[Kyanos]

So I'm looking into buying a new video card to get an old PC up and running. I want to stay under $200-ish Canadian, paid $200 for the whole PC 2 years ago. I want to toss this in behind my TV, as a media PC / home network extra storage / occasional gaming. I'd like to run Polymer again, my laptop (currently my only machine) is AMD and definitely doesn't like Polymer.

So far I think I'm going for Nividia's GTX650-E-1GD5 from ASUS at Walmart for $144.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

[Tea Monster]

Nowadays I'd say make sure it has DVI out. Apart from that, if you are going to be playing with Cycles, make sure you have as much VRAM as you can get away with. 2 will be fine for gaming, more if you are doing rendering.

[Kyanos]

Thanks, and yeah this one has DVI and HDMI so thats good, but only 1GB. I would like to find something better but most cards the next step up are actually 2 or 3 steps up in price range, like $400+. This PC may be dead and I may just be tossing money, so $200 is my limit on a Video Card to try to get this ol' PC running again.

Added:
They have a 2GB version of the same card, probably going with it, 20 bucks more.

[Forge]

your lag is going to be with that 128 bit memory interface.

1GB video memory 192 bit card is better than a 2GB 128 bit card


i don't know what the exchange rate is, but something from this page should do (i not recommending shopping from there, just the cards on the page):
http://www.newegg.co...=1&name=192-Bit

[Person of Color]

[Mr.Deviance]

Drek, on 24 March 2014 - 07:41 AM, said:

So I'm looking into buying a new video card to get an old PC up and running. I want to stay under $200-ish Canadian, paid $200 for the whole PC 2 years ago. I want to toss this in behind my TV, as a media PC / home network extra storage / occasional gaming. I'd like to run Polymer again, my laptop (currently my only machine) is AMD and definitely doesn't like Polymer.

So far I think I'm going for Nividia's GTX650-E-1GD5 from ASUS at Walmart for $144.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Isn't a 560ti better than a 650? I think it is. If you can find a 560 under $200 get it. If not then I guess you can either look for amd cards which usually pack more hadware for the buck than nvidia but also expect shitty traditional ati drivers to forever plague your experience and make your superior amd hardware perform vastly inferior to nvidia's hardware.


Later edit:
Yes, I was right, the 560ti is indeed much better than a 650
http://www.hwcompare...eforce-gtx-650/

[Forge]

most of those comparisons are outdated. they're running a 560ti card with a 256 bit bus speed vs. a 650 card with only a 128 bit bus speed
like these:
http://www.gpureview...1=681&card2=641
http://www.hwcompare...rce-gtx-650-ti/


A 560ti will kill a run of the mill 650 (like the one mentioned in the O.P.)

's why i mentioned:
your lag is going to be with that 128 bit memory interface.

1GB video memory 192 bit card is better than a 2GB 128 bit card


He should get a 256 bit card, or at least a 192 bit.

[Person of Color]

Mr.Deviance, on 18 May 2014 - 12:53 PM, said:

If not then I guess you can either look for amd cards which usually pack more hadware for the buck than nvidia but also expect shitty traditional ati drivers to forever plague your experience and make your superior amd hardware perform vastly inferior to nvidia's hardware.

Horrible advice, my Radeon 6970 had better drivers than my current 770.

Nvidia is great if you like terrible compute performance. And no Mantle. The whole industry is going Radeon anyway. Who do you think is powering the next gen consoles? The only reason I bought Nvidia was because my power supply failed and took out my old card during the Radeon Litecoin shortage.

[Hendricks266]

I got a 660 over Black Friday, and it's been pretty nice. Didn't even plan to do any mining but I got 65000 DogeCoin off of free dorm electricity.

Protected by Viper, on 18 May 2014 - 01:36 PM, said:

And no Mantle.

Mantle ain't shit. See also: Glide, S3 MeTaL, Rendition RRedline, PowerVR...



"MUH DRIVERS."

DirectX 12 should be solid, and OpenGL will follow.

[Person of Color]

You know the 780ti is faster to begin with, right?

The biggest issue with those higher level API's like DirectX and OpenGL is that they rely on the CPU to make draw calls which is crazy resource intensive. Aside from Mantle there is no way to program directly to the metal. DX12 is an improvement but it isn't full access like Mantle is. My CPU is overclocked far enough that I wouldn't see much of a benefit from Mantle.

I just built my friend a nice ass PC with an i5-4670k and an R9-280x. It's a much nicer than piece of hardware than the 770 now that prices have (almost) stabilized again. $320, 1GB more VRAM than Nvidia and better all around performance...and it was a name brand (XFX).

