Your ideas for better entry level half height/low profile ready gamer video cards

[Blue_Max]

Sorry... didn't realize the CPU was that anemic. Decent video and ridiculously small size at least. An ITX rig w/ FM2+ APU would still be better than that old Dell (and I've owned that very model - they get LOUD under load!)

 

[cbn]

An ITX rig w/ FM2+ APU would still be better than that old Dell (and I've owned that very model - they get LOUD under load!)

One problem I have with FM2+ Mini-ITX is that the motherboards start at $78.99 (See this post earlier in the thread---> http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36930356&postcount=14 )

This compared to my Dell Optiplex 360 which was $50 for the whole computer.

P.S. I haven't used the SFF Version of Optiplex (10 liter displacement), but my Slim Desktop Optiplex (16 liter displacement, see below for example of what it looks like) is pretty quiet while still being only 13.9" deep (short enough to fit on pretty much any TV stand).

 

[Blue_Max]

Go ahead then. When the fan kicks into high gear you're going to hate it.

Hate. It.

There are some cheap $60 ITX Intel boards... pair that with an i3 and Intel 4600 graphics, you'd still be better off than this junker with a klunker video card.

 

[Yuriman]

$50 for the tower, $75 after the Xeon, $110 after a video card. You really can't beat that pricing with a new build, but for under $200 you can get an AMD APU with more CPU and GPU power in a smaller form factor, drawing less power under load and considerably less at idle and making a lot less noise.

So, it depends on how much you're willing to spend. Personally, I've tossed and sold all of my Core2 machines sans one that my father still uses, because he gets rather annoyed when I make unnecessary changes to things he knows and understands.

 

[EduCat]

I have an HD7750 in my little sff case, works very well! http://www.ebay.com/itm/VISIONTEK-900574-RADEON-HD-7750-1GB-PCIE-/321589589288?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4ae03bb528

I have the power color version (awesome customer support) and have really been happy with it.

 

[Madpacket]

For $50.00 and under you won't find anything much better than a 630 low profile. Perhaps look around for a used GDDR5 Radeon 6670 low profile card. They are still pretty powerful for 720P medium detail or 1080P low detail gaming and also come in single and dual slot form factors.

 

[cbn]

Go ahead then. When the fan kicks into high gear you're going to hate it.

Hate. It.

Its pretty quiet actually.

There is some fan noise at idle, but when I was testing Battlefield 3 64 player with the E5440 (same clock and cache as Q9550) installed I don't remember the noise level increasing.

E5440 is only a 80 watt TDP processor, so its nothing out of the ordinary with respect to power draw under load.

 

[cbn]

Regarding the APU and AMD video card recommendations, one reason I am leaning towards Nvidia is because they are said to have much better proprietary OPEN GL Linux drivers.

And I would like to have at least one very economical, but good performing Linux Mint 17 MATE machine. (EDIT: I also expect to give SteamOS a try n the future as well.)

Regarding the idle power consumption, its running about 55 watts (according to my Kill-a-watt meter) with the GT 630 installed. Not exactly the greatest, but it does drop down to under 2 watts while sleeping (when I step away from the desktop for more than 10 minutes.)

 

[evilspoons]

Putting pure gaming performance aside, has anyone actually made an ENTIRELY NEW low profile video card lately? I was doing research because of my HTPC, but it's still relevant to this discussion...

I had an ASUS Radeon 6570 that bit the dust - the fan died (so I zip-tied a better one to it), then the memory started flaking out. Nice random chunks of things missing from videos, etc, probably from the months of the fan not working properly before.

When it finally totally made the computer unusable I switched to my Core i3-2100's iGPU. The video decoding quality is noticeably worse but at least it hasn't blown up, so it's got that going for it.

So, like 18 months later, I check around for new low-profile cards, what do I see?

- R7 240 by Asus: EXACTLY THE SAME PCB AND COOLER as the stupid 6570 that died. Is this even a different card, or did they just put a new sticker on it?
- They're stocking like 5 different Radeon 5450s, what gives?

Nvidia side:
- they're still selling the Geforce 620 locally???!!
- the GT720 is a rebadged GT630?
- the 1 GB GT730 is a GF108??!! -> this is a Geforce 420! It came out in 2010!

 

[Blue_Max]

Go Radeon 7750 (or R7-250, essentially the same thing) or GTX 750 (very different technology from the 730) or don't bother. Any other card is absolute crap in comparison.

Shop carefully you can find them under $100 new.

 

[evilspoons]

I don't think the GTX 750 comes in low-profile though - at least... no one around me sells one. Right now I think my best bets are the GDDR5/GK208 GT730, if I can find it for a good price, the low-profile R7 250 (again, if I can find it for a good price), or just tear out my mobo and CPU and put a newer setup in there with a better iGPU. What a pain in the arse! Haha.

 

[cbn]

I don't think the GTX 750 comes in low-profile though - at least... no one around me sells one. Right now I think my best bets are the GDDR5/GK208 GT730, if I can find it for a good price, the low-profile R7 250 (again, if I can find it for a good price), or just tear out my mobo and CPU and put a newer setup in there with a better iGPU. What a pain in the arse! Haha.

