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Video Card Recommendation

B

bdgtor

n00b
Joined
Sep 26, 2011
Messages
9
Hi Folks,

I was wondering if I could get some recommendations for a new video card. Been out of the loop for the last little bit when it comes to keeping up with hardware as I've got two young sons to deal with now.

I'll be putting this into an older system. eVGA 680i motherboard with a Q6700 processor and 4GB of RAM. Current card is a GeForce GTS450 I believe (I'm at work now, and this is how out of the loop I have been...I forgot the card I have installed at home).

Anyway, the reason for the upgrade is that the video card I currently have is extremely noisy and produces a lot of heat. To the point where it heats up the room if the door is closed. This is not a new phenomenon...it's always been like that...I just haven't had a chance to change it yet.

I'd like to upgrade to something that will give me improved performance, but will also be quieter and cooler. Cost is not an issue, but with that being said, I'd like to keep things in perspective considering that the PC itself is aging, so top end would not likely be worthwhile.

I don't have time to do much gaming anymore, but would like to see if I can manage to find some time for some newer games. So, peformance would also be nice..guess I'm looking for a point where I can get the best value for money, with all things considered, but still have a relatively quiet and cool card.

Oh, I will be using a 24 inch monitor at 1920 x 1200 resolution.

Anyway have any advice?

Thanks,
Bobby
 
New cards are only going to make that worse. The GTS450 is quite a low-end card and as such doesn't use much power or put out much heat. The motherboard and CPU will be the main contributors to the heat in your room and not the graphics card. You won't yet find anything that gives you a real performance boost without using any more power for now. Wait until the HD7 series is released, then you'll see some significant gains. This of course assumes it is a GTS450 you're using, that's quite a recent card (2010 or so) compared to the rest of your system (typically from 2007)
 
My video card is definitely not that young. Sorry about that! I called my wife to check....she says it's actually a 8800GTS. I'm embarrassed....sorry!

That probably makes my original post make more sense, right?

So, with my more accurate information, any suggestions?

Bobby
 
There were three versions of the 8800GTS, but they both used around 140W, which is a bit more than the 110W that the GTS450 uses. You can get something like an HD6850 at 127W, which will offer around a 100% performance increase versus the 512MB version, or 150-170% versus the older and slower 320/640MB versions.
 
680i, Q6700, 8800GTS. Hmm...

Well, a new video card will do you good, but then you will start to get into potential bottlenecking issues because of your CPU. It might be time to look into upgrades for your chipset.

As far as your video card goes, I'd look into either an HD 6870 or GTX 560. Those will both give great performance at your resolution at around $190 or so, or you could look into an HD 6950 1GB for $210 after rebates. But again, your CPU will bottleneck your system and limit performance.
 
bdgtor said:
My video card is definitely not that young. Sorry about that! I called my wife to check....she says it's actually a 8800GTS. I'm embarrassed....sorry!

That probably makes my original post make more sense, right?

So, with my more accurate information, any suggestions?

Bobby
Click to expand...
your wife should join the forum and let you do the cooking. :D
 
THIS

This thing uses 15W! @ idle!

I pretty much have your exact setup except a Q6600 instead of a Q6700. I have 2 460s in SLI, and when I game, I dont hear them above the rest of my rig.

The card is really quiet:

The Bottom Line

To put it simply, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 is a fantastic product. It is priced right; it performs admirably; it is dead quiet; it sips power; it runs cool, and it overclocks like a monster without voltage modification. Even when overclocked, its fan kept it cooler than AMD’s competitor. In three out of the five games we tested, we had a markedly superior gaming experience. In the other two, the GTX easily matched the competition. There was no time in this evaluation whence the GeForce GTX 460 did not set itself apart as a superior product. Even when performance was merely equaled, it was quieter and using less power!
Click to expand...
 
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SpeedyVV said:
The GTX 460 is more quiet, cooler and uses less power for the same use (idle\average\max or gaming).
Click to expand...
No, it's none of those things. That is plainly obvious from reviews. There won't be anything to compare power usage across that many generations, but trust me, the GTX460's TDP of 160W is generous, the real world usage is actually even higher than that.
 
samuelmorris said:
No, it's none of those things. That is plainly obvious from reviews. There won't be anything to compare power usage across that many generations, but trust me, the GTX460's TDP of 160W is generous, the real world usage is actually even higher than that.
Click to expand...
yeah before Fermi, Nvidia used way less than their TDP rating but now they easily exceed it.
 
@bdgtor

The point that I am making is that I know for a fact (owner of GTX 460 and ex owner of 8800 using the same CPU and mobo) that the GTX 460 will give you much better gaming, it is much more quiet and produces less heat)

At MAX power of both boards they both use about 150Watts of power. But if you you have to take into account that at the same settings the GTX 460 will be using a lot less power, as it is a lot more efficient.

