spec me a graphics card please!

[ik9000]

Folks, help! I'm wayyyy out of date on this stuff. Spec me a graphics card please! Budget ideally <£200 but could do £300 if it is really really worth the extra money (and the extra month of delay).

Uses: Photoshop, sound editing (cubase is generally not GPU intensive SFAIK), 3D CAD including rendering, FEM, gaming (not modern titles although the new half-life does sound tempting), some light video editing (basic stuff for youtube, nothing overly professional)

The one immovable line-in-the-sand is that it needs to be whisper quiet like my current Gigabyte 1GB GTX-460SO, no screaming moaning fans, bleeting, chirping coil-whine, or any such like etc.

Do point me to any good online articles that go into detail on this. I tried googling it but I just get swamped with BS lists of "10 best graphics cards" that just seem to me to be whatever their preferred online merchant happened to be promoting at the time they were written, and no proper comparitive testing or any such like.

If the improvement isn't worth it I'll stick with the 460 - so long as both win7 and win10 will run it nicely (machine will be running both 7 and 10). The drivers I'm on for win7 are optimised for it, but very OoD and win10 will almost certainly reject them for more modern ones which will presumably hamstring the thing given its age.

[DanceswithUnix]

This is my current go-to graphics card: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-Radeon-...dp/B0785Q6DYP/

Cheap, should be about three times faster than your GTX460, plenty of VRAM (that's the 8GB model), nice big fans to keep it quiet and at low load the fans don't spin so it runs fully passive.

My son has one to drive his 4K TV. I have one in the PC downstairs to drive the VR Headset. You can pay a lot more for a little more performance, so I see at as one of these or pay double for a 2060 or RX5600 XT (though I don't know if AMD have sorted the drivers out on those new cards yet).

Requires an 8 pin PCIe power connector, so for my son's old Dell I had to get a cheap SATA to PCIe power adapter cable.

[Zak33]

i think it's worth looking at the AMD RX5500 XT, and in particular the Sapphire versions as it is v v quiet, and in honesty half the time the fans dont even spin

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...pulse/?page=11

they're in the budget, I'd get the 8gig version if I were you, as the 4gig is a tad small

They're subtly good cards

[ik9000]

This is my current go-to graphics card: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-Radeon-...dp/B0785Q6DYP/

Cheap, should be about three times faster than your GTX460, plenty of VRAM (that's the 8GB model), nice big fans to keep it quiet and at low load the fans don't spin so it runs fully passive.

My son has one to drive his 4K TV. I have one in the PC downstairs to drive the VR Headset. You can pay a lot more for a little more performance, so I see at as one of these or pay double for a 2060 or RX5600 XT (though I don't know if AMD have sorted the drivers out on those new cards yet).

Requires an 8 pin PCIe power connector, so for my son's old Dell I had to get a cheap SATA to PCIe power adapter cable.

Interesting - and affordable . I thought I'd heard Polaris ran hot and on the noisy end, but then that could just be NV fanboy hearsay I stumbled over in the forums?

[cptwhite_uk]

It is more power hungry, but not unreasonably so, and can be solved with a sensible cooler.

GTX 1660 Super is worth looking at too (a twin fan version should be good enough). It's about 50% faster than the RX 570. Should cost about £200.

[ik9000]

i think it's worth looking at the AMD RX5500 XT, and in particular the Sapphire versions as it is v v quiet, and in honesty half the time the fans dont even spin

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...pulse/?page=11

they're in the budget, I'd get the 8gig version if I were you, as the 4gig is a tad small

They're subtly good cards

thanks, checking that out too. One thing that's interesting is how last time I bought a GPU you had cards where they were actively cooled, but they'd put effort into using good fans and making sure they ran quiet. As Hexus helpfully recorded: https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...review/?page=9. Best in-class temps and noise from one pre-overclocked mid-range card at £175. So far as I can tell there isn't really a similar equivalent these days. To get low temps go low performance. Or pay lots and accept noise.

My personal estimate, given that it's so quiet vs the CPU fan which is itself rated <20dBa is that the GPU I currently have would beat anything in that table on noise.

[Zak33]

thanks, checking that out too. One thing that's interesting is how last time I bought a GPU you had cards where they were actively cooled, but they'd put effort into using good fans and making sure they ran quiet. As Hexus helpfully recorded: https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...review/?page=9. Best in-class temps and noise from one pre-overclocked mid-range card at £175. So far as I can tell there isn't really a similar equivalent these days. To get low temps go low performance. Or pay lots and accept noise.

My personal estimate, given that it's so quiet vs the CPU fan which is itself rated <20dBa is that the GPU I currently have would beat anything in that table on noise.

yes it's viable that they've all worried less about silence than a decade ago, and it's very right that the most powerful cards need to lose a LOT of heat. But then a top range card is way above £1000 !!!!!

As for the low to mid rangers ... the quiet ones are very very quiety and in all honesty run things very well.

[ik9000]

yes it's viable that they've all worried less about silence than a decade ago, and it's very right that the most powerful cards need to lose a LOT of heat. But then a top range card is way above £1000 !!!!!

As for the low to mid rangers ... the quiet ones are very very quiety and in all honesty run things very well.

Back then the GTX480 was top of line, cost approx £400 and also had to dump a lot of heat. In fact you could warm your bedroom from an SLI pair according to one review. It was noisy too. All that's changed is a £600 mark-up.

[Zak33]

All that's changed is a £600 mark-up.

true story, sadly.

Genuinely the lower range cards are the sweet spot now unless you're on 4k gaming, Sub £200 is a great price point

The 4gb 5500XT is very good.. and at £170 it's top value.
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/sapp...ams-1737mhz-gp

GTX1650 are good too... to be balanced...BUT.. the one I've heard was LOUD because it's aimed as a SFF card and PCB and with only one fan and a short heatsink... it's got a lot of work to do in gaming

[ik9000]

I did some hunting around this w/e and found an old gigabyte nvidia win10 driver for a similar gtx-460-1GB in their range. Works fine with my win10, and the original OC utility installed fine too. I even found some default OC settings at stock voltage mentioned in the old Hexus review which I dialled in for another 5-10% boost without issue. It still scores 70% in passmark (though I imagine the reference baselines are out of date these days). I'll stick with it for now while I look into this more and save up for another few months. (like I originally planned to).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I did some hunting around this w/e and found an old gigabyte nvidia win10 driver for a similar gtx-460-1GB in their range. Works fine with my win10, and the original OC utility installed fine too. I even found some default OC settings at stock voltage mentioned in the old Hexus review which I dialled in for another 5-10% boost without issue. It still scores 70% in passmark (though I imagine the reference baselines are out of date these days). I'll stick with it for now while I look into this more and save up for another few months. (like I originally planned to).

I couldn't link this on OcUK for obvious reasons:
https://forums.hexus.net/retail-ther...ics-cards.html