Not sure where you live, but in the United States the PNY GT 730 (GK208 with 64 bit GDDR5) is $54.99 AR + shipping at Tiger Direct:

(At Newegg it is a couple bucks more expensive)

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...309&CatId=3669

That is probably the best Nvidia card in the price level just above what I am looking for,

 

[cbn]

Nah, no way I would ever go below 1GB on a modern card. Modern games just have too much data, even with low quality textures and models. Look at something like Assassin's Creed Unity, and the number of people in a crowd. 512MB is just going to choke on that.

I think a game like Assassin's Creed is probably outside the scope of the SFF living gaming room box I am thinking about (re: Minimum System requirements for that game are much higher than a cheap build that competes with an ARM Set-up box on hardware cost.)

So assuming playing games typical of a build that consists of Core 2 duo or Xeon Quad core with 2GB RAM on the low end to a faster Core 2 Quad (or faster Xeon) with maybe 4GB RAM on the highest end, is 512MB GDDR5 VRAM really going to be that bad on a card with only 192 Kepler CUDA cores or maybe even 256 Maxwell CUDA cores? (I am having a hard time believing it would be, but am open to specific game examples realistic to a low cost system)

 

[cbn]

As a consumer/reviewer I hate to get into the marketing angle of things, but maybe one of the Nvidia OEMs could partner with Valve for a "Steam OS approved" entry level card verified to play all the Valve titles at 1080p low in OPEN GL Linux.

Then maybe we could see a lower cost 512MB 64 bit GDDR5 card surface?

In any event, I would like to see an improvement in the Go-To low profile/half height card for this low price segment.

 

[Blue_Max]

You said you wanted to play games; well all the cards you keep talking about won't play games (or if they do, only at absolute minimum settings.)

I know what it's like to have a tight budget... I know what it's like for $50 to be an impossible difference to overcome... but don't waste the $50 you HAVE by buying a worthless P.O.S. card! SAVE that money, live on movies & flash games until you can scrimp & save the extra cash for either a Radeon 7750/R7-250 or GTX 750. Anything else will just leave you disappointed in the game quality, and jilted because you wasted your money.

Keep scouring your local kijiji or on here... someone may have one of those cards used for half retail price.

Aim for these $80-90:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161418&cm_re=7750-_-14-161-418-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129294&cm_re=r7_250-_-14-129-294-_-Product

 

[cbn]

You said you wanted to play games; well all the cards you keep talking about won't play games (or if they do, only at absolute minimum settings.)

I know what it's like to have a tight budget... I know what it's like for $50 to be an impossible difference to overcome... but don't waste the $50 you HAVE by buying a worthless P.O.S. card! SAVE that money, live on movies & flash games until you can scrimp & save the extra cash for either a Radeon 7750/R7-250 or GTX 750. Anything else will just leave you disappointed in the game quality, and jilted because you wasted your money.

Keep scouring your local kijiji or on here... someone may have one of those cards used for half retail price.

Aim for these $80-90:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161418&cm_re=7750-_-14-161-418-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129294&cm_re=r7_250-_-14-129-294-_-Product

For Valve games on Steam Linux I have a hard time believing a $80 to $90 video card is necessary.

Even my GT 630 plays Team Fortress 2 smoothly on 1080p low (with Linux Mint 17 Mate using the Nvidia proprietary drivers)-- See the OP.

Furthermore, AMD graphic drivers have proven to be much worse than Nvidia drivers last time I checked Phoronix testing.

With that mentioned, I haven't tested Left 4 Dead 2 or CS:GO (I am hoping to buy these games at the next sale). However, looking at the system requirements the video card requirements are not high ---> http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/ , http://store.steampowered.com/app/730

Instead of recommending relatively expensive $80 to $90 video cards for an inexpensive living room computer, I think it makes a lot more sense to see the $35 sale priced video cards measurably improve.

P.S. Looking at the Valve games I just linked, neither one requires more than 256 MB VRAM under the Windows specification. (The Linux specification doesn't list a VRAM requirement, it just lists actual cards)

 

[VirtualLarry]

What about a half-height die-shrunk successor to the HD4850 512MB cards? Use 128-bit GDDR5 instead of 256-bit GDDR3.

Instead of the endless sea of 5450s.

 

[positivedoppler]

One problem I have with FM2+ Mini-ITX is that the motherboards start at $78.99 (See this post earlier in the thread---> http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36930356&postcount=14 )

This compared to my Dell Optiplex 360 which was $50 for the whole computer.

P.S. I haven't used the SFF Version of Optiplex (10 liter displacement), but my Slim Desktop Optiplex (16 liter displacement, see below for example of what it looks like) is pretty quiet while still being only 13.9" deep (short enough to fit on pretty much any TV stand).

Good grief. I can't stand looking at those ugly pos at work, can't even contemplate setting one up at home. Do yourself a favor and spend an extra $30 at newegg for the cheapest thing they have
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811121128
so it doesn't feel like your at work every time you have to stare at that thing.