A very important use case is at idle where you are not in the heat of gaming battle. In that use case, the GTX460 uses less than 1/2 the power of your old GPU.

Analogy: 1995 Ford Crown Victoria vs 2005 BMW M3. BMW has a lot more power (TDP if you like). But they both use the same mpg rating city\hyw.

BUT!!!! When you need it, the BMW M3 will give up a 13s quater mile. The Crown? 16s.

The good part? The GTX 460 will not cost you and arm and a leg.

PS: DO NOT TRUST ME! Trust real references like I provided you on my 1st link. Also I can provide you with more if you like.

PPS: Reference that 460 max power consumption less than TDP? CHECK.
Reference from HardOCP review saying "Even when performance was merely equaled, it was quieter and using less power!"? CHECK
Reference that 460 min power is 15W? CHECK
Usual Fan Boais trolling without refernces? CHECK

PPPS: I got too much time on my hands? CHECK
 
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Some of the 8800 coolers were dire, so it's no surprise it was cooler, and possibly quieter. The performance difference goes without saying because it's two generations ahead. Your 'it's faster, so it uses less power' logic unfortunately doesn't hold true in the real world, you'll just get a higher frame rate, and you'll still use more power, even though you don't need to.
The GTX460 does use less power at idle, but Fermi's idle loading is nowhere near as good as AMD's, so the difference isn't huge (Idle load is also considerably higher than 15W)
Your car analogy is very poor, I'm not even going to debate that.
 
samuelmorris said:
Some of the 8800 coolers were dire, so it's no surprise it was cooler, and possibly quieter. The performance difference goes without saying because it's two generations ahead. Your 'it's faster, so it uses less power' logic unfortunately doesn't hold true in the real world, you'll just get a higher frame rate, and you'll still use more power, even though you don't need to.
The GTX460 does use less power at idle, but Fermi's idle loading is nowhere near as good as AMD's, so the difference isn't huge (Idle load is also considerably higher than 15W)
Your car analogy is very poor, I'm not even going to debate that.
Click to expand...

You should be banned for quoting wikipedia.

This is not a debate. It is about facts substantiated by reviews of [H]. Why dont you go and tell Kyle his staff sucks donkey balls.

Maybe Kyle will be in the mood to debate you.

Lastly. I promise.

AMD has very good cards, that might be better. I just happen to see this great deal on another thread. Feel free to suggest your favourite brand. I could care less. But, please provide some references.
 
A Q6700 will bottleneck any video card that can run modern games at 1080p unless you overclock it (and there's basically no reason not to).
 
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/10/21/amd_radeon_hd_6870_6850_video_card_review/8

If you can go AMD, go with the 6850; the only reason why the 460 posts better temps on that review is because it had a custom cooling setup, but if you watch the power use at load it asked for 65watts more than the 6850.

The 6850 is posted as a 127watt solution for amd, so with that +65watt on the green side i seriously doubt that it is "only" a 150watt card.


Does my link work good enough?
 
Well, done indeed. Yes 6850 is a better card than the GTX 460. See, how hard is it to provide a reference?

Now just help him find one that is close to $100 and the OP will be all set.
 
SpeedyVV said:
You should be banned for quoting wikipedia.

This is not a debate. It is about facts substantiated by reviews of [H]. Why dont you go and tell Kyle his staff sucks donkey balls.

Maybe Kyle will be in the mood to debate you.

Lastly. I promise.

AMD has very good cards, that might be better. I just happen to see this great deal on another thread. Feel free to suggest your favourite brand. I could care less. But, please provide some references.
Click to expand...

I have no reason to tell Kyle he sucks donkey balls? His article is correct, and you are not...

Also, I quoted wikipedia, because you were calling me on the TDP, not the real world power usage - which was a subsequent post I made. I'm well aware of the risks of using wikipedia as a reference, but is an easy-to-hand list of the TDPs of those cards. Look around and you won't find anything that contradicts those, because they're correct - not everything on wikipedia is wrong.
 
Wow, thanks for all the help folks. Really appreciate it.

Cannondale06, yes, I probably should let my wife do my research for me on the forum. Still embarassed that I forgot what video card I had installed in the system...what makes it worse is that I'm the IT professional, and she's a teacher. :)

I understand what a lot of you are saying about my CPU perhaps being a bottleneck on the system performance. I agree and am willing to upgrade my whole rig if need be. But I am hesitant to do that right now as I have a feeling that I won't have much time to play games for the next little while (my older son is just getting to be independent at 3, but the younger guy is not even 1 yet, so he takes a lot of our time up). Likely it will be another year or two before I will have a chance to devote any significant time to gaming, so my logic was to save the upgrade until that time, when newer and better hardware will obviously be available.