My biggest complaint about Nvidia is that they are selling products based on their name, false brand loyalty, and then they are overpricing them. Like I said before they are inferior to Radeons in every way save for power consumption, and their dual GPU support is a bit better. They rely on the "OMG RADEON DRIVERZ SUCK" meme to push cards these days.

[Forge]

[Person of Color]

[Tea Monster]

If you want to play games, Radeon will do, but if you want to actually get some work done with Blender, Maya or Photoshop, then CUDA is the only game in town.

[Person of Color]

Wow, I can't believe those still use CUDA. You'd think they'd have OpenCL support considering how weak Kepler is at GPGPU. It's like leaving free performance on the table.

[Kyanos]

For the record, i said fuck it and am still rockin' my 2010 HP Compaq. I ripped the 2 HDD outta that old PC and have it stashed in the basement. Spent 13 bucks on USB to SATA/IDE cable.
Score:
1 for my wallet - 0 video card producers

So I never see lights in Duke or play ROTT2013. There are worse fates

[Forge]

Protected by Viper, on 19 May 2014 - 05:22 AM, said:

Wow, I can't believe those still use CUDA. You'd think they'd have OpenCL support considering how weak Kepler is at GPGPU. It's like leaving free performance on the table.

my 650ti has OpenCL 1.1 CUDA as well as CUDA 3.0 support.
not tech savvy to know if it's the same thing or not
it's "off" by default, but can be "turned on"
at least GPU-Z is reporting it as available:full support after i "enabled" it

[Kyanos]

So, I'm all over the place. I shelled out a few shekels after all. Got an Asus NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 2GB card coming. Came out at $108, $125cdn after tax, from best buy.

I formatted the old HDD's, I get the pleasure of reinstalling Windows now.

[Person of Color]

Yeah do yourself a favor. Return that overpriced piece of shit to Best Buy and get a real video card.

http://www.newegg.ca...N82E16814121714

[Forge]

go a little cheaper:

http://www.newegg.ca...N82E16814125510

[Person of Color]

Good call. I'm only awake due to Dexedrine right now lol. Johnny Cash's drug of choice.

[Kyanos]

BUMP!!

More choices, I'm so torn. want more RAM. what do i do??

info, i got 2@1GB DDR2 ram sticks in my mobo, I want a new mobo but I'm not buying one. Maybe someday.

Anyways, should I buy 4GB shitty ram at 80 bucks and swap it out, or can I cheap out and buy 2GB for $40 and put it in beside my current 2 sticks.

^
Nevermind, my old RAM is really slow, 400mhz, and the new sticks are 800mhz, so I'm gonna go with a straight up replacement.

[Person of Color]

What processor in in this thing?

[Kyanos]

Intel duo core 3.0 (dp35dp board)
It stays till the next big purchase, mobo & i7 & at least 8gb ddr3
Probably never happen, probably gonna build one from scratch, or buy new. This case is tuned and I literally have duct tape covering up broken off pieces, I like it.

[Person of Color]

That processor isn't useless yet, I upgraded to a 2.8 I ran at 3.0 in my shitty Asus laptop right before the board decided to only post 1/5th of the time. Gotta love the Chinese.

Also, your so called "old" ram, which is DDR2-800 (400MHz clock, 800 effective) is more than enough for that setup. A 3.0GHz Core 2 Duo will not be bottlenecked by DDR2, period.

Case in point, The Commander bought DDR3-2166 to run with a locked multiplier Ivy Bridge i7. He should have just burned his money. You don't need that shit unless you're running a Haswell at 4.5GHz+ on water cooling, and even then, you'd be better off with 1866.

[Kyanos]

Yeah the more I think of upgrading further, I seriously think this box will take me through till 2016 and the next gen processors. I don't really push it on the graphics end, it handled ROTT 2013 well, which is very heavy CPU usage, got up to 70 C. though and maxed out that 640 too I bet. IMO the only possible game I may truly miss out on with this rig is the new DooM, I hope it's good enough that I miss it.

For the record, I'll say Polymer runs at a steady 60fps in the first episode with HRP, with those sometimes small lags seeing a new texture for the first time at the wrong moment, like a fire fight with lights all over.

[Person of Color]

70c on a C2D?!

Holy shit...throw some fresh thermal gel on that bitch.

[Kyanos]

It was. I just learned what thermal gel was when I put that video card in. The fan was loose, and my card hit 90 and forced a shutdown... oops...

now that I think about it, it may just be why she runs a little hot now, but ROTT is very very cpu intense.

[Person of Color]

With a stock Intel cooler you shouldn't even be approaching 70c...