 

[positivedoppler]

Regarding the APU and AMD video card recommendations, one reason I am leaning towards Nvidia is because they are said to have much better proprietary OPEN GL Linux drivers.

And I would like to have at least one very economical, but good performing Linux Mint 17 MATE machine. (EDIT: I also expect to give SteamOS a try n the future as well.)

Regarding the idle power consumption, its running about 55 watts (according to my Kill-a-watt meter) with the GT 630 installed. Not exactly the greatest, but it does drop down to under 2 watts while sleeping (when I step away from the desktop for more than 10 minutes.)

You might want to keep an eye on this thread then.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2409595


Haha, you think your safe with Nvidia on Linux...if you only knew. Just putting Nvidia and Linux in the same sentence over the past 5 years gives me a hernia. But I"m not talking about Mint though, so hopefully Nvidia's done a better job there.

 

[cbn]

Just putting Nvidia and Linux in the same sentence over the past 5 years gives me a hernia. But I"m not talking about Mint though, so hopefully Nvidia's done a better job there.

Linux Mint 17 is pretty awesome with respect to installing the Nvidia proprietary drivers because under control panel there is a driver manager that does the install automatically for the user. Ubuntu, on the other hand, does not have the driver manager. (The more and more I use Mint, the more and more I see how it is so much better than Ubuntu)

My only complaint (and this is a rather small one after a person figures out how to "fix" it) is that after installing the Nvidia proprietary Linux driver through the Mint driver manager I'll get the same error message I get when I try to launch a Valve game on Steam with the open source driver. But I've noticed all it takes is a full reboot of the computer and this goes away. Maybe this is what it take for the system to blacklist the open source graphics driver that comes with the Mint 17 install and use the proprietary Nvidia driver instead?

 

[Blue_Max]

Enjoy your POS video card and games on LOW instead of MED to HIGH. *sigh*

 

[cbn]

With regard to Nvidia vs. AMD proprietary Linux graphics driver performance, here is the testing from Phoronix (June 2014) I was referring to earlier in the thread:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvamd_binary_comparison&num=1

Here is the link to the conclusion of the article:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvamd_binary_comparison&num=8

While AMD is generally the better offering when it comes to open-source Linux drivers given that Nouveau is community-driven independent of NVIDIA Corp, with the proprietary drivers the tables are turned. The NVIDIA proprietary Linux graphics driver was consistently delivering better performance. In some tests the Radeon R9 290 Hawaii graphics card on Catalyst was running around the performance level of the GeForce GTX 770 (a ~$70+ cheaper graphics card) and in the worse case around the speed of a GTX 760. In the games that were more CPU-limited, the Catalyst performance was tapping out at measurably lower frame-rates than where the NVIDIA performance ended. The performance-per-Watt of the graphics cards on the binary blobs were also generally more favorable towards NVIDIA; the GTX 750 Maxwell cards were delivering great results and I'm so anxious to see Maxwell in a high-end NVIDIA graphics card on Linux.

Outside of these OpenGL test results, the NVIDIA proprietary drivers tend to have better maintained legacy drivers, the NVIDIA drivers more quickly support new X.Org Server and Linux kernel releases, and generally the consensus among both Linux gamers and developers is that there's far less bugs with the NVIDIA driver than AMD Catalyst. The AMD Catalyst driver though has been improving quite a bit in recent months given all the commercial game studios now pushing Linux games, but it's still not to match NVIDIA's Linux dominance when it comes to proprietary drivers. I'll be back with more tests in the weeks and months ahead to see how future Catalyst drivers combat NVIDIA in this space and as well how the open-source drivers evolve. Coming up later this month are also some updated 4K Ultra HD Linux gaming benchmarks and other interesting graphics card tests.

Hopefully this proprietary Linux driver situation changes in the future (with AMD catching up to Nvidia), but for now this is one of the reasons I am leaning towards Nvidia.

A second reason I am leaning towards Nvidia has to with their GPUs having a trend for better sale prices as reported in the entry level video cards hot deals thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2403091

Maybe if half height/low profile R7 240/250 video cards were to drop much lower in price (and stay there more consistently like the GT 630s) I would reconsider my position even if the Linux driver performance was worse. (re: greater hardware spec can compensate somewhat for worse drivers)

 

[cbn]

Regarding the GT 630 64 bit DDR3 vs. the R7 240 (128 bit DDR3) , here are some game benchmarks at 1366 x 768:

http://www.tipidpc.com/viewreview.php?id=1107

Surprising results to say the least. The 64 bit DDR3 GT630 actually beats the 128 bit DDR3 R7 240 in two out of the four games (and this is under Windows, not Linux).

 

[XavierMace]

Sorry, double post

 

[XavierMace]

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? As you've been advised in at least two different threads now this is pretty dated equipment and you're talking about putting like $110+ into it. That seems like a pretty poor investment to me. I'm a dedicated PC gamer, but you can get a PS3 for about $150 which will do a far better job of playing games and streaming video if that's what you're wanting to do.

If you are dead set on buying a cheap PC for gaming, please do yourself a favor and spend a little more money. You can get a system with an i5 for $200.