How does my video card stack up today?

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fubak

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jul 13, 2001
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Is there a tool/website out there that will compare my video card with today's video cards? Whether it uses calculations per second, 3dMark scores, benchmark results, etc... I'm just looking for an easy way to see how old my video card is compared to newer cards.

Anything out there?
 
You could start by looking at recent benchmarks that may include your card in the review ? You don't even say which card you have, so it's not easy to tell you how it stacks up against today's cards.

Synthetic benchmarks can be used to more or less compare an array of cards in a group of the same tests, with predefined behavior. However, your best index for performance is always running a game. If your card can't handle a "lightweight" game such as CoD 4 or HL2, with all the settings maxed @ anything above 1280x1024, then it's severely outclassed by anything that's considered mid-low end today i.e. 9600 GT, HD 4670, etc.
 
It's a GeForce 8600GT, but the post was more of an inquiry to see if a tool like that exists. I know that every card supports different APIs so it's hard to compare, but you would think that there would still be a way to compare them.
 
fubak said:
It's a GeForce 8600GT, but the post was more of an inquiry to see if a tool like that exists. I know that every card supports different APIs so it's hard to compare, but you would think that there would still be a way to compare them.
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wth are you talking about?

anyways, tom's hardware has a comparator, I'll assume you can punch a URL in and click a few links in logical sequence, at least I would hope

as far as "how is an 8600GT compared to modern cards?" -> not so great, depending on what games you're intending to run, an upgrade might not be a bad idea
 
obobski said:
wth are you talking about?

anyways, tom's hardware has a comparator, I'll assume you can punch a URL in and click a few links in logical sequence, at least I would hope

as far as "how is an 8600GT compared to modern cards?" -> not so great, depending on what games you're intending to run, an upgrade might not be a bad idea
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1) I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about, unless 3dfx made a new glide card?

2) 8600gt is worse than not so great, seriously compared to how the 7600 was to 7800/7900 the 8600 was gimped hard.

A 4870 or Gtx260 would be a massive improvement for a small amount of money, if you absolutely must have dx11 then a 5770 is a cheap solution, even the 5750 would blow your 8600 away.

It all depends on what settings you want to play at, how good the rest of your system holds up/size of monitor and how much you want to spend.
 
Thanks for the Tom's Hardware recommendation. That's what I was looking for!
 
e-geek said:
1) I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about, unless 3dfx made a new glide card?

2) 8600gt is worse than not so great, seriously compared to how the 7600 was to 7800/7900 the 8600 was gimped hard.

A 4870 or Gtx260 would be a massive improvement for a small amount of money, if you absolutely must have dx11 then a 5770 is a cheap solution, even the 5750 would blow your 8600 away.

It all depends on what settings you want to play at, how good the rest of your system holds up/size of monitor and how much you want to spend.
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I have an Intel Core 2 Duo e6750 2.66Ghz and 4GB RAM running on a Gigabyte P35-DS3L. And I'm running Win7 x64 Ultimate.
 
if your a couple of generations behind on video cards. you can bet your behind compared to others.
 
knothead34 said:
if your a couple of generations behind on video cards. you can bet your behind compared to others.
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On [H] forums yes.

If it is fine for what you need it for then don't waste your money, if you cant run what you want at the settings that you want then it is time to think about an upgrade.

OP has a 8600gt so it doesn't look like performance is the highest up the list, and i agree $/performance is a major factor for alot of ppl in todays economy.
 
The games I am currently running are COD4, Company of Heroes, DoW, etc. Not really the latest and greatest, but they are pushing my card pretty far. I avg around 40FPS in COD4 on my 22" WS monitor. I run around 1280x768 resolution with medium settings.

Would a newer card really give that much of a boost or would I need more than that?
 
fubak said:
It's a GeForce 8600GT, but the post was more of an inquiry to see if a tool like that exists. I know that every card supports different APIs so it's hard to compare, but you would think that there would still be a way to compare them.
Click to expand...

A 8600 GT is not so good nowadays, since it's rather low-endish. Anything above 1280x1024 andyou won't get any acceptable framerates, even in the games I mentioned above.

And what do you mean by "every card supports different APIs" ?
 
fubak said:
The games I am currently running are COD4, Company of Heroes, DoW, etc. Not really the latest and greatest, but they are pushing my card pretty far. I avg around 40FPS in COD4 on my 22" WS monitor. I run around 1280x768 resolution with medium settings.

Would a newer card really give that much of a boost or would I need more than that?
Click to expand...

Whoa, a $100-$150 card would max out COD4 @ 1680x1050 easily. (I'm assuming that's the native res of your 22")

No brainer upgrade provided you have the $$.
 
Silus said:
A 8600 GT is not so good nowadays, since it's rather low-endish. Anything above 1280x1024 andyou won't get any acceptable framerates, even in the games I mentioned above.

