Question What's the new low-end for dedicated video cards?

[jrichrds]

I am in need of video cards to be able to use DL-DVI 1440p monitors (those 27" Korean monitors from their hey-day), as integrated graphics only has VGA and HDMI. No 3D gaming. I remember the low-end being AMD 5450, 6450, and then nVidia GT 710. What would the current/modern "baseline" card be these days?

 

[Bouowmx]

Baseline is still NVIDIA GeForce GT 710. The generational successor, GT 1030, is a steep step in price.

EVGA 02G-P3-2717-KR has two DVI ports, but no idea if they are dual-link.

 

[Stuka87]

Finding a card with dual-link DVI is getting tough. No entry level card will have it. And really, cards have not come with them at all for several generations. I think the last card I had with one was an HD7950, and it only had one.

I did find this GT 730 with two dual-link ports: https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-gt-730-01g-p3-2731-kr/p/N82E16814487054?item=9SIAM3PA4X6028

But, $92 for a 730 is a tough pill to swallow, and its not actually sold by NewEgg, so no clue if its new or used, or what.

 

[MrTeal]

I wouldn't pay $90 for a 730, that's what a 1030 goes for.

This GT 710 says it has dual link DVI at $37

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AZHOWL0

Support page says Dual-link DVI-D x 1Max Resolution: 2560 x 1600 @60 Hz

Specification GT 710 1GD3H LP

As a world leading gaming brand, MSI is the most trusted name in gaming and eSports. We stand by our principles of breakthroughs in design, and roll out the amazing gaming gear like motherboards, graphics cards, laptops and desktops.

www.msi.com

The baseline card market is pretty terrible these days though. Your choices are either a 6 year old GT710, or a $80-90 1030.

 

[Arkaign]

The most economical solution I know of for two native dual-link DVI ports is the Nvidia Quadro 2000D. It's pretty old, but works perfectly fine in Windows, and is even somewhat peppy for video playback and indie games. Don't get me wrong, it's not blazing fast at half a TF (only slightly faster than the Nintendo Switch GPU), but it's low power/heat, they're built extremely well (launched at $599 so it better be), and they're widely available as used pulls on eBay for $40-$50 in 2GB GDDR5 variant. This will run a pair of 2560x1440 no problem. I get them all the time when I do my bargain Xeon WS gaming rigs, and put them aside for other uses. Great little card and excellent drivers in W10.

 

[Stuka87]

I wouldn't pay $90 for a 730, that's what a 1030 goes for.

This GT 710 says it has dual link DVI at $37

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AZHOWL0

Support page says Dual-link DVI-D x 1Max Resolution: 2560 x 1600 @60 Hz

Specification GT 710 1GD3H LP

As a world leading gaming brand, MSI is the most trusted name in gaming and eSports. We stand by our principles of breakthroughs in design, and roll out the amazing gaming gear like motherboards, graphics cards, laptops and desktops.

www.msi.com

The baseline card market is pretty terrible these days though. Your choices are either a 6 year old GT710, or a $80-90 1030.

The OP says he needs TWO Dual-Link DVI ports, one for each monitor.

 

[MrTeal]

The OP says he needs TWO Dual-Link DVI ports, one for each monitor.

Did he? He said he needed video cards to run 1440p monitors, but didn't specify he wanted to run two per video card. If that is the case, the linked EVGA would be a good option new, as it does have dual DL-DVI.

EVGA GeForce GT 710 2GB (Single Slot, Dual DVI)

Make your entire PC experience faster with the EVGA GeForce GT 710 dedicated graphics card. Now, you can enjoy up to 10x better performance than integrated graphics in all your PC multimedia applications. Take on modern games with advanced and reliable dedicated graphics. 80% faster performance...

www.evga.com

Used might be the best value, though if he's buying many or needing to provide support it might be easier to just deal with one vendor.

 

[mopardude87]

I picked up a local 4gb gtx960 off craigslist for $40,maybe such a deal can be had in your local area? Beats the heck out of anything new upwards of $100 that's for sure.

