Thread: Choosing A Graphic Card For Your PC ?

Ok , I am writing a Guide to Choosing your graphic card after seeing scores of Doubts and the ensuing false 'expert' advices on them ......My aim is to educate the readers in very simple English on the very basic attributes of a GPU and also introducing the basic associated Lingo [words] so they are fully capable of choosing thier own card.

A common misconception regarding video cards is that they are strictly used for video games; a misconception that companies take advantage of in order to sell their products by advertising their products as if they were in fact video consoles. Video cards instead have a much broader range of capability. Being specialized for video, output video cards improve what a computer monitor displays. As well, they play a very important role for graphic designers and 3D animators, who tend to require optimum displays for their work as well as faster rendering in order to efficiently tone up their work.
-wikipedia

What is a GPU ?
A GPU is a unit which does all the graphics related processing . It has its own graphical processor and sometimes its own ram and its own cooling solution like a fan

Steps For Choosing a Graphic card

Step1 : Determine your Budget

Step2 : Find out the specification of your PC like what Motherboard are you using ?

Step3 : With that information Decide Whether you would like to buy a Dedicated Graphics card .
What is a dedicated Graphics card ? (What is Integrated and Dedicated Graphics solution ?)

What type of Card do you want AGP or PCI-E ?
What is AGP and PCI-E (What is PCI and AGP interface/slots ?) ?

Step4:Next Choose whether you want a NVIDIA or ATI card

Step5:Next Choose which particular card [depending on your budget]you want
Understanding Nvidia's naming system (Nvidia Graphic card Naming system)

Step6:You might also want to choose to SLi your new card to your older card
SLI and CrossFire ? (What is meant by Nvidia SLI and ATI CrossFire ?)

Step7 : Check to see if you r happy with the specification of your Chosen card
[Check Google for review's on your chosen card] !

My Recommendation for a moderate Budget card

Choose a card among the
Nvidia 7 series, Nvidia 8 seies Nvidia 9 series , Nvidia 10 series [also known as GTX200 series]

I would recommend either a 8 series card or GTX200 series card

Note : GTX series uses PCI-E2 slots

Specific cards i would recommend are [according to price vs Performance ratio ]

1. Geforce 8800GT (GDDR3) [called the best card for economically challenged gamers ] And before you look down upon it i ll tell you it costs Rs 11,000
2. Geforce GTX260 (GDDR3)
3. Geforce GTX280 (GDDR3)
4. Geforce 9800GT (GDDR3)
5. Geforce 8600GT (DDR2 , GDDR3) [Cheapest in this list]

All the above are 100% Directx10 compatible cards

What is Directx ?


Enjoy!

I have a doubt. My Graphics Card is GeForce 6200+ LE 256 MB and system RAM memory is 1024 MB. So can I play any games that requires 256 MB minimum memory if I upgrade my RAM to 2-3 GB ? I mean is it necessary to upgrade my Graphics Card to a newer version ?

Edit: I mean 256 MB minimum Graphics Card memory.

Originally Posted by Archer

I have a doubt. My Graphics Card is GeForce 6200+ LE 256 MB and system RAM memory is 1024 MB. So can I play any games that requires 256 MB minimum memory if I upgrade my RAM to 2-3 GB ? I mean is it necessary to upgrade my Graphics Card to a newer version ?

Yours is an AGP card right ?

If so if you want to upgrade your card you will have to upgrade your whole system as your motherboard does not have a PCI-E2 or a PCI-E slot [Refer to my PCI thread]

As all the components are attached to your motherboard you ll end up upgrading your whole system .

This is not a good time to upgrade your system imo as Due to previous years's Technology boom Technology keeps changing every few months/years .

AGP has been outdated by PCI-X , PCI-E and then PCI-E2 and by 2010 Intel is planning to release PCI-E3 based motherboards .

So i would recommend you to wait till PCI-E2 based motherboards become mainstream in India .[Atleast 2-3 years] Before you upgrade .

You can upgrade your ram for now ... it ll def give you a performance boost

I will post after checking it.

8800GT is outdated. ATI Radeon 4850 is the card to get. Its available at 10000.

I'm jus an occasional gamer and I have PCI-Express slot

Can u suggest any nVidia or ATi card within 2k - 3k.

For about 3k, I dont think you will get anything better than 8600gt

Originally Posted by harsham05

8800GT is outdated. ATI Radeon 4850 is the card to get. Its available at 10000.

Mad cap 8800GT costs Rs 11,000 and you call it outdated :lol: :lol:
Reality Check
We live in India . And in India very few people own an 8 series card [Talking about that General population]

You obviously don know about Nvidia cards

[Refer post no 10 for further arguments]

Originally Posted by newprouser

I'm jus an occasional gamer and I have PCI-Express slot

Can u suggest any nVidia or ATi card within 2k - 3k.

