Minimum frame rates?

[andy572]

A few threads I read here earlier in the week related to less than high-end cards. The recent questions were for cards that were to be bought to 'get by' until moving to a something faster later in the year.

A couple of things struck me across the threads.

The first was that minimum frame rates weren't referred to.

If using a quad core CPU (as I am about to with an i5-2500K), is there not an advantage with cards of a better spec when it comes to maintaining more consistent frame rates?

That takes me to cost. Unless I'd missed something in every thread, the second point was the option of second-hand cards.

I read through the forum to seek related experience this week as I'm looking at GTX 670 cards and above for my own build. Especially below the GTX 970 tier, they appear to compare well with current-gen cards. I've gained the impression that the cards I'm considering are great at 1080p or below, so it seemed odd that they didn't feature in replies. Considering the spec and costs of new cards, even as the interim purchase that some forum members had in mind, aren't Nvidia 600 and 700-series cards or the AMD equivalents worth considering as well?

[Phage]

At 1080p. Certainly.
I just bought a second hand 680 for my son. They're going for around £85.

[DanceswithUnix]

We generally look up a few benchmarks in these discussions and they should include some minimums. eg: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1349?vs=1333

There you can see the 670 compares quite well with an R9 285, although the minimums are in favour of the 285. So they are considered, and if the discussion gets sticky people dig out frame pace graphs showing how many milliseconds each frame takes to render and percentage of frames taking longer than a couple of frames times to render as they really make the game seem jerky.

But overall, there are some people on here who are really into second hand gear and some like me who are really into buying a card with a good warranty and don't consider second hand to be a good risk. Similar with overclocking, like second hand I have done it in the past but now feel life is too short to be tracking down stability problems and I will pay a bit more for low effort returns and what should be a longer life product as I know no-one has abused it.

So given you can buy a new R9 380 with warranty for about £130 delivered, your almost equivalent GTX 670 would have to be really cheap to tempt me and I would have to personally know and trust the person selling it.

[abaxas]

If you want framerate you switch off eye candy.

Any serious games player will run the game in whichever mode gives the best perf and best visability. This is usually the lowest setting.

[kalniel]

Any serious games player will run the game in whichever mode gives the best perf and best visability. This is usually the lowest setting.

Games competitor I think you mean? You can be a serious games player and have your enjoyment increased by the eye candy because you're not competing with anyone.