But I have a bit of an upgrade itch and am using the heat in the computer room as an excuse to buy something. So, what I'm hearing is that I shouldn't overdo it, and settle for either an HD6850/70 or a GTX560, as anything more powerful than that would likely be wasted due to my CPU bottleneck.

I'm agnostic when it comes to chipset manufacturers, so can go either AMD or nVidia. So I guess I'll check out some prices (I'm in Canada, so most online prices quoted on the forum don't really apply to me) and determine what the best deal is!

Thanks again for all your help!
Bobby
 
bdgtor said:
Wow, thanks for all the help folks. Really appreciate it.

Cannondale06, yes, I probably should let my wife do my research for me on the forum. Still embarassed that I forgot what video card I had installed in the system...what makes it worse is that I'm the IT professional, and she's a teacher. :)

I understand what a lot of you are saying about my CPU perhaps being a bottleneck on the system performance. I agree and am willing to upgrade my whole rig if need be. But I am hesitant to do that right now as I have a feeling that I won't have much time to play games for the next little while (my older son is just getting to be independent at 3, but the younger guy is not even 1 yet, so he takes a lot of our time up). Likely it will be another year or two before I will have a chance to devote any significant time to gaming, so my logic was to save the upgrade until that time, when newer and better hardware will obviously be available.

But I have a bit of an upgrade itch and am using the heat in the computer room as an excuse to buy something. So, what I'm hearing is that I shouldn't overdo it, and settle for either an HD6850/70 or a GTX560, as anything more powerful than that would likely be wasted due to my CPU bottleneck.

I'm agnostic when it comes to chipset manufacturers, so can go either AMD or nVidia. So I guess I'll check out some prices (I'm in Canada, so most online prices quoted on the forum don't really apply to me) and determine what the best deal is!

Thanks again for all your help!
Bobby
Click to expand...

No sweat, just tell folks in your post you are from Canada, and they will quote Canadian sites.

BTW, I am from Toronto.
 
Indeed, I'm actually from the UK, but because of the dominance of US users at [H] unless stated, I assume that's where people are from, and use component choices accordingly. You have several options in canada, such as newegg.ca, .com and tigerdirect.ca as well as a few others like canadacomputers.
 
SpeedyVV, I'm from Toronto as well. Well, technically from Mississauga I suppose.

samuelmorris, yes, thanks for those recommendations. That's where I generally do my price comparisons (have local presence of .com, tigerdirect and canadacomputers in Mississauga, so I generally choose the best price from those retailers...unless of course newegg.ca is offering a deal that's too good to pass up...but I generally like the instant gratification of in-person purchases). :)

I'm seeing very few HD6850 cards available (all seem to be special order), but am finding many HD6870 cards for about $20 or so more (around the $200 CAD price range) so may end up picking one of those up tonight. Thinking of picking up a reference Sapphire card, as it's the only one where I specifically read in user comments that it is generally quiet. They probably all are though, but am not finding references for that.
 
You're sure it's reference? Reference HD6870s are hard to find these days, rarer still from Sapphire.
 
Actually, no, I'm not sure if it's reference. I assumed it was due to the fact that there are two more versions of the 6870 at the retailer, one with the term Vapor-x attached to it, and another with the term Flex attached to it. Both of those are about $50 more than the one that just says HD 6870.

But maybe the cheaper model is not a reference design either.

Is there any way I can identify if it's reference or not? And are there any advantages of it being reference?
 
It will have an AMD logo at the base of the PCB, and will look identical to this, but perhaps with a different sticker:
Sapphire_HD_6870_282.jpg

Yes, there are advantages to it being reference - it will be more reliable, and it may also be quieter.
 
OK, thanks for the tip. Will see if I can get one. Could have sworn I saw stock, but now that I look again it seems to be gone. :) Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on me.
 
Actually found it again...it is a Diamond, not a Sapphire. Looking at too many video cards today! :)
 
More modern video cards have gotten better at clocking down and lowering voltage at idle, reducing heat and noise significantly.

With the last few generations the heatsinks and coolers on the video cards have improved too, so they are not as noisy as some of the borderline hairdryers of the previous generations.

That being said, if you want decent performance at 1920x1200, there will be no getting away from load heat dissipation. It's going to heat up the room when gaming no matter what.

You can mitigate this by enabling Vsync in games that don't need really high framerates. This will keep the GPU at a lower utilization when not needed above 60fps, and slightly reduce heat output and noise.