Originally Posted by The Sorcerer

For about 3k, I dont think you will get anything better than 8600gt

And 8600GT will do very well for occasional gamers ..... Perfect for you ..... You can also use it for heavy duty gaming .... just a year ago it was one of the best card [Before the release of 9 series and GTX series [released in a space of 1 year !]

It was Nvidia's marketing ploy

Originally Posted by newprouser

I'm jus an occasional gamer and I have PCI-Express slot

Can u suggest any nVidia or ATi card within 2k - 3k.

raise the budget a little bit more and get a 8600gt 512mb. get 2gb ram if u havent got that already (i dont). and u will have a mid-level gaming pc.

Ok i did a little research .
ATI HD 4850 is based on a new architecture . Its a very good card and unlike what Harsham said is classed along with 8800GT and 8800GTX . It gives better performance when compared to 8800GT .

But wait , not for free ! . ATI 4850 costs Rs 3000 more ! .So if you can afford it !.

Nvidia 8800GT 512MB - Rs 9k approx [online pricing] [it was rs11k 2 years ago when i bought it]
Nvidia HD4850 512MB - Rs 12k approx [online pricing]

Both should be cheaper [Street pricing]

And please be aware that HD4850 is a PCI-E2 card ....

If you have PCI-E2 enabled board and want the latest hottest graphic card ... you can buy Nvidia GTX 280 900MB which costs rs 45,000+

that said ATI HD4850 looks like a very good [in terms of Price to performance ratio] PCI-E2 card in the 11-13k range.

Originally Posted by Evander Leopold

raise the budget a little bit more and get a 8600gt 512mb. get 2gb ram if u havent got that already (i dont). and u will have a mid-level gaming pc.

That too is a good option .

prices of gtx280/260 will get lower pretty soon. ( @shadow - why r ya refering to that, u know it will break so many hearts including mine ). they are so costly because they are the latest and contain several billion more transistors than even nvidia9 series cards, gtx280/260 are still in experimental stage and i bet we ll see some changes in them pretty soon.

again @ shadow, u sly devil u got a 8800gt. and here i am trying to play cod5/nfs-undercover in my poor 7600gt . can u imagine my dilemma.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Graphic card prices keep coming down .... But before GTX 280 becomes affordable Nvidia in its own true style will release a very good affordable and advanced card [like 8800GT was 2 years ago] ......

But card prices do come down drastically ....... and become outdated equally quickly

learn to be happy with your card or learn to be very very rich



And behind every advanced Graphic card is a new motherboard [and a whole new PC] and new Hole in your pocket

i m very happy with my 7600gt ( i had finished Condemned:Criminal-Origins on my then gf5200fx and 512mb ram, the gameplay seemed like a slide-show ).

but still if u wanna give some good( working ) tips on "getting very very rich" , u are most welcome.

Originally Posted by Evander Leopold

i m very happy with my 7600gt ( i had finished Condemned:Criminal-Origins on my then gf5200fx and 512mb ram, the gameplay seemed like a slide-show ).

but still if u wanna give some good( working ) tips on "getting very very rich" , u are most welcome.

Well you can start by the tried and trusted method of "Robbing the bank"

But unfortunately due to recession i dont think there is anything left to steal in banks now :sad:

:lol: :lol:

Originally Posted by ShAdOwCoN

And please be aware that HD4850 is a PCI-E2 card ....

PCI-E2 = PCI express x16.

Am i right or please make correction if i am wrong.

Hey you, whats with all that bullshit.
as far as i can see, u have copied all the info already given by shadow and put in ur own ati4850 price of 9.5k. why so rude and pathetically enraged remarks at a senior member ???
U wanna talk graphics, allright. lets start by saying that every few months a game is released saying "all the advanced graphics is only supported by nvidia cards". it has happened so many times in the past and is going to happen again.
u can count on that.

lastly , i can see that not in a single place, shadow promoted nvidia over ati. I myself have used many cards, ranging from ati to nvidia. and i have found out that all that advanced tech talks never matter, all u gotta do is to stay updated with a 10k(+/- 2k) card on a good machine and u r set to play them all.
have u also considered the fact that many people use nforce chips these days and nforce is much more compatible with nvidia cards than ati cards(for obvious reasons). Point me out another gr8 chip-system like nforce and i will start crapping in forums about ati just like u.
ATI is no better than a passing phase( me and my friends call it). Ultimately we all move to nvidia.

Originally Posted by ShAdOwCoN

Ok i did a little research .
ATI HD 4850 is based on a new architecture . Its a very good card and unlike what Harsham said is classed along with 8800GT and 8800GTX . It gives better performance when compared to 8800GT .

But wait , not for free ! . ATI 4850 costs Rs 3000 more ! .So if you can afford it !.

