matters more so than the generation it belongs in. You can't say that a 460 is a terrible choice for futureproofing and then say futureproofing is impossible. Either way, its far from our decision. What really matters is what the person actually buying the hardware thinks they need :)
 
CardboardSword said:
Ok well you're sort of contradictory here. You don't want wasted power, but you also want something that'll be good for a while. The games you play could be played by the pretty low end GPUs in the modern card market. You also game at a pretty low resolution so that'll make even newer games easier to run. As far as the bottleneck is concerned, you have a pretty powerful CPU, so any card will basically be your bottleneck in games. Any card capable of gaming will be able to easily manage Blu-ray and other HD media, your biggest problem there is having a blu-ray drive and a high definition monitor.

Since you seem to be pretty concerned about your purchase becoming obsolete, so I think I'd recommend a mid-range card. The GTX 460 as I mentioned earlier is a great mid-range performer, depending on how much of a boost you want you may want to choose the 1GB version over the 768mb as I previously recommended. In the same cost range is the 68XX series, which are also fantastic mid-range cards with a little more oomph to carry you through the years. Any of these cards are HUGE overkill for your current games, so maybe that'll encourage you to look at some of the newer and more demanding games :)
Click to expand...

I do realize that I'm sort of waffling back and forth on price vs. performance; sorry about that. I guess if I want a card to last a little while, I just need to bite the bullet and get a decent one.

As far as a monitor goes, yes, I'm quite aware that my monitor is a few years old, and I know that I can't expect it to perform as well as the new ones. But I figure it'll save me some money for the mean-time. And if I positively can't stand it, I'll look at a HD monitor then.

Sorry, I just saw that I forgot to mention a budget. I'm not afraid of spending up to $300 on a card. That would get me up to a 6950 at Newegg, which should be plenty, I'd guess (especially if I were to try out that shader-unlock thing).

Someone else mentioned that he'd use an AMD card(s?) if he was going with an AMD build; do AMD cards work better in AMD boards, and NVidia work better in Intel boards, or what's up there?
 
Davis Goertzen said:
I do realize that I'm sort of waffling back and forth on price vs. performance; sorry about that. I guess if I want a card to last a little while, I just need to bite the bullet and get a decent one.

As far as a monitor goes, yes, I'm quite aware that my monitor is a few years old, and I know that I can't expect it to perform as well as the new ones. But I figure it'll save me some money for the mean-time. And if I positively can't stand it, I'll look at a HD monitor then.

Sorry, I just saw that I forgot to mention a budget. I'm not afraid of spending up to $300 on a card. That would get me up to a 6950 at Newegg, which should be plenty, I'd guess (especially if I were to try out that shader-unlock thing).

Someone else mentioned that he'd use an AMD card(s?) if he was going with an AMD build; do AMD cards work better in AMD boards, and NVidia work better in Intel boards, or what's up there?
Click to expand...

Don't worry about being unsure. If you weren't unsure you wouldn't be here! :P Although it would look like you don't need our help all that much, as you not picked a good card, but a great reason why too (the 6970 bios tweak). The modded 6950 won't quite be as good as a full blown 6970, but for the money you'd save you wouldn't know the difference unless you were running them side by side haha. Any and all of the cards I and others have recommended in this thread will carry you through your eventual monitor upgrade so you have plenty of options at your fingertips.

As far as the matching brands goes? I have heard absolutely nothing solid to make that something you need to worry about. Each company may boast that you should pair their hardware together for better performance, but they just want you to buy all of their stuff. Maybe somebody can contradict me on this one, but I would say go right ahead and use whatever parts you feel are right for you and don't worry too much about the company making them.
 
CardboardSword said:
Don't worry about being unsure. If you weren't unsure you wouldn't be here! :P Although it would look like you don't need our help all that much, as you not picked a good card, but a great reason why too (the 6970 bios tweak). The modded 6950 won't quite be as good as a full blown 6970, but for the money you'd save you wouldn't know the difference unless you were running them side by side haha. Any and all of the cards I and others have recommended in this thread will carry you through your eventual monitor upgrade so you have plenty of options at your fingertips.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my laptop has a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3430, so pretty much anything decent I get now will blow that out of the water. I probably wouldn't even need the bios tweak, at least not for a while. That'd be cool eh; I get an new card, and when it starts to feel a bit "old and tired," I do the bios tweak and get a bit more life out of it.
 
The difference between a 6950 and your laptop will be night and day :) The BIOS tweak seems to give a pretty significant boost too, so long as you overclock the card afterwards the 6970 spec, so if that sounds good to you, then I think you've found your card!
 
You're right, that does sound good. But I just had a thought; I'd like to use one of the Sandy Bridge processors (i5-2500k or i7-2600k) for the proposed build, and I was thinking probably the integrated graphics on them could take care of my (very moderate) gaming needs, eh? Then I'd have the QuickSync feature to provide extra that extra juice for any video editing I do. I'd save a few hundred bucks that way too.
 
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