budget video card for minecraft?

[pontifex]

My cousin's son plays minecraft and wants a video card for his PC. He's running on integrated video right now.

Not sure if he plays anything else though. He mentioned some other game, Heroes & Generals (I think).

He's got 4 GB of RAM, CPU is AMD (I think maybe an A6 something). I know he has a PCIEX slot on the motherboard. I think the PSU was 480W, but not sure on brand. My video card has a 4 pin power connector but their PSU doesn't have that. I haven't been keeping up with PC hardware for awhile, so not sure if those are for higher end cards or they all take them these days?


They supposedly bought this "gaming" pc off ebay. No idea what they paid for it or total specs but I doubt they got their money's worth.

Any suggestions?

 

[ViRGE]

It sounds like there's no 6pin PCIe power connector from the PSU. In which case you'll want a sub-75W card. Assuming the case can handle the cooling needs, I'd argue that GTX 750 would be a good fit.

At $90 it's not a super-cheap card, but your options for sub-75W cards get increasingly awful quickly below that price.

 

[LTC8K6]

GT730 with GDDR5.

Best budget PCIE card.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-2.html

http://www.amazon.com/PNY-GeForce-G...?ie=UTF8&qid=1433043281&sr=8-4&keywords=gt730

 

[Tapoer]

AMD APU and GPU are very good for minecraft:

Make sure what APU your cousin's son have bacause a new low end dGPU might be slower in Minecraft that the iGPU.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Find out if he's cpu or gpu limited first.

 

[Valantar]

If he already has an AMD APU, he might be better off moving to a more powerful APU than a dGPU, but you should look into his chip's options for Dual Graphics too. If it's a newer series APU, I think the R7 240 is the go-to option for that.

 

[pontifex]

Find out if he's cpu or gpu limited first.

how would i find that out?

 

[Flapdrol1337]

how would i find that out?

Could install msi afterburner, monitor gpu use and fps while playing.

If the gpu is at 100% if the fps drops you're gpu limited, if the gpu use is way below 100% you're cpu limited.

Or run at an extremely low resolution, that's how the game will run with a very powerful gpu at normal resolution.

 

[pontifex]

Could install msi afterburner, monitor gpu use and fps while playing.

If the gpu is at 100% if the fps drops you're gpu limited, if the gpu use is way below 100% you're cpu limited.

Or run at an extremely low resolution, that's how the game will run with a very powerful gpu at normal resolution.

I don't have easy access to this PC and they're not very computer savvy.

 

[Ketchup]

Tell us what model computer he has, and we can tell you what would be needed for it to work. If nobody in the family is nearby that can do this, they may want to contact computer shops nearby and ask for a quote.

Having said that, in today's day and age, it wouldn't be too hard to find a YouTube video that could walk them through this, especially if they can use a low power card from Nvidia, which wouldn't require a power supply swap.

AMD cards may be a little better for this, but considering what it feasible in this situation is a big part of it too!

 

[frozentundra123456]

We really need more information. A6 could be either big core or small core I believe. I would assume Richland or Kaveri big core, but we need to know that for sure. If it is Kabini, it is going to be hard to make much improvement.

We also need to know what is unsatisfactory about the performance, and as someone said, whether cpu or gpu limited.


Edit: I would think a big core A6 would be decent at least for minecraft, unless he is running a lot of mods. What is the resolution?

 

[reb0rn]

Most kids run a LOT of mods in minecraft so good intel IPC CPU + 3x more GPU power then crappy amd integrated can offer would be nice........

NV 750 would be gr8 or something like that, but don`t forget good IPC CPU

 

[OCNewbie]

I've heard/read that, more than anything, Minecraft is CPU dependent. Especially on higher view distances (which more is always better, IMO).

 

[Stuka87]

Minecraft is way more CPU heavy than GPU heavy. When I used to play a lot, it would keep all four cores on my 965BE @4GHz pretty busy. But they would keep it at 60fps even with mods. When I first started to play it I had an HD5750, and then later an HD7950.

But more details on the machine would be better.

 

[sm625]

I dont know what this benchmark is, but my kid's crazy into minecraft. He's got like 200 mods and 15 GB of minecraft content. His G3258 at 4.4GHz flies through all of it. He talks about his friend who has an AMD FX and some kind of video card and yet it only gets half the framerates my kid does. Minecraft thrives on two high clocked haswell cores, even with intel IGP it is faster than on an AMD A6, even if the AMD A6 was paired with a GTX980ti.

 

[tweakboy]

Try 670 GTX. gb

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I dont know what this benchmark is, but my kid's crazy into minecraft. He's got like 200 mods and 15 GB of minecraft content. His G3258 at 4.4GHz flies through all of it. He talks about his friend who has an AMD FX and some kind of video card and yet it only gets half the framerates my kid does. Minecraft thrives on two high clocked haswell cores, even with intel IGP it is faster than on an AMD A6, even if the AMD A6 was paired with a GTX980ti.

Yeah, the G3258 is great for Minecraft. I had one at that same 4.4 GHz clock and it ran it beautifully on a $50 Gigabyte H81 board.