Nvidia 8800GT 512MB - Rs 9k approx [online pricing] [it was rs11k 2 years ago when i bought it]
Nvidia HD4850 512MB - Rs 12k approx [online pricing]

Both should be cheaper [Street pricing]

And please be aware that HD4850 is a PCI-E2 card ....

If you have PCI-E2 enabled board and want the latest hottest graphic card ... you can buy Nvidia GTX 280 900MB which costs rs 45,000+

that said ATI HD4850 looks like a very good [in terms of Price to performance ratio] PCI-E2 card in the 11-13k range.



That too is a good option .

Originally Posted by rajan1311

Mad cap 8800GT costs Rs 11,000 and you call it outdated
Reality Check
We live in India . And in India very few people own an 8 series card [Talking about that General population]

You obviously don know about Nvidia cards




DUDE.....

i get ur point.. its true.
But we are talking about bang 4 buck !
If u know anything about Gfx cards, u would know that ATI 4850 is wayyyyy faster that an 8800GT.Also, u can get a 8800GT for 9k here techshop.in (they dont let me post full link)
And if u think its not out dated, well, i will remind u that 8800GT is 1 year old.
Also a 9800GT is RE-BRANDED 8800GT, they have ditto same hardware.

u can get a ATI 4850 for 9.5K at same website.
u really dont seem to know what ur talking... ur post really PISSED me off bro... next time back-up ur statements with some source/proof .

the ATI4850 is way faster (15% on average). go to techpowerup.com
PS : there is a driver fix that reduces the Temps of the ATI 4850, temps are down to 56/65 on idle/load. Sry i could not send u direct links.... i need 13 more posts.

You obviously don know about ATI cards.
You obviously are an NVdiot .


Happy shopping !

NEXT TIME PLS READ THRU THE WHOLE THREAD .I ALREADY POSTED CORRECT PRICING AND OTHER INFO

The only point you got correct is that i am a little out of touch concerning New ATI cards ..... But i know enough to make an informed decision

I had nt checked prices for a while
Everything you have said i already posted .....

Check the Post no 10 .... ok !!!!

In Post No 10

--> I said the current Nvidia 8800gt is rs9k [Lesser in reality ]

--> I also said HD 4850 performs better than 8800gt But is classed along with 8800GT and 8800GTX

-->Check properly 8800GT and 9600GT are ditto not 9800gt ! .... You are wrong here

-->There seems to be some confusion . Search this in Techshop
MSI ATI Radeon HD4850 512MB GDDR3 R4850-T2D512 Graphics Card
its rs 12k

You know a little bit , but in a hurry to parade your knowledge you made a fool of yourself .....

have already reported and answered his post. strange person !!!

Originally Posted by Evander Leopold

Hey you, whats with all that bullshit.
as far as i can see, u have copied all the info already given by shadow and put in ur own ati4850 price of 9.5k. why so rude and pathetically enraged remarks at a senior member ???
U wanna talk graphics, allright. lets start by saying that every few months a game is released saying "all the advanced graphics is only supported by nvidia cards". it has happened so many times in the past and is going to happen again.
u can count on that.

lastly , i can see that not in a single place, shadow promoted nvidia over ati. I myself have used many cards, ranging from ati to nvidia. and i have found out that all that advanced tech talks never matter, all u gotta do is to stay updated with a 10k(+/- 2k) card on a good machine and u r set to play them all.
have u also considered the fact that many people use nforce chips these days and nforce is much more compatible with nvidia cards than ati cards(for obvious reasons). Point me out another gr8 chip-system like nforce and i will start crapping in forums about ati just like u.
ATI is no better than a passing phase( me and my friends call it). Ultimately we all move to nvidia.

I Do not recommend ATI for 2 reasons

NO 1 :Sometimes ATI produces better cards than Nvidia , BUT The technologies in ATI cards are only supported by Mainstream popular games .That is many Game developers Do not include software support for advanced features of many ATI cards in their Games .

You should surely have seen the Nvidia [The way its meant to be played]TM recommendation Logo in many games ?
Thats not because of sponsorship .

Especially in India where people do not change graphic cards very often the standard Nvidia is better recommended

NO 2 : All the cards i have recommended are either owned by me or one of my friends/relatives [all game enthusiasts and working ] .I just dont go read somebody's review and then give advice like the above guy ^^ .

Me and my friends perform Benchmark tests using softwares and compare the results ourselves .....After checking online reviews .

But if you know what you r doing and want to buy an ATI card . Then you must be already knowing enough and do not need my advice . In that case u can buy the card of your choice .

For others ATI would be a bad choice .

And did anybody notice that Nvidia has increased the performance of all existing cards by releasing a firmware [Driver] upgrade with PhysX Engine ?

