In need of a better Graphics Card.

[themonk3106]

I built my own system last year and it took over 6 months to gather the components which I wanted.

My system comprises of the the following:

ASUS P8 P67PRO MOBO
INTEL i7 2600K CPU
ASUS GEFORCE GT630 4GB GPU
Corsair Vengeance 16GB RAM
CS Series™ Modular CS850M — 850 Watt 80 PLUS® Gold Certified PSU
Crucial M550 256GB SSD (For OS and Games)
Western Digital Black 2 TB (For Films and TV Shows)
Western Digital Black 1 TB (For Films and TV Shows)
Western Digital Black 500 MB (Music & Junk)
Windows 7 PRO 64Bit

Panasonic Plasma Monitor TH-42PS9UK via VGA (It has no connection for DVI or HDMI)

I have bought Elite Dangerous and am currently awaiting its release. I do not think my current GPU is up to the task (If anyone feels different here please jump in). There doesnt seem to be many new Graphics cards out there at the moment which still support VGA. HDMI appears to be the norm, and with that in mind I have a LED Projector with a HDMI socket and a 120" Motorised Projector Screen which I bought three years ago.

I only play games on the internet ie. World of Tanks, World of Planes, Wartune

Any replies would be most appreciated.

 

[rpjkw11]

I don't know what your budget is, but you should take a look at the nVidia GTX 970 or 980. Every thing I've read indicates the 970 is a great bang-for-buck GPU. And it should handle what you want to do with ease. Something to consider, anyway.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Get a 750Ti and a DVI->VGA cable.

Not sure why rpjkw11 is telling you to get such expensive cards with the games you listed...

 

[themonk3106]

Which Manufacturer of 750ti? EVGA, PAlit, MSi, Gigabyte, Zotac or KFA2?

 

[synthetic_fenix]

Ultimately manufacturer would be up to you, but EVGA tends to have higher consumer ratings.

 

[caddi daddi]

evga is good, my gigabyte cards have all been good and so have all my asus and saphire cards.

 

[Owenator]

It looks like that motherboard supports SLI. I'd recommend looking at a second GT630 in your search as a point of comparison. I run two GTX570s in SLI and I get 100+ frames in WoT. I don't run max settings but I do have view range maxed out. The new WoT engine with enhanced graphics is GPU taxing but if you lower it down it runs well on less powerful GPU. I have one box running a 8800 GTX.

 

[EarthDog]

There is no way I would SLI such low end cards... None.

I like the 750Ti solution for his needs.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

It looks like that motherboard supports SLI. I'd recommend looking at a second GT630 in your search as a point of comparison. I run two GTX570s in SLI and I get 100+ frames in WoT. I don't run max settings but I do have view range maxed out. The new WoT engine with enhanced graphics is GPU taxing but if you lower it down it runs well on less powerful GPU. I have one box running a 8800 GTX.

Not exactly sure how you plan to SLI those 630's.

 

[Owenator]

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't know you can't SLI GTX 630's. My bad.

 

[EarthDog]

So if I read through your "helpful suggestions" you are saying "Sorry, you can't SLI GTX 630's". I did not know that. My bad. In the future I'll stick to a topics I know better, sorry.

I was saying I wouldn't SLI such low end cards, not knowing it wasn't possible in the first place. The potential trouble that multi-GPUs can bring to the table, even on the low end, are just not worth it to a lot of people. Its a curious card too.. 128 bit bus but 4GB of vram??? Weird. I also do not think the performance would be there even with two in the first place.

YHPM...

 

[Owenator]

Interesting, I've never had any trouble with multi-GPUs. I had 2X GTX 260's in SLI, 2x GTX470's in SLI and now 2x GTX570's. The only down side I found was power delivery.

 

[EarthDog]

Let me more clearly define 'trouble'. With SLI there is the potential for...

