Graphics card for occasional gamer?

[=assassin=]

Scan have an 'eco' GTS250 going for £84, seems an alright deal. Miles faster than the GT240. Nowhere near a 5770 of course, but it's a fair bit under £100.

Link: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...Cores-DVI-HDMI

[judge56988]

Thanks for the advice guys.
I've just looked at the XFX GTS250 for £84 - it's got 512MB DDR3 memory, yet for £91 (also at Scan) there is a Gainward GT240 GTS with 1GB DDR5 memory...
So what's fastest?
This is confusing the hell out of me!
Then I saw the passive cooled Asus GT 240 and thought "Yes!" - but that's £100 and only 1GB DDR3.

[Zak33]

If your monitor is up to 22" go 512mb... ( I have a 4870 on a 22" ) and if it's 242 plus go 1 gig.

And ... stop fretting you worry too much.... buy what your heart feels is right cos you will NEVER buy what we ALL think is right...

but for under £100 this year, you get a MONSTER lot of video power in any respect

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The GTS250 is a faster card than a GT240 GDDR5. The GT240 GDDR5 is in many cases slower than a 9800GT.

I assume your PSU is upto the task.

[Scooby]

I would get 1gb 5770:

£111 http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=38291





Or offer this guy £110 for this: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...highlight=5770







Or this one for £95 - £100:http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...highlight=5770

[judge56988]

Thanks for all the advice so far. Here are my thoughts:

5770 - more than I need for occasional playing of a couple of 4 year old games. I'm never likely to get into modern FPS/RPG stuff. I'm over 50!! I might just get a more recent xxxxxx Total War game but the DRM and need to be online when playing puts me right off.

5750 - Seems good value for money, probably more than I need, drivers not good for Pacific Fighters sim and regarded as being generally buggy and inferior to nvidia drivers.

5670 - Right level for my needs I think, driver problems as for 5750

GTS 250 - Old design, high TDP & power consumption, hard to cool quietly, probably faster than I need.

GT 240 - This seems to tick all the right boxes for me, good drivers, cool, low power consumption, CUDA support to help with video encoding and perhaps CAD; perhaps it's overpriced for what it is when compared with the sheer speed of ATi's product.
As to which one, it seems that 1GB DDR5 will be my best bet if I want to run a 24" monitor at a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

Special thanks to Zak33 for his relevant answers to my original post i.e. regarding Pacific Fighters

Happy Easter.

[Antagram]

5670 - Right level for my needs I think, driver problems as for 5750

Not to sway you from your GT 240 decission. But I'm still going strong on my 4670 512MB that was recommended to me over a year ago Although as been stated it probably wouldn't be any good for your flight sims.

Playing at 1680 x 1050 (20" widescreen) I've noticed it was struggling with Dragon Age: Origins as the cut scenes were running around 20 FPS. Although it wasn't that big an issue for me other than seeing the FRAPS counter.

For my next card I was considering a Powercolor 5770 that Hexus showed on a Cebit interview. No auxillary power connector, and passively cooled. Bound to be over your budget though.

[Zak33]

GT 240 - This seems to tick all the right boxes for me, good drivers, cool, low power consumption, CUDA support to help with video encoding and perhaps CAD; perhaps it's overpriced for what it is when compared with the sheer speed of ATi's product.
As to which one, it seems that 1GB DDR5 will be my best bet if I want to run a 24" monitor at a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

think you're sorted then. get it ordered and start playing

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The GT240 1GB GDDR5 is one of the most blatantly overpriced cards under £100! At £80 to £90 it just not worth the money. It only has 96 shaders and 8 ROPS meaning it is crippled.

The 1GB version of the 9800GT Green Edition is a better card. It has 112 stream processors, 16 ROPs and is bus powered too.

You can get the 9800GT 1GB Green Edition for around the same price:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169136

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173760

The Gainward 9800GT is quiet according to modd1uk:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...read-pics.html

An overclocked GT240 GDDR5 1GB is slower than a 9800GT 512MB GDDR3 according to TechPowerUp.



The 1GB version will be faster still.

The 9800GT is also better for non gaming use too!!

Look at this review for instance:

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/evga_g...t/page_6.shtml

The 9800GT destroys an overclocked GT240 for video encoding and hence will be better in many tasks which use CUDA.