All this being said, I don't think you'll be happy with the performance of any card less than the following:

I guess my minimum recommendations would be:

GeForce 4xx series: GTX460 or higher
GeForce 5xx series: GTX560 or higher
Radeon 5xxx series: 5830 or higher
Radeon 6xxx series: 6850 or higher

They are all going to put out some heat during load. No way around that.

I would avoid OEM designs on the 5xxx Radeon and 4xx Geforce (at least above 460) as hose designs tended to be quite noisy at load). HD6xxx and 5xx have gotten better OEM coolers, but 3rd party designs tend to be cooler.

I have two ASUS EAH6970 DirectCU II boards in my rig. Lots of heat at load, but not very much noise. When you see the heatsink you understand why :p

1298842266iGYymnJZ5e_1_15_l.jpg
 
Thanks for the information. Yes, I understand that under load these cards will get hot. That's to be expected I suppose. But I like the way you described the older generation of cards like mine to be borderline hairdyers! Yes, that's exactly what my card reminds me of. It gets hot regardless of the load, and sounds like a hairdryer as well. That's what I'm trying to get away from.

That deal at Microcenter looks great, but I don't think they are here in Canada. Or at least not close to me.

Actually, with all this price research I am doing, I am actually seeing 1GB HD6950 cards (only one type actually - XFX) for only $12 more than what I would be paying for one of the cheaper priced HD6870 cards ($198 vs $210). I realize it will generate more heat under load, but do you folks think I'd be missing out on a much better deal by buying the HD6870? I am assuming that under idle conditions, or low load, that the cards would produce similar heat and noise. And the vast majority of the time the computer will be under those conditions.
 
bdgtor said:
Actually, with all this price research I am doing, I am actually seeing 1GB HD6950 cards (only one type actually - XFX) for only $12 more than what I would be paying for one of the cheaper priced HD6870 cards ($198 vs $210). I realize it will generate more heat under load, but do you folks think I'd be missing out on a much better deal by buying the HD6870? I am assuming that under idle conditions, or low load, that the cards would produce similar heat and noise. And the vast majority of the time the computer will be under those conditions.
Click to expand...

According to Anandtechs bench data for what I believe to both be OEM designs, they idle within 1.5dB of eachother.

Surprisingly - at load - Anand measured the 6950 to be quieter...

I know that a lot of people here like the OEM designs, but I have found that if you like silence, the after market ones tend to be a lot quieter.

The upside of - at least - early OEM 6950's was that they could be flashed to have the same number of SP's as the 6970, for a nice little performance boost. 3rd party designs often lacked the BIOS switch to do this safely, and many more recent chips are hard wired to prevent this.

In your comparison above, I'd definitely go with the 6950. At 49.9dB at load, it's not going to be silent, but it shouldn't be terrible either.

Reference the image that the [H] reviews use to demonstrate noise comparisons
 
i like how everyones talking about the TDP but ignoring the fact that the 460 has a much better cooling solution on it. making it both cooler and quieter even if it is sucking more power.
 
Yes but the reason TDP is being discussed is the effect of heating the room up - no matter how cool the card is, the effect of higher TDP will still be the same, potentially worse if the card cools itself better.
 
Also, once you get whatever card you decide to go with, there are a lot of tweaks you can use to adjust fan speeds so that they only get loud when really necessary.

I like MSI's Afterburner, which has worked with every video card I've tried it on thus far.

In it you can draw a line chart of what fan speed you want at what temperature. If you do your research and find out the max temp for the GPU (people have run the 6950 safely at over 90C)

fan-exponential.png
 
Well raised - my XFX HD4830 is annoyingly noisy on auto, even at idle. With manually forced fan speeds though, it's essentially inaudible at idle, and still very respectable at load.
 
samuelmorris said:
Yes but the reason TDP is being discussed is the effect of heating the room up - no matter how cool the card is, the effect of higher TDP will still be the same, potentially worse if the card cools itself better.
Click to expand...

TDP doesn't really mean much unless you are into designing coolers.

All the TDP represents is the minimum heat dissipation a heatsink/fan needs to be able to dissipate in order to have reasonable assurance that the GPU will function properly during some measure of worst case use (which seems to be less intense than furmark).

While not an unreasonable number to use if you need to know peak power consumption/heat dissipation, it will probably be slightly lower than the true peak using programs that really torture the GPU, but will likely be a fair bit higher than you'd actually see in real gaming.
 
samuelmorris said:
Yes but the reason TDP is being discussed is the effect of heating the room up - no matter how cool the card is, the effect of higher TDP will still be the same, potentially worse if the card cools itself better.
Click to expand...

eh if you get the heat into the air and out of the case your not going to feel it. if it stays on the card it will eventually make every component of the case hot by means of conduction, and then the whole area around the case will be hot.
 
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