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Thread: Need a budget video card

  1. #1

    Need a budget video card

    I very rarely use my PC for gaming, and my old dedicated video card died quite some time ago and I hadn't bothered to replace it. However, I now want to run the Model 2 emulator, and possibly the Model 3 emulator if possible. I'm not certain that even with a video card my PC can run it, but I'd give it a try!

    Budget isn't a real big issue, but I'd like to keep it cheap since I will pretty much only use it for these emulators and will not be doing any other kind of gaming. Fan noise is my only real concern, my last card was a HTPC card simply because it didn't have a fan, and worked great for me and my non-gaming ways.

    Anyone have any thoughts? I haven't payed attention to PC stuff in years, so I have no idea what's good anymore. The PC is an old 2.0 GHz Pentium dual core with 2 gigs of memory, the video card slot is a PCI Express 2.0.

    Also I'll be grabbing a sound card, but I think I've got that picked out already. I'm going to grab a Asus Xonar DS sound card, it seems to be good on quality and low on features I'll never use.
    Quote Originally Posted by EvilMog View Post
    Screw being smart. This is TNL.

  2. Toms hardware should have a good "best bang for your buck at X-price" article.

    my gtx 460 runs everything and goes for about $100.

  3. Is that a Pentium D? Pretty much any card from the past 3 years will be bottlenecked so it doesn't really matter too much tbh.

  4. #4
    I looked up Toms Hardware, and it says that the Radeon 5570 pretty much destroys anything at that price range, and Newegg has a Sapphire model for $50, so we may have a winner. But yeah, Diff is probably right and the card won't matter too much, but maybe it can squeeze just enough power from this aging system to play Supermodel.
    Quote Originally Posted by EvilMog View Post
    Screw being smart. This is TNL.

  5. Yeah but it's a Radeon so you might have to spin around 3 times holding soap over your head to get it to work with a homebrew application.

  6. Quote Originally Posted by FirstBlood View Post
    Toms hardware should have a good "best bang for your buck at X-price" article.

    my gtx 460 runs everything and goes for about $100.
    A GTX 460 runs about $150, and its power consumption is probably going to be too much for the power supply in an old ass rig like that, if his power supply even has the appropriate rails for it, which I'd bet it doesn't.

    What Diff said is correct, so I wouldn't focus on performance as much as broad compatibility that works with modern standards. Something like this should do nicely:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150555

    I agree with Joust that nVidia's compatibility and drivers are way better than ATI's. Emulators are generally more bottlenecked by the CPU than the video card (though almost everything will run like shit if you have only onboard Intel horseshit). Getting more than that would be a waste.
    Last edited by Frogacuda; 02 Oct 2011 at 04:55 PM.

  7. What about someone looking for a card that is PCI express x16, and can run not-too demanding games like Torchlight and Dungeon Defenders (lf4d 1 & 2 at the worst)?
    Quote Originally Posted by Diff-chan View Post
    Careful. We're talking about games here. Fun isn't part of it.

  8. Quote Originally Posted by Hero View Post
    What about someone looking for a card that is PCI express x16, and can run not-too demanding games like Torchlight and Dungeon Defenders (lf4d 1 & 2 at the worst)?
    The GTS 250 is a pretty decent card for $60. It only requires a 450 Watt power-supply and will run pretty much any game made before 2008. I have a BFG GTS 250 that I use in my HP computer. It works pretty well and even supports HD video.
    Last edited by gamevet; 31 Mar 2012 at 01:49 AM.

  9. I want to upgrade my 9800GT but don't want to spend too much. I've been digging around the GTX 460/560 range to keep it less than $150 (preferably around $100 though that may be impossible) but it's been a little confusing as to exactly where each model stands in relation to each other since benchmarks like this one show the 560 SE being a lot better than it should be. I was debating between this and this but was wondering if anyone knew of a better choice, if the upgrade isn't worth the money, or if someplace else has better prices.

  10. Quote Originally Posted by MechDeus View Post
    I want to upgrade my 9800GT but don't want to spend too much. I've been digging around the GTX 460/560 range to keep it less than $150 (preferably around $100 though that may be impossible) but it's been a little confusing as to exactly where each model stands in relation to each other since benchmarks like this one show the 560 SE being a lot better than it should be. I was debating between this and this but was wondering if anyone knew of a better choice, if the upgrade isn't worth the money, or if someplace else has better prices.
    You can check out the average performance here. The GTX 560 SE does not perform as well as a GTX 460.

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