New graphics card

[Funkstar]

Help!

I've never been much into gaming, so graphics cards have pretty much passed me by for the past 10 years.

Currently got a ATI 4550 in my low profile desktop system. It's a bit crap these days, what should I replace it with?

I still don't game, but if there is anything that will hardware assist Adobe Creative Cloud that would be awesome. Not looking to spend a fortune, £100 at the absolute max. Passively cooled would be nice, but not essential, as long as it is low profile and can support my two Dell 2408WFPs (1920x1200).

Recommendations?

Cheers

[kalniel]

The direct replacement is pretty much the HD7750 1gb DDR5 low profile edition (under various manufacturers: sapphire etc.), hard to find in stock for sensible prices. Found it at dabs for ~£80:
http://www.dabs.com/products/best-va...ics&origin=pla

But would maybe expect to find it somewhere else cheaper.

Over on the green side the GT 640 is slower but stock situation looks slightly better, eg ~£60:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/GIGABYTE-GV-...068106&sr=1-29

Both will accelerate creative cloud, the AMD card has more compute power, but nVidia probably have slightly more optimised drivers.

[Funkstar]

Thanks for the prompt reply

What's the deal with the AMD naming scheme at the moment? Why are there some x000 cards and some Rx cards?

[kalniel]

Read the Hexus article

Rblah is the new series numbering scheme. HD7000 etc. are the previous ones. Note some Rblah cards are rebrands of HD7000 series chips. nVidia have done the same in the past too - they just run out of nice numbers and have to think of new ways of doing things

[Funkstar]

I figured it was something like that

Thanks for the help dude.

[MrJim]

The direct replacement is pretty much the HD7750 1gb DDR5 low profile edition (under various manufacturers: sapphire etc.), hard to find in stock for sensible prices. Found it at dabs for ~£80

Scan have a 2Gb XFX 7750 at £64 on their 'Today Only' page...the 7770 is £91.19, but that's 1Gb...

[scaryjim]

Scan have a 2Gb XFX 7750 at £64 on their 'Today Only' page...

Not low profile

The Radeon 6450 is actually the nearest replacement card - there's several variants available including eyefinity 3 and Sapphire Flex versions. It uses the same underlying tech as the 4550 but with DX11 support and twice as many shaders. The 7750 is actually a much more powerful card than the 4550 (it's around 4850/4870 performance-wise) and is beautifully implemented, but finding the low-profile ones - at a decent price - is like hunting hen's teeth.

For my money your best option is actually an R7 240: Ebuyer have an XFX at £51 that is low profile and passive (if you can afford the space for the almost 2 slot cooler ). I can't tell if it comes with an HDMI - DVI adapter or not, but that's all you'd need to run your 2 monitors no problems. The card is GCN-based so it's the most recent tech. Other low profile R7 240s are available

[MrJim]

Not low profile

Ah! Didn't spot that...

[kalniel]

For my money your best option is actually an R7 240: Ebuyer have an XFX at £51 that is low profile and passive (if you can afford the space for the almost 2 slot cooler ). I can't tell if it comes with an HDMI - DVI adapter or not, but that's all you'd need to run your 2 monitors no problems. The card is GCN-based so it's the most recent tech. Other low profile R7 240s are available

Excellent call. Won't be as fast, but should still accelerate creative cloud OK.

[MrJim]

Excellent call. Won't be as fast, but should still accelerate creative cloud OK.

Or this one?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-x...FdQgtAoddFYABA

[kalniel]

Or this one?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-x...FdQgtAoddFYABA

Ah so that's where the 7750s are going - rebranded as R7 250s, so yes, good call again. Not passive like the ebuyer one, but doubt it would be too noisy in OPs usage.

[scaryjim]

Excellent call. Won't be as fast, but should still accelerate creative cloud OK.

erm ... the 4550 was an 80 shader part with 64bit DDR3 memory - a 4350 with faster memory, essentially. The R7 240 is a 320 shader GCN part with a 128 bit memory bus. It is massively faster than a 4550.

Ah so that's where the 7750s are going - rebranded as R7 250s, so yes, good call again.

The R7 250 (and R7 240, as it happens) use the Oland core, which only has 384 shaders. The 7750 doesn't (yet) have a direct replacement, although there is an OEM only R9 255 which seems to use the salvaged Cape Verde cores. The recently released R7 250X also uses cape verde, but in its full 640 shader version i.e. 7770.

The 7750 remains the best bus-powered low profile card available, and as I said earlier it's around 4850/4870 performance. The R7 240/250 are probably just a shade behind a 4830/4770, from that generation of cards. Still massively faster than a 4550 though...

[kalniel]

erm ... the 4550 was an 80 shader part with 64bit DDR3 memory - a 4350 with faster memory, essentially. The R7 240 is a 320 shader GCN part with a 128 bit memory bus. It is massively faster than a 4550.

"Won't be as fast" as the 7750.

The recently released R7 250X also uses cape verde, but in its full 640 shader version i.e. 7770.

That was probably what I was thinking of. Goodness sake AMD, your numbering scheme is worse than nVidia's even.

[scaryjim]

"Won't be as fast" as the 7750.

Ah! Yes, that makes more sense

That said, the R7 250 GDDR5 gets a lot closer to the 7750 than you might expect thanks to its much higher core speed.There's probably not enough in it to make it worth AMD releasing a replacement 7750, particularly given how close their product stack already is down that end of the market. Perhaps a Kaveri/Dual Graphics system might be a worthwhile upgrade for me after all...

[Funkstar]

Thanks for all that. I think I understand the numbering

Would there be much practical difference between a R7 240 and a 250 based card?

I know it isn't passive, but this card looks to be a lot faster on paper:
http://www.ebuyer.com/580275-xfx-rad...d-r7-250a-zlf4

Would it be worth the the little extra money and the bit of extra noise?

[MrJim]

Thanks for all that. I think I understand the numbering

Would there be much practical difference between a R7 240 and a 250 based card?

I know it isn't passive, but this card looks to be a lot faster on paper:
http://www.ebuyer.com/580275-xfx-rad...d-r7-250a-zlf4

Would it be worth the the little extra money and the bit of extra noise?

Small fans like that can whine a bit, I guess it depends on its rotation speed though?

Another interesting difference between the suggested cards is the amount & type of RAM they use. In terms of compute performance (with Adobe Creative Cloud), which is better - 1Gb DDR5, or 2Gb DDR3?