Recommendations for a video card?

[Swoka Ikran]

I'm planning to ask for a video card for xmas and was wondering if anyone has recommendations for a decent card for my PC. It'll replace an integrated Geforce 8300.

I don't usually buy video cards (integrated graphics on all PCs I build), so don't know too much about them. I plan to use it mainly for F@H GPU, but might run a game or two if I find something I like. My main reason for asking is because a lot of stuff I've looked at on Newegg and Tiger Direct is either obsolete or too expensive.

My 2 main questions are these: Is there something that fits the below specs? Does the card brand actually matter?

Here's what I'm looking for:

• ~$125 or less price tag
• Must run F@H GPU
• Chipset is supported by nVidia or ATI, and works on both WinXP and Win7
• MoBo has an nVidia chipset, so preferably nVidia card.
• PCI-e x16 (the slot below it is free IIRC, so oversize cards should be fine)
• Can run on a 550w PSU. Don't remember if it has the special PCI-e power connector...
• Has a VGA output or supports a DVI->VGA adapter.

Irayo in advance for any suggestions

EDIT: PSU was 550w, not 400w.

[Payoang]

If you're on a budget and still looking for something decent, try the radeon series. The best thing you can get for about $140 is something like this.

[Swoka Ikran]

If you're on a budget and still looking for something decent, try the radeon series. The best thing you can get for about $140 is something like this.

Oooh. That looks nice. That's probably about as high as I could go in price. Bad news is I just realized that I may need a monitor

I just bothered to look behind my 17" 1024x768 max res LCD for the first time in years. It's VGA only...

On the upside, I found the book for my PSU, and it's 550w (150w larger than I thought). 12V rail is only 30A though, and I've seen some reports that the card can be heavy on the +12 rail.

[Tsmuktengan]

I asked a friend of mine who knows many things about hardware. He told be the following :

As Payoang suggested, an AMD HD6850 graphic card would be optimum for this. The most important this is to not take a NoName graphic card (the same for PSUs).

You may need to buy an adaptater if you keep your VGA screen. You can now find many 24" screens at 2ms for about 150$ (Samsung, Iiyama, Viewsonic, ...) in the Internet. Search for tests to see what the various ones you may find really worth.

[Swoka Ikran]

I asked a friend of mine who knows many things about hardware. He told be the following :

As Payoang suggested, an AMD HD6850 graphic card would be optimum for this. The most important this is to not take a NoName graphic card (the same for PSUs).

You may need to buy an adaptater if you keep your VGA screen. You can now find many 24" screens at 2ms for about 150$ (Samsung, Iiyama, Viewsonic, ...) in the Internet. Search for tests to see what the various ones you may find really worth.

Guess it'll be an HD6850 then Advice noted on not buying NoName GPUs. I'll probably get the Sapphire. My normal parts company (Newegg) sells it, and I'm planning to get PC parts for a home server anyway...

Spoiler: As for PSUs...I learned that lesson the hard way in technical school.

File and print server we built from spare PC parts and a 400w NoName PSU. Lasted a year, and I was in the process of decommissioning it (replaced with newer equipment). It was sitting on the bench, running since the new system wasn't up yet.

The PSU failed shorted during that time...120V AC line on the outputs. Sound like firecrackers going off, then the PC began billowing smoke from every crevice. Shop had that distinct burnt electronics smell in the air for days.

I pulled the case side off...inside was completely black. Tested PSU, discovered 120 on outputs, then lugged entire chassis to the dumpster. Lost the 500GB of data that I hadn't yet transferred.

My current PSU is an ULTRA 550w. Been running almost constantly for over a year, still works fine. Unit had good reviews, and was an $89 unit on sale for $39.

Buying a new monitor isn't worth it because the desk won't fit anything larger than 19". DVI->VGA adapter it is.

[Tsmuktengan]

You can still try to buy a newer monitor that has a better resolution (this is great for photos and videos) for cheaper, and that still fits on your desk.

