How to understand graphics cards - Whats good whats not etc

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Morgenmuffel

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#243400 10-Dec-2018 13:58

Hi Guys this started out as one question but rapidly evolved into about 20 and well the kids interrupted with queries, so apologies for the slightly scatter gun questioning

Question 1

Current specs

Windows 10

Intel Core i7 3770 @ 3.40GHz

Intel HD Graphics 4000

16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 662MHz

motherboard B75M-D3H

Ok, up until about 3 months ago i had a GTX 460 that i was given running in my machine, then it suddenly dropped dead, it did everything i wanted, although from memory it was a tad noisy

So i am now using my onboard Intel HD Graphics 4000, whic does most of what i want, but when the sprogs use the machine they can't play some of their games eg Star wars battle front and a few others.

But i am utterly baffled by graphics cards, the numbers seem to be meaningless, i assumed that a graphics card with a higher number would be better, but it seems that often isn't the case especially for the nvidia ones. I have been using a lot of comparison sites gpuboss? and others is there a logical easy way to tell without having to do a huge investigation everytime i see a card on trademe or in the offers and wanted section here.

I am looking at the budget end cards, i don't want to spend much money as i have a truck load of house maintenance jobs and DIY is not in my DNA (although when i do DIY splashes of my DNA have been known to appear in little red puddles).

I don't particularly want to spend more than $60-70 dollars at the max, I mean if my gtx 460 was able to be repaired i'd do that but i am guessing thats not possible or is it a case of disassembling the card putting new paste on and hoping anyway all suggestion on this are welcome, but please remember the budget, i have zero interest in a $1000 card, and most of the higher end games i own will have come with Humble bundle or something so will be a few years old

Question 2 and 3

Kids machines

Dell 530s and some 9500 quad core thingie (both have max ram I think)

They seem to be having a few issues graphics wise with roblox and minecraft

the 530s has a nvs 290 I think

and the quad thingie had an hd4550

looking to ugrade both to HD6450s as they both have small power supplies and this fits within the range they are also $15 each which is in my price range

Question 4

Completely off topic, what is the cheapest Skinny compatible phone that uses a nano-sim as i got a cheap ex-repair zte blade for kid so he could ring us if he needs a lift school etc, but he won't take it to school as his friends phones have been nicked etc, so i thought i'd find an el cheapo second hand $10ish phone, but almost all seem to take the other size of sim

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SpartanVXL

1306 posts

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#2142587 10-Dec-2018 14:52

Without knowing the symptoms the GTX460 is showing, can't really tell you how to fix it. If it was noisy then it probably died from overheating, while it was low power draw compared to it's brethren it still cooked if you left a dusty or dead fan cooler on it.

As for your budget $60-70 isn't going to get anything brand new worthwhile. You're strictly in second-hand, old-gen territory here.

If you want a rough performance estimate heres the order it's been since your GTX 460.

A 460 is just over half a 580

A 580 is roughly a 660

A 680 is +50% a 660

A 770 is equal to a 680 (same card, better memory/cooling)

A 780 is +50% to a 770

A 780ti is +15%~ to a 780

A 970 is around +5% to a 780ti

A 980ti is +50% to a 970

A 1070 is +5%~ to a 980ti

A 1080 is +20%~ to a 1070

A 1080ti is +40-50% to a 1080

A 2080 is equal or +5%~ to a 1080ti

A 2080ti is +40%~ a 2080

It's complicated.

The names don't really mean too much, especially between generations. To really see their specs, go on wikipedia and take a look at things like core count, memory etc. you can usually extrapolate performance if you know a benchmark for one card in a generation.

Right now a 970 second hand on trademe is probably still around the $200 mark. You could probably step down to a 770 for around the $120 mark or so, or get lucky and find a 780/780ti for that price. Otherwise it's searching for a 760/750ti.

For low end cards, anything with a low power draw off of pci-e can suffice. This is why the 1050ti is popular as it is one of the fastest cards without needing an extra power cable (75w off pci-e port).

The HD 6450 is not that much better than the HD4550 you currently have in your children's PCs. The Intel onboard gpu in your rig's CPU is 3x faster. Those cards are literally just for showing a display and not much else, hence why the throwaway price of $15. You would be better served doing similar to your machine and finding a older gen, pci-e powered card from trademe eg. 750ti

Edit: this is also not including AMD gpus which have their own decent lineup of low TDP cards. I'm just not as well versed with it as I am nVidia.

Morgenmuffel

631 posts

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#2142660 10-Dec-2018 16:46

Bother the internet seems to have eaten my reply

Yep, i am definitely looking at second hand, and that list is a big help

As to the kids machines, they do most of what the kids want, but there is just a few strange glitches eg MineCraft is glitchy on the HD4550 machine, but runs beautifully on the 530s with the nvs290 which has a much lower spec all round, so i thought just bumping the graphics performance up a notch might make them a bit more useable

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Gurezaemon

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#2142672 10-Dec-2018 17:15

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

has a list of GPUs in order of power, stretching back into the dark ages, and that is useful for comparison. Scroll down to "Legacy GPU Hierarchy"

Lias

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#2142806 10-Dec-2018 22:06

Gurezaemon:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

has a list of GPUs in order of power, stretching back into the dark ages, and that is useful for comparison. Scroll down to "Legacy GPU Hierarchy"

I've been reading Tom's Hardware for decades and somehow managed to miss that.. cheers, very handy reference.

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Batman

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#2142847 10-Dec-2018 23:30

the rule is the sum of the first 2 digits the higher the better.

any doubt refer to gpu hierarchy chart

Tomahawk66

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#2142875 11-Dec-2018 07:08

Gurezaemon:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

has a list of GPUs in order of power, stretching back into the dark ages, and that is useful for comparison. Scroll down to "Legacy GPU Hierarchy"

Thank you so much for this link. The list is amazingly helpful to total graphics cards newbies like me.

sidefx

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#2142989 11-Dec-2018 10:08

Anandtech Bench is also worth looking at if you want a more detailed comparison of actual benchmarks and performance between cards (also does CPUs, SSDs etc)

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU18/2293

It can be a bit more involved as the benchmarks change over time so you can't always compare very old with very new, but they generally have 3-4 generations available in each year to compare.

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SpartanVXL

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#2143019 11-Dec-2018 10:44

As I mentioned in my first post, it's complicated.

Generally as the numbers go up they perform better but there are always little quirks in some generations of cards.

There are three different models of the GT 730. Two are Kepler based (6xx, 7xx series) while one is Fermi based (4xx, 5xx series). You generally wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at the sticker label which is which unless you knew beforehand.

The GTX 970 has 4GB of vRAM, but the last half GB is on a slower memory bus. You would see this as stutter/framedrop if your games used over 3.5GB of vRAM.

There are 4-6 different cards called Titan (I've lost count), all from various generations of architectures. Some do certain computation workloads better than others. Depends on the architecture.

The list rankings posted before are very good for a quick comparison, but if you're wanting to do certain things be sure to research a particular card before purchasing. There are always the little things with products =)