I just swapped my asus radeon hd 6670 1gb gddr5 out for a pny nvidia geforce gt 730 2048 ddr3 card hoping to get a better frame rate for guru. The nvidia runs so much slower. Is the radeon a better card?

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-6670-vs-GeForce-GT-730A

So what you are saying is that i wasted money money on the nvidia card.

Yes mate, a 730 is about three steps down from the 6670 on the hierarchy table, it isn't even technically classed as a gaming card the way NVidia cards are rated (roughly) is:

x10 to x40 = low end terminal cards, mostly for web browsing and very low end games.
x50 = low end gaming.
x60 = low to mid range gaming.
x70 mid to high range gaming.
x80 high to very high end gaming.

The first number with NVidia cards is only a very small factor in deciding the card, it only matters when there's a few generations in the gap, for example the difference between a 980 and a 1080 is negligible, however the difference between a 780 and a 980 is quite a bit. On the other hand a 680 is a way better card than an 730 and so on.

Before buying a card I always check the hierarchy table on TomsHardware, it's usually pretty accurate.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gpu-hierarchy,review-33383.html

What card would you recommend for a older computer. I have a gateway win 7 x 64 quad core i-5 2nd gen. pci express (2.0 ?) x 16

budget under $200.00

This is a trap I have saw many fall into. They buy a newer card imagining it has to be faster because it's newer. This is true to a small degree, but you will always find and 020 card to be slower than an 030 and the same throughout the range, even when you jump up a couple of revisions . At least with Nvidia. I imagine AMD have their own system which will be similar.

Nvidia's range is fairly simple you have the series number, for instance that is currently 10. Then the model version, from 20 to 80. There used to be a 10 as well but I'm not sure if they still do those now. So if you have a 660 for instance and upgrade to a 930, you will find you have downgraded your card. Sure it can support a few more features, but it is simply too slow to really use them. To get a proper upgrade you would have to get a 960 or higher.

A simple system as well as the numbers is the price If your paying less than £100 for a new graphics card, chances are it is a budget card and not really suited to games. Personally I'd never get anything below a 60 card. It will generally run games really well and you won't have to upgrade it again in 6 months. Anything higher is nice, but an 060 is generally good enough to run any game you throw at it.

Anyway, perhaps the shop would consider swapping it out for a higher spec card and a restocking fee?

Edit

I would be looking for a 960 or 970 if you can get one for that price. Maybe a 1060. I've seen those for about £200, so not too much higher. Really, if you can't find something of that spec for $200 or less, try to wait till you have the extra You will get a fair bit more poke under the hood than say an 050 and it will wipe the floor with your current card.

the 970 is quite a bit better than the 960 though so if you can find one in your price range i would go for it.
otherwise yh, an R9 280x or a GTX960 are good choices (i have the former and GG runs well).

GTX 750 is good card. with Nvidia look for GTX instead of GT look here: http://www.evga.com/Products/productlist.aspx?type=0

750 Is old by now and the price difference isn't worth it in the long run.Unfortunately crypto miners have slightly inflated prices of AMD card notably the RX470/RX570 and RX480 and RX580. However RX470, does kick some serious butt, and a fair bit cheaper.

Personally I needed to get a temp card and got a RX460, and boy I am pretty impressed what this little card can do, with specials and all pick it up cheaply.

Your biggest problem is going to be your PSU, you likely need to replace it, because by the sound of it you have a prebuild system and if that is the case, it's doubtful your PSU will last long or at all with a mid/high end GPU, Can't remember if the 6670HD needed additional PCIe power or not, Definitely need some info on the PSU as you might very well need to replace that as well.

a lot of the cards you guys mention need a pci express 3.0. i have a 2.0

@ wizard
i have a 630 watt power supply so i believe i can run a mid range card. i'll have a look at the rx 460/70

thanks guys for the suguestions . all this info is helping me.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2438733/pci-backwards-compatible-pci.html


I think You would be fine with PCI 3.0 vs. 2.0. I refer you to that link as evidence only. I am no expert, btw. 630 watt supply should be adequate as well. Good luck!

Good luck deciding

Now i have to ask... my pci express slot is a x16 (wich i believe is 16 pins, right) alot of these cards are saying 8. is this compatible?

Not pins but lanes the 16 x pci-e has 16 lanes for the data to move through. 8 X pci-e has 8 lanes and so on.

All pci-e cards will work in all pci-e sockets on the motherboard.

Some 4 x pci-e sockets look like 16 x sockets but only use 4 x and some 4 x sockets are a lot shorter but a 16 x card will still work as long as the socket is open ended so the card can fit.

So yes a 8 x pci-e card will work in your 16 x pci-e slot.