Concerning NoName PSUs, I think this video explains the issue in the most simple way...

PSU "Noname" = Danger

The french guys who tested this kind of PSU (CanardPC.com) actually were faced with two PSU explosions before they filmed that one.

[Swoka Ikran]

You can still try to buy a newer monitor that has a better resolution (this is great for photos and videos) for cheaper, and that still fits on your desk.

Concerning NoName PSUs, I think this video explains the issue in the most simple way...

PSU "Noname" = Danger

The french guys who tested this kind of PSU (CanardPC.com) actually were faced with two PSU explosions before they filmed that one.

That was actually peaceful compared to the ways I've had them fail. I've had failures like that, and catastrophic ones with smoke and flames out the back. Whether the load was fried varied.

I built a budget PC for someone once (web surfing and MS word PC)...total cost $180. Thing worked great for a year, then it was brought back to me. The $10 Chinese PSU had quit and blown sparks both out the back and into the case...dust inside had caught fire. Needed a MoBo, processor, PSU, and soot removal...

After that and the catastrophic PSU failure in the server, all PSUs are name-brand units.

[Tsmuktengan]

Always take good quality PSUs. Even if they are more expensive, you save up money by not reinvesting in ruined material.

I decided to buy recently a Fortron (FSP) Aurum Gold that has 90% effectiveness to ensure it powers reliably my computer, that will soon have a Sandy Bridge CPU in it along with my Geforce 8800 GTX that shall change soon as well. There are other good ones such as Corsair.

Never buy NoName, never ever. Even when you buy cheap motherboards from popular builders such as Gigabyte, you can have bad surprises : my former motherboard  which was between cheap and middle stage had high chances of seeing it's ceramic phases burn because there weren't enough of them for the Pentium 4 processor.

Hardware websites do help a lot to choose PC components.  

Right now, for an unknown reason, there are some few computers that destroy our hard drives at school, and that generate big black smoke when powered on. They used to work properly before. 

[Sіr. Ηaxalot]

You can still try to buy a newer monitor that has a better resolution (this is great for photos and videos) for cheaper, and that still fits on your desk.

Concerning NoName PSUs, I think this video explains the issue in the most simple way...

PSU "Noname" = Danger

The french guys who tested this kind of PSU (CanardPC.com) actually were faced with two PSU explosions before they filmed that one.

There is a brand called Ace, or sometimes Ace of Sweden. I don't think that they are common anywhere outside of Scandinavia and well, that for the best. They made cheap power supplies and there was a lot of discussions about how good they really were on the Sweclockers.com forum. To put an end to all baseless discusion Sweclockers decided to do a review of their PSU. In the end 4/5 reviewed power supplies failed hard at 50% load. With failed hard I mean that the fuses in their PSU testrig blew which means that any real connected hardware probably would have been fried.
The reviews was accompanied with a video where they talked about the test and finished with throwing a bunch of failed power supplies into a garbage room.

... within a few hours after the review was published other news sites reported a fire in a garbage room in central Stockholm. It turned out to be a coincidence though.

Anyway, with GPUs you may basically buy any brand as long as it's either a nVidia or ATI chipset. If it's an unknown brand they're likely to just use reference cards with added stickers. Also, every GPU I have bought have been bundled with a DVI -> VGA converter, so you should be good.

[bommel]

If you want to do a lot of folding@home, don't get a Radeon. As much as I like AMD/ATI, but they don't perform very well at f@h.

[Swoka Ikran]

If you want to do a lot of folding@home, don't get a Radeon. As much as I like AMD/ATI, but they don't perform very well at f@h.

F@H is the main reason I'm looking for one...

The only things I've seen from Nvidia at the top of my price range are a GTS 450 w/ 1GB GDDR5 for $129.99, or a GTS 550 w/ same RAM for the same price. Brand varies, but all have good reviews. Which is better?

Someone OC'd the 450 and gets 9K+ PPD on F@H. I can't find much on the 550.