No scaling (need to wait for SLI profiles for it to work period)
Sub standard scaling
Scaling period as you never get 2x (50-70% on average?), but always pay 2x so its a poor bang for the buck proposition
Heat management can be a problem (not in this case I am sure)
Power consumption (again not a problem in this case)
Microstutter (potentially as this seems better with Nvidia and its also not noticed by all)

I personally never recommend SLI/CFx for any single monitor user when a single card can do the job. With 4K tv's around though, it is really a requirement to run multiple GPUs. A 750Ti is the perfect card to me as well for the games he plays and the resolution he is on.

 

[Galaxy]

I hear less and less issues about scaling these days now that the majority of games are pretty close to 2X scaling on 2-way SLI, but I agree that SLI is probably just unnecessary for what themonk3106 is wanting to do. If you want to play your typical online games in 1080p with high presets and smooth framerates, a 750 Ti will do the job quite admirably. If you're wanting to max settings or run at 1440p+, I'd go for a 970 which will give you about triple the performance--more at extreme resolution.

One of our most popular cards is the GTX 750 Ti GC Slim, and I find both it and its dual fan counterpart easy to recommend to anyone looking for a solid card with a good bang-for-the-buck.
http://store.galaxytechus.com/product.asp?itemid=90
http://store.galaxytechus.com/product.asp?itemid=87

If you're interested in something a bit more powerful, I'd go with the GALAX GTX 970 EXOC or the GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition which is due to release very soon:
http://www.galaxstore.net/product-p/97nqh6dnb4ux.htm

As for customer service, at the very least I can say that as an official rep I'm always just a pm away if you ever need help with any GALAXY/KFA2 or GALAX graphics card.

 

[w00t69]

yeah a 750 ti is best bang for buck for OP

And my friend never tie your purchase to the types of connectors the card has, there are converters for basically anything to anything. You can do displayport to vga,hdmi,dvi and everything vice versa.

 

[themonk3106]

The Panasonic Plasma TH-42PS9UK Monitor is incapable of a 1080. The max it will run with a HDMi board (Which costs a small fortune) is 480. This is why I run VGA with a screen resolution of 1366 x 768.

If I was to run through either the HDMi board (If I can find one as there are as rare as hen's teeth) or a HDMi to VGA convertor/lead I would have to further reduce my resolution to 1024 x 768.

I do have a home cinema system (LED Projector) which houses both VGA and HDMi inputs and transmits signal onto a 120" screen (size matters) but I use this mainly for XBOX.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Then just use a DVI to VGA adapter.

 

[NiHaoMike]

Its a curious card too.. 128 bit bus but 4GB of vram???

Maybe it was designed for office type work across multiple high resolution monitors. Lots of RAM usage but not much graphics horsepower.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Maybe it was designed for office type work across multiple high resolution monitors. Lots of RAM usage but not much graphics horsepower.

The whole point of the post you partially quoted is that it isn't meant for gaming... which is the point of this thread.

 

[Galaxy]

Maybe it was designed for office type work across multiple high resolution monitors. Lots of RAM usage but not much graphics horsepower.

Don't want to step on anyone's toes, but in the case of a card like the GT 630 the 4GB is only there to make it sell. Any game that could demand that much VRAM would have a GT series card limping about in the low single digit fps, and I haven't managed to find any situation where other software benefits from it either. I'm not saying it's a bad card or anything, just that the extra memory is pretty much there for decoration. I'd say even 1 GB is plenty for 1366x768.

Speaking of which, if I was the OP I'd consider figuring a new 1080p display into the upgrade budget. Not only gaming but also work, surfing and pretty much everything on a PC is infinitely more enjoyable with 2 times the screen real estate. If you subscribe to Newegg or TigerDirect's newsletters you'll find fairly nice 1080p displays for under $100 from time to time. If I had ~$200 to spend on an upgrade, I would take a 750 and 1080p monitor over a 760 and 720p monitor any day. Just my opinion.