And what do you mean by "every card supports different APIs" ?
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I clarified this in a later post, but I was talking about DirectX 9/10/11, etc. I'm not nearly as well versed on video cards as I used to be, so forgive my ignorance :)
 
What is the max resolution of your monitor? You should pick up a 5750. It is around $120.
 
fubak said:
The games I am currently running are COD4, Company of Heroes, DoW, etc. Not really the latest and greatest, but they are pushing my card pretty far. I avg around 40FPS in COD4 on my 22" WS monitor. I run around 1280x768 resolution with medium settings.

Would a newer card really give that much of a boost or would I need more than that?
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Yes, of course. Anything above a 8800 GT/HD 4830 will yield you a massive performance increase at that resolution. Not to mention you will be able to bump those settings to high.
 
Here, a review with a recent video card in the low-end for CoD4:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GT_220/1.html

Your card is not faster than the 9500GT in review.

Looking at the 1920x1200 (sure it's not 1080, but 1200 is slightly more taxing anyway),

cod4_1920_1200.gif
cod4_1920_1200.gif




Company of Heroes :
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GT_220/9.html

You can pick up a 4870 for a decent price and it'll give you the performance you need.
 
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fubak said:
I clarified this in a later post, but I was talking about DirectX 9/10/11, etc. I'm not nearly as well versed on video cards as I used to be, so forgive my ignorance :)
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No need to apologize. The point of a forum is precisely to try and inform, even though lately it's basically far from that...

Anyway, any card over a GeForce 8 series and ATI HD 2000 series, supports DX10. And recently ATI introduced their DX11 line up. But obviously any of these cards will run DX9 games too. In fact, DX9 is still the base for all the games in the market

If you want to improve your gaming performance, definitely look at any card equal to or above a 8800 GT/HD 4830. This includes the GeForce GTS 250 / HD 4850 / HD 5750, for something at a good price (< $130). It also includes more powerful cards, such as the GeForce GTX 260 / GTX 275 / HD 4870 / HD 4890 / HD 5770, which can all be found for no more than $200. Obviously there are even more powerful cards, but you didn't disclose your budget, so I only include the ones with appealing prices.
 
Yes, it's called 3dmark vantage. After you perform the benchmark, you can 'submit' your results and compare it to how other people's setups did.
 
fubak said:
Directx 9/10/11, OpenGL, OpenCL, etc. is what I was referring to.
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these are backwards compatable though, in other words if the card supports DirectX 10, it will also support DirectX 9, and so on, the game isn't automatically rendered in whatever the best/latest API the card supports, instead its rendered in whatever its written to use (some games do give you the option, for example Half-Life 2 can use DirectX 8 or 9 (I think it supports 7 as well, but I've never bothered to look, been a while too))

so you can still compare cards performance in the same application, there will just be some things that a newer card might have over another board

for example DirectX 10 or 11 support (honestly aside from arguing on this board, it means nothing, less than nothing uses DX11 and almost as many titles use DX10, this doesn't mean avoid cards because of the newer API support, but realize it doesn't really mean that much in real world usage)

and honestly, based on reviews, and pricing, forget the 5770, get a 4870 while they're on the way out, you'll save some money, and get comparable performance (if not better)

or just go from silus' post, the GTS 250 wouldn't be a bad grab either
 
fubak said:
Is there a tool/website out there that will compare my video card with today's video cards? Whether it uses calculations per second, 3dMark scores, benchmark results, etc... I'm just looking for an easy way to see how old my video card is compared to newer cards.

Anything out there?
Click to expand...


Not sure if this is the type of thing you're looking for but you can compare the basics on quite a few cards on this website:

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php
 
I just usually read reviews of whats going on in the videocard world. I know that there is alot of benchmark stuff on the web. Such as http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/gpu_video_cards/ these guys can pretty much tell you were your cards at. Besides you might like to run your native resolution on your LCD. FPS is life online (COD4) 60+. As far as a tool to compare stuff....3DMark!
 
Hey fubak, what processor are you running anyways? Since you do have the very outdated 8600gt, I am guessing not a core 2 duo or even athlon x2? You don't want to throw an HD5770 in there though, just because there are cheaper options that would match the system better.
 
aZn_plyR said:
Hey fubak, what processor are you running anyways? Since you do have the very outdated 8600gt, I am guessing not a core 2 duo or even athlon x2? You don't want to throw an HD5770 in there though, just because there are cheaper options that would match the system better.
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He did say earlier.

fubak said:
I have an Intel Core 2 Duo e6750 2.66Ghz and 4GB RAM running on a Gigabyte P35-DS3L. And I'm running Win7 x64 Ultimate.
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So yeah a 5770 seems like a good, sensible upgrade. Depends on the power supply though, I'd say at least 25A total on the 12 volt rail.
 
I'll have to check my PS, can't remember what I put in it 2 years ago.
 
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