@shadow
whats with the last post !!!! who are u talkin to/at ?????????
if its me then read my post again, if its the other guy, ignore this post.

Yup, nvidia physX is supposed to replace aegia. the driver is not fully functional though without hardware support(physX card).

Originally Posted by Evander Leopold

@shadow
whats with the last post !!!! who are u talkin to/at ?????????
if its me then read my post again, if its the other guy, ignore this post.

Yup, nvidia physX is supposed to replace aegia. the driver is not fully functional though without hardware support(physX card).

8 series cards are PhysX compatible ....

I was talking in general as other people [members/guests] reading this thread might get confused because of our arguments .

Originally Posted by prasannaganesh

PCI-E2 = PCI express x16.

Am i right or please make correction if i am wrong.

No .... PCI-E X16 = PCI-E

PCI-E X16 2 =PCI-E 2

PCI-E X16 is more Advanced when compared to AGP 8X and gives greater Bandwidth hence better performance ......

Originally Posted by Evander Leopold

i m very happy with my 7600gt ( i had finished Condemned:Criminal-Origins on my then gf5200fx and 512mb ram, the gameplay seemed like a slide-show )

My situation is a lil more worse. Have only Intel x3500 integrated chip and 2 GB system memory.

Happily d/l nfs undercover. d/l a nice looking, shiny new bmw and started gaming.

Every thing looked ok in the begining... as soon i reached 100 kmh or mph watever and pressed the nitro boost everything beyond the car and road margin vanished to reveal the sky.. only to appear back after i crashed into the pavement :lol:

tho i must say say it literally gave me an experience of flyin thru the sky like in harry potter 2 movie (wish i was more closer to the clouds tho)

Originally Posted by Evander Leopold

have already reported and answered his post. strange person !!!

Yeah . I can understand his outburst [passion for PC stuff :lol: ]

But unfortunately he was under the false impression that he knew everything about PC hardware .

Thanks

Originally Posted by newprouser

My situation is a lil more worse. Have only Intel x3500 integrated chip and 2 GB system memory.

Happily d/l nfs undercover. d/l a nice looking, shiny new bmw and started gaming.

Every thing looked ok in the begining... as soon i reached 100 kmh or mph watever and pressed the nitro boost everything beyond the car and road margin vanished to reveal the sky.. only to appear back after i crashed into the pavement :lol:

tho i must say say it literally gave me an experience of flyin thru the sky like in harry potter 2 movie (wish i was more closer to the clouds tho)

I dont think it was able to handle the graphic load . Possibly because of the improved Motion Blur effect . :lol: :lol:

Did you check the options for disabling motion blur ?
Go and reduce the Graphic options till u get max stable performance and enjoy the game

Originally Posted by ShAdOwCoN

I dont think it was able to handle the graphic load . Possibly because of the improved Motion Blur effect . :lol: :lol:

Did you check the options for disabling motion blur ?
Go and reduce the Graphic options till u get max stable performance and enjoy the game

Will have a look at that.. right now i'm running it at the lowest possible resolution and reduced all object details. thats seems to help a quite a bit.


Meanwhile i've a doubt about 8600GT and GTS cards. According to info @ nVidia website both have same h/w except that they have different memory/shader clock speeds.

I've heard tis a manufacturing ploy to offer cards @ lower rate.

So is it possible to achieve the same performance in 8600gt by overclocking the chip

It seems there is a rs 1000 difference between 8600Gt and 8600GTS 512MB cards.

Quoting myself from another thread

The reason the factory settings have very less clock speeds is to ensure long life for the graphic cards .
So it produces lesser heat while working and hence has longer life .

If you overclock the probability of Graphic card going bust increases , though the probability is small its still a risk [rs 3k-10k worth of risk !] ....

8600GTS is an overclocked version of 8600GT .
When you can overclock your self , you may want to know y u want to pay extra for an overclocked version ? .
-->Overclocked version come with the same warranty as normal one .

-->Overclocked versions are provided with Better Heat sinks and maybe some extra active cooling systems like extra fans.

-->There are also some changes to the architecture sometimes

And yes its a marketing ploy . But sometimes such ploys do yield very good cards .

Comparing both the cards there is a big difference between them . Its actually a pretty good card

Nvidia from time to time does release overclocked versions of Cards , This generally have better Heat Sinks and some more changes in hardware structure depending on which there may be a slight or a significant performance boost .

Imo Nvidia 8600GTS does give a significant boost over 8600GT and price is reasonable too

Specification Changes Between 8600gt and 8600GTS

Core Clock : 540Mhz , 675Mhz
ShaderClock : 1.19Ghz ,1.45Ghz
MemoryClock : 700/1400 ,1000/2000
MemoryBandwidth :22.4GB/s , 32 GB/s


Performance comparison

8600gt.png

Its pretty good