I needed the 960 for 60hz 4k display for a htpc.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The most economical solution I know of for two native dual-link DVI ports is the Nvidia Quadro 2000D. It's pretty old, but works perfectly fine in Windows, and is even somewhat peppy for video playback and indie games. Don't get me wrong, it's not blazing fast at half a TF (only slightly faster than the Nintendo Switch GPU), but it's low power/heat, they're built extremely well (launched at $599 so it better be), and they're widely available as used pulls on eBay for $40-$50 in 2GB GDDR5 variant. This will run a pair of 2560x1440 no problem. I get them all the time when I do my bargain Xeon WS gaming rigs, and put them aside for other uses. Great little card and excellent drivers in W10.

The reference (VisionTek was reference) single-slot HD4850 cards had dual, dual-link DVI ports. Which could also do HDMI via those adapters.

 

[Arkaign]

Haha yeah, though using Terascale in W10 is a mixed bag, which is one of the weirder things to experience. For some reason the IGPs seem to work much easier than the add-on cards. I've simply stopped trying to use stuff like 2000-4000 series altogether, and even 5000/6000 series I am hesitant to work with, simply because Windows 10 seems to be truly allergic to it. 7k and up no problems. I've been through so many modded drivers, threads on TPU, etc, just painful. You think everything is ok, go to run some pretty ordinary app, and whammo crash/error/glitch. With Win7? Nooooo problems haha.

Yet the automatically applied windows drivers for IGP HD3200/4200 stuff works fine, if slowly.

What has your experiences been like with it? I have some interesting Terascale PCIe GPUs sitting around that I might play with on v1909 to see if I can get any better results.

 

[Arkaign]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7fz1qs

Ahhhhh
yeah, now I remember. One of the W10 feature updates broke the older WDDM entirely. It sucked, because at the time I still had some FX6350 and 8320 workstations out there doing generic office work, and ended up adding Nvidia GPUs because running up to date windows broke their older model graphics drivers. Ironically I had used some nice older AMD GPUs originally in them as a cheap way to get multiple DVI ports (not even Dual link, just needed 1080p X2) hooked up. This one wasn't AMD's fault even, Microsoft just created an Apocalypse for the old stuff at that time.

 

[jrichrds]

Baseline is still NVIDIA GeForce GT 710. The generational successor, GT 1030, is a steep step in price.

EVGA 02G-P3-2717-KR has two DVI ports, but no idea if they are dual-link.

Thanks for the info, bummer to hear the low-end for video cards drag along at a snail's pace too. I wonder how much performance one gives up going with a GT 710 vs the integrated graphics in an 8th or 9th gen Core i3/i5.

And thanks for the link to the eVGA card. I have an old eVGA 9800 GT that has two DL-DVI ports as well that handles 2 1440p displays, and it seems eVGA is the only company that makes those. Not as useful these days as HDMI can now handle 1440p and higher, but still good for driving older 1440p monitors with only DL-DVI (those 27" Korean monitors that went for $200 with free overnight shipping from Korea and had the same LG S-IPS panel as the $1K Apple Cinema Display).

As for pricing, I was buying MSI GT 710 cards (one DL-DVI port) from Amazon in the low $20s 3 years ago, and now they're in the high $30s.

 

[jrichrds]

Finding a card with dual-link DVI is getting tough. No entry level card will have it. And really, cards have not come with them at all for several generations. I think the last card I had with one was an HD7950, and it only had one.

I did find this GT 730 with two dual-link ports: https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-gt-730-01g-p3-2731-kr/p/N82E16814487054?item=9SIAM3PA4X6028

But, $92 for a 730 is a tough pill to swallow, and its not actually sold by NewEgg, so no clue if its new or used, or what.

I'd say finding a card with 2 dual-link DVI ports is more rare (and eVGA seems the only company making those), but pretty much all cards dating back to the Radeon HD 4350 era have dual-link DVI port capable of 1440p. I even had a Biostar AMD 880G chipset motherboard (Radeon HD 4200 IGP) that had integrated DL-DVI, which was a surprise.

 

[SPBHM]

Haha yeah, though using Terascale in W10 is a mixed bag, which is one of the weirder things to experience. For some reason the IGPs seem to work much easier than the add-on cards. I've simply stopped trying to use stuff like 2000-4000 series altogether, and even 5000/6000 series I am hesitant to work with, simply because Windows 10 seems to be truly allergic to it. 7k and up no problems. I've been through so many modded drivers, threads on TPU, etc, just painful. You think everything is ok, go to run some pretty ordinary app, and whammo crash/error/glitch. With Win7? Nooooo problems haha.