Now a 4 x pci-e socket is going to be a bit slower than a 16 x one. tests on the internet show a gtx 750 was only 5 to 10% slower in a 4 x slot. I did the same test and got the same. But I would think with a higher powered card you would lose a lot more

So a 8 x pci-e card you've been looking at will run as it been made too in a 16 x pci-e socket.... i.e run at full speed for that card.

Thanks guys. learning a lot here. looking at the radeon rx 460 (in my budget) trying to decide between the 2 gb and 4 gb version.

here they are on amazon. is it worth the price to go with the 4 gb over the 2gb?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J1M4HDS/ref=dra_a_ms_mr_hn_xx_P1250_1000?tag=dradisplay-20&ascsubtag=20df3c4138fe2c9a749a94fa9e886238_S

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K1JV83C/ref=dp_cerb_1

It might be worth you going for a new comp,build your own.there are some great bundles going on at the moment.use what you have and build a new one a bit at a time ,it takes time I no but you will end up with 2 comps.allways good to have a backup comp.

Edit. Oops I see you have 2 by your sig,but you no what I mean.

Dave

Simple answer is yes, go for the larger RAM version.

The advantage of more lanes is that the CPU can 'fill' the graphics card faster, the advantage of more RAM is that the graphics card can retain more of what it needs so reduces the need for the CPU to have to send more. An i7 processor can handle more lanes than an i5 so more RAM makes a bigger difference on an i5 system.

I have the 2gb version, would have gotten the 4gb version if it wasn't for having to replace CPU and Motherboard as well.Still getting decent frames with the 2gb version, Skyrim runs pretty much on high and ultra with it, I need to test out fallout 4 with it, haven't had the a chance as it's likely the most testing game on my system.

RX series of cards runs super cool, I have the gigbayte twin fan version, and some times the fans didn't even turn on, O.o however I loaded the gigabyte software and let the fan rather run at a min of 30%, I don't like the idea of start/stop fan profile.

A quick update. just installed my my sapphire nitro radeon rx 460 oc 4 GB gddr5 card.

first off, this card is physically huge. thought i was going to have to build an addition onto my tower. I have a couple of 2x4's supporting it. They recomend at least 450 watt psu.

I always use heirs revenge level to test updates and what nots. Before i really couldn't run the level on high settings. Would get maybe 5 fps. now with this card i average 30 fps and was peeking at 57 fps. graphics look cleaner and brighter.

guru still takes forever to load but hopefully updating to dx 11 helps this.

If you are looking for a card around $140.00 i would recomend this one. If your case can fit it.

@ wizard
where do you find the fan settings?

Trying my new passmark rating.... sorry for the double post.

Started GG today first time for a while .went and made a coffe while the editor finished loading .

Dave

Yes, my early results show that the editor will load about 30 seconds quicker (as will standalone games). That's just the benefit from pre-compiled DX11 shader blobs. I might also spend a few days spring cleaning the non-graphics loading steps to see if there is anything I can offload to a later stage or a novel idea of delay-loading some other elements on a thread in the background so you can get started even quicker

@Lee : uhmmm as you mention loading times: one thing that always strikes me funny is the "creation of AI Obstacles" in loading/compiling a level.

Frankly speaking: whatever GG does there , couldn't his be moved to SAVING the level and stored in a sort of pre-compiled state,
to be loaded in at LoadLevel Time (hopefully faster) ?
It IS the exact same construct everytime the level is being loaded, as long as at least certain parts of the level aren't changed, right ?

But: Ideally this should be an option, because

For testers/players:
IF "precompiled AI Obstacles construct grafting" IS faster, these users would profit with every initial load.

On the other hand, DEVELOPERS would possibly suffer with every intermediate save, if the feature is not optional,
because most likely, they are saving much more often than loading, I suppose.

WIth "create standalone" such a feature could be defaulted if it proves useful, because after that, only loading is to be expected.

Could loading of "AI obstacles " also be done by its own thread, possibly , further decreasing total load times?

Not sure about player saves - it is well possible that the "AI obstacles" are subject to change through player interaction, I don't know.

Mabe, it would even be possible to maintain a saveable "delta" that gets loaded additionally at the next load on top of the initial
taking care of player interaction ?

Lee, I know you are busy withj DX11, so, it is probably the wrong time to bring this up, and/or maybe, my imagination of the "Creating AI Obstacle" phase is all wrong.

sapphire should have their own app, to do this, check the driver CD or the website, as far as I am aware AMD doesn't support it via their crimson drivers not that I played around with it a lot.

I have a gigabyte card and used MSI afterburner, but resulted in one or two graphics crashed so loaded gigabyte extreme for my card, I am pretty happy with it in general.That said I will be likely upgrading my GPU year endish, to 1070GTX. which should last me a good while. RX460 isn't going to have a massive shelf live but you should get a decent 2 years out of it before you need to consider upgrading again.

Happy gaming and designing