Please suggest a replacement for NVIDIA GEFORCE 8500 GT

[kaps_4]

Hi,

I am from Mumbai, India.
My current graphics card has conked off, can you please suggest a suitable graphics card as per my machine configuration.

My budget is $150-$300.
Need a graphics card for - Photography, editing high res pics ( Photoshop/Lightroom ), Dreamweaver, Watch HD videos etc but no gaming necc

Current Graphics Card which needs to be changed - NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT ( This card supports SLI )
http://www.nvidia.co.in/object/geforce_8500_in.html
http://www.nvidia.co.in/page/8800_tech_specs.html


Power Supply - SMPS 300W
Slot details - PCI Express 16X

System - HP Pavilion Elite M9290in
Processor - Intel Core Quad CPU - Q6600 @ 2.40 GHZ
Motherboard - Intel G33/31 Express Chipset Family
RAM - 2 GB DDR 2


Resolution - 1440x900 @ 6o Hertz ( HP w 1907 wide screen monitor )


I am considering NVIDIA again, but I am open to Radeon cards or any other equivalent, if not better, to my current card

Website links for NVIDIA Graphics Card
http://www.nvidia.co.in/object/geforce_family_in.html


Thanks for your time

Regards
Kapil

 

[frozentundra123456]

You will be limited to something that does not require an external six pin connector with that power supply. AMD seems to have the best selection of cards in that category. I would think something like an AMD HD 5570 or 5670 or an nVidia GT240 ddr5 would work nicely. I think you are sort of pushing that power supply though, considering you are using a quad core CPU.
Any of the cards I suggested should cost less than 100.00 here in the US, but in India, I dont know where you can order from or what the prices might be. They would all be much faster than that 8500GT.

 

[Keysplayr]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150553

This looks good. 50 bucks. At least 4 times faster than your 8500GT. No need to spend much more if you're not gaming or not actually using the GPU for video editing, which is done on the CPU with the software you are using. No external power connector needed.
And if you needed to, for under the minimum budget you mentioned, you could up the Power supply if it is insufficient. Rated for 300W but what is it "actually" delivering? We don't know.

 

[kaps_4]

Thanks a lot for your replies -@ frozentundra123456 @Keysplayr. It really helps !!

 

[Majcric]

With a 300w PSU try grabbing a 8600gt.

 

[Arkaign]

With a 300w PSU try grabbing a 8600gt.

do not listen to this advice. An 8600GT was mediocre many years ago, by now it is truly ancient.

I agree with :

5670/6670 1GB. Good performance, massively faster than 8500/8600, low power, affordable.

 

[DominionSeraph]

do not listen to this advice. An 8600GT was mediocre many years ago, by now it is truly ancient.

And don't listen to this advice. He's suggesting gaming cards. All you need is a basic 2d card with GPU offload for video. An 8600GT would do that.
Radeon 5450/6450 or a GT220 would be newer.

 

[Keysplayr]

Unfortunately, you can't even get an 8400GS for under 40 bucks new right now. Why? I have no idea. So, for 50, why not get a 96 shader job instead of a 32 shader 8600GT anyway? If software is indeed able to offload to GPU shaders, well, the more the merrier.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

And don't listen to this advice. He's suggesting gaming cards. All you need is a basic 2d card with GPU offload for video. An 8600GT would do that.
Radeon 5450/6450 or a GT220 would be newer.

And please listen to this advice

 

[Arkaign]

And please listen to this advice

What, did you even think about the OP and the response I had? The 8xxx series had notoriously bad solder failure, and are incredibly old. Sure they'd work, but for the price a 6450 would be faster, cooler, and much more modern, without nearly the risk of early failure. The OP has already had an 8500 that died.

OP also mentioned a budget that easily allows for a 6670 or so while still having $$ to spare. A 6450 would work, but in my experience they're often saddled with DDR2 memory and very poorly implemented tiny heatsinks/fans. Benchmarks also show notably lower CPU usage with the 6670 vs. 6450/6570 when decoding h264, probably because the 6670 has about double the bandwidth.

I don't think of the 6670 as really a gaming card in any meaningful way, just something that's not very much more expensive for about double the performance of a 6450, comes with typically much better memory and cooling (as well as many with support for 3 monitors), and will be usable longer. The extra cores for DirectCompute/OpenCL are also possibly useful, but that's more of an afterthought.

The 8600GT was released on April 17th, 2007 on a fantastically old 90nm process, is a DX 10 card, and is known for being prone to failure.

The 6670 was released on Feb 7th, 2011 on a 40nm process, is a DX 11 card, is is known for being a great value, they can be found for $65 or so AR here in the US, but in India may be closer to $100 or a shade more, well under the OP budget.

The GT240 is similar, not as good as the 6670, but would probably work out fine for the OP.

I just don't understand recommending ancient hardware to people when equally-priced options (6450/GT240) are much newer and better, or for a little more, something much better can be found (6670).