[Zak33]

best do what CAT says or we'll never ever hear the last of it.

[judge56988]

The 9800GT destroys an overclocked GT240 for video encoding and hence will be better in many tasks which use CUDA.

First let me say that I do appreciate your help, but;
I looked at that page you linked to:
GT 240 -- 7.26 mins
9800GT -- 6.36 mins
That's not really what I would call "destroyed".

Then I read the rest of the review and lo and behold...

NVIDIA and EVGA have really put out an impressive graphics card with the GeForce GT 240.

You are of course correct about frame rates, there's around a 25% - 30% increase with the 9800GT however what is more important to me than sheer speed is the fact that the GT 240 is built on a 40nm process as opposed to a 65nm process which allows for much lower power consumption.
Looking at page 28 of the techPowerUp review that you linked to, the idle consumption is 12W vs. 35W and the max consumption is 51W vs. 124W.
That means that it will be much easier to cool quietly and it will use less electricity, which is good for both my wallet and the environment.

(As an analogy, I suppose that's why I've got an Audi A4 Quattro, even though it's actually slower than the cheaper Subaru Impreza - also 4WD of course. The Audi is quite fast enough for me!)

If I was an out and out gamer I'd just stick a GTX 295 in there and have done with it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

First let me say that I do appreciate your help, but;
I looked at that page you linked to:
GT 240 -- 7.26 mins
9800GT -- 6.36 mins
That's not really what I would call "destroyed".

Then I read the rest of the review and lo and behold...


You are of course correct about frame rates, there's around a 25% - 30% increase with the 9800GT however what is more important to me than sheer speed is the fact that the GT 240 is built on a 40nm process as opposed to a 65nm process which allows for much lower power consumption.
Looking at page 28 of the techPowerUp review that you linked to, the idle consumption is 12W vs. 35W and the max consumption is 51W vs. 124W.
That means that it will be much easier to cool quietly and it will use less electricity, which is good for both my wallet and the environment.

(As an analogy, I suppose that's why I've got an Audi A4 Quattro, even though it's actually slower than the cheaper Subaru Impreza - also 4WD of course. The Audi is quite fast enough for me!)

If I was an out and out gamer I'd just stick a GTX 295 in there and have done with it.

The Green Edition 9800GT is built on a 55NM process and is bus powered. The TPU review is stating power consumption figures for the 65NM version which needs a PCI-E power connector.

Hence you are looking at much lower power consumption. The maximum amount of power that the PCI-E slot can provide is 75W.

Also the TPU review shows the framerates for the 9800GT 512MB version which means in some games the frame buffer will not be enough at 1920X1200 especially if you use AA. This is why I linked to the 1GB version of the 9800GT on Ebuyer.

The 512MB version of the GT240 even has lower performance.



The 9800GT is also faster for CUDA based operations all for the same price. This means that with the GT240 GPU accelerated applications will take longer to complete meaning that that overall energy consumption for the GT240 GDDR5 will probably be more than a 9800GT Green Edition.

[judge56988]

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Sorry!

I think that eating a whole chocolate Easter egg just before I posted probably did not help.

[Zak33]

judge... you're a star for putting up with us all so long

CAT.... well, you genuinely do live and breath this stuff so fair play on your overal knowledge.

And to you both.. this has been the best thread for weeks, in hardware, because:

A) it's been polite
B) it's been useful
C) everyone has READ the requirements and then had a debate
D) judge has a choice of just a couple of cards now.

I say now: you won't do wrong on any of these final choices.

[Zak33]

The GT240 1GB GDDR5 is one of the most blatantly overpriced cards under £100! At £80 to £90 it just not worth the money. It only has 96 shaders and 8 ROPS meaning it is crippled.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...STRK:MEBIDX:IT

£69:61 delivered inc vat. (with a few more quality posts he gets Free Deliv from Scan.) it's a GDDR 3 card.. I see no need for GDDR 5 to be honest.

I am sure I'm right... but CAT DOES know more about this stuff than I

BUT.. in experience terms.. ie actual useage only last week, I installed a 220 GT with 1gb and it ran Dungeons and Dragons online, on a S939 Dual Core, at max graphics settings, at 1280x1024.
And it plays IL-2 as well as my 4870 does.