Yet the automatically applied windows drivers for IGP HD3200/4200 stuff works fine, if slowly.

What has your experiences been like with it? I have some interesting Terascale PCIe GPUs sitting around that I might play with on v1909 to see if I can get any better results.

the HD 7000 series (apart from a few rebranded TeraScale cards) is still supported and works pretty well on windows 10 indeed, I'm using an HD 7850 right now and it's a pretty smooth experience,

I think some HD 7700s had dual dual-link DVIs and these cards are not power hungry or anything, also much faster than a 710 and very cheap on the used market?

the HD 5000-6000 series had official driver releases for Windows 10, and it works OK, it's stuck in 2015 and WDDM 1.3 but I've used an HD 5850 for a while after that and it was mostly fine,

HD 4000 series gets the windows update driver which works OK on 1909 for me, it's WDDM 1.1 and lacks the Catalyst Control Center, but for basic performance the card performs as expected, I even used it for some gaming like this, the main issue for me was the lack of CCC, because when used with HDMI the card sets a default overscan which you can't adjust! (not a problem if using DVI or VGA) I solved the problem by using the catalyst 13.1 from AMD's website and adjusting the overscan in there, after that I even updated to the default driver again and it kept the adjustment,

other than that, yeah these cards are very old, the HD 4000 is OGL 3.3 (and not good at that, I had some OGL 3.3 software fail to run, but that isn't win 10 specific), also the video decoder is very outdated and doesn't play well with all software, and even if it does it the hardware can't handle 1080P60 for example (so it's better to let the CPU do the work)
I think the video decoder on my 8400GS G98 performs a little better even compared to the HD 5850.

 

[Spjut]

the HD 7000 series (apart from a few rebranded TeraScale cards) is still supported and works pretty well on windows 10 indeed, I'm using an HD 7850 right now and it's a pretty smooth experience,

I think some HD 7700s had dual dual-link DVIs and these cards are not power hungry or anything, also much faster than a 710 and very cheap on the used market?

the HD 5000-6000 series had official driver releases for Windows 10, and it works OK, it's stuck in 2015 and WDDM 1.3 but I've used an HD 5850 for a while after that and it was mostly fine,

HD 4000 series gets the windows update driver which works OK on 1909 for me, it's WDDM 1.1 and lacks the Catalyst Control Center, but for basic performance the card performs as expected, I even used it for some gaming like this, the main issue for me was the lack of CCC, because when used with HDMI the card sets a default overscan which you can't adjust! (not a problem if using DVI or VGA) I solved the problem by using the catalyst 13.1 from AMD's website and adjusting the overscan in there, after that I even updated to the default driver again and it kept the adjustment,

other than that, yeah these cards are very old, the HD 4000 is OGL 3.3 (and not good at that, I had some OGL 3.3 software fail to run, but that isn't win 10 specific), also the video decoder is very outdated and doesn't play well with all software, and even if it does it the hardware can't handle 1080P60 for example (so it's better to let the CPU do the work)
I think the video decoder on my 8400GS G98 performs a little better even compared to the HD 5850.

The only cards I've actively seen users reporting worse performance/functionality with compared to Windows 7, are the Intel IGPs using WDDM 1.0 drivers. I've also seen the occasional user with an old ATI DX9 card say the drivers are broken on Win10.

For a very short time, I used a Geforce 6 card for basic browsing on Windows 10 and didn't notice any issues, but I didn't do any extensive testing and tbh, I didn't remember how "fast" they felt on Win7 either. That was the official Windows 8.0 drivers from 2015 and they were WDDM 1.0.
HD 4000 and Geforce 8 series have worked well for me too, but I didn't test Win10 with my HD 4870 until last year.

I know Win10 updates in the past have broken the drivers, as the posts above mention, and perhaps you should give AMD a pass for it, but AFAIK, Nvidia's DX10 drivers have been solid from day one. I've never seen any report about them being affected badly by any of the Win10 versions.
Hard for us to say if it has anything to do with Nvidia supporting WDDM 1.2 to AMD WDDM 1.1, or if AMD's support wasn't 100% complaint, but Nvidia just seems so much better with Legacy support.

I remember back when Win7 got the platform update to bring it somewhat up to par with Windows 8.0, by the time AMD officially had moved their DX10 gen to legacy, that people who actively used these cards for gaming reported they were broken already then.