My PSU is a concern if I get those Nvidia cards. I have a non-modular 550w made by this company that's discontinued. No clue about quality, but it hasn't blown up in the 2 years I've been using it.

[Payoang]

If you want to do a lot of folding@home, don't get a Radeon. As much as I like AMD/ATI, but they don't perform very well at f@h.

Oh man, that explains a lot of things...

[Tsmuktengan]

If you want to do a lot of folding@home, don't get a Radeon. As much as I like AMD/ATI, but they don't perform very well at f@h.

False. Radeons are recognized since a very long time to be better in mathematical calculations than other GPU manufacturers, nVidia being more advanced for gaming performance rather than mathematical calculations. So there is no reason a Radeon should perform badly in any grid computing calculation program or photo/video editing, compression and treatment.

Your PSU should be fine with this. I had a non modular 315w Fortron(FSP) PSU that could handle very well an nVidia 8800 GT. If yours is 550w and of good enough quality, then it should be all right.

[Swoka Ikran]

Now I'm debating...

The Radeon reportedly gets 4K to 5K points/day on F@H, but the Nvidia GTS 450 can get 9K if OC'd.

The Radeon also reportedly runs cooler and is more energy efficient, but the PSU in my system could handle the GTS 450.

I'm still liking the Radeon 6850 at this point. Regardless of the card I get, it'll be a heck of a lot better than the 0 PPD my GF8300 puts out (that thing takes almost 3 days to do one WU!)

[Tsmuktengan]

Overclocking is certainly not something you can do just by snipping your fingers. Your PSU must be very reliable, your motherboard as well. You also need to have an excellent airflow in your computer case to ensure your GPU won't be too hot, which can considerably shorten it's life time.

By the way, what CPU do you have? It is useless to have an over-powerful GPU if the CPU isn't following as well, as many calculations are also done in the CPU.

[Swoka Ikran]

Overclocking is certainly not something you can do just by snipping your fingers. Your PSU must be very reliable, your motherboard as well. You also need to have an excellent airflow in your computer case to ensure your GPU won't be too hot, which can considerably shorten it's life time.

By the way, what CPU do you have? It is useless to have an over-powerful GPU if the CPU isn't following as well, as many calculations are also done in the CPU.

IIRC, the case has dual fans, front and back, but I may be wrong on that. I haven't opened it in a while, so it may only be a rear fan...adding a front one wouldn't be hard on this case. Probably ought to clean the dust out in the near future...

Processor is a Phenom II x4 940 @ 3Ghz. I had it OC'd to 3.3 a while back, but went back to stock when I started leaving the system running 24/7. System has 3GB RAM. MoBo is an ASUS M4N78 PRO.

[Tsmuktengan]

Not bad. So you could overclock a GTS450 then. I'll ask about this then.

[Sіr. Ηaxalot]

If you want to do a lot of folding@home, don't get a Radeon. As much as I like AMD/ATI, but they don't perform very well at f@h.

False. Radeons are recognized since a very long time to be better in mathematical calculations than other GPU manufacturers, nVidia being more advanced for gaming performance rather than mathematical calculations. So there is no reason a Radeon should perform badly in any grid computing calculation program or photo/video editing, compression and treatment.

Your PSU should be fine with this. I had a non modular 315w Fortron(FSP) PSU that could handle very well an nVidia 8800 GT. If yours is 550w and of good enough quality, then it should be all right.

It's true that nVidia cards are better at performing more complex instructions. Gaming however doesn't really use those advance features, simple calculations are to more help there. Also, F@H is supposed to have a special core that are utilizing the complex instruction capability of the nvidia cards, boosting PPD output.

[bommel]

If you want to do a lot of folding@home, don't get a Radeon. As much as I like AMD/ATI, but they don't perform very well at f@h.

False. Radeons are recognized since a very long time to be better in mathematical calculations than other GPU manufacturers, nVidia being more advanced for gaming performance rather than mathematical calculations. So there is no reason a Radeon should perform badly in any grid computing calculation program or photo/video editing, compression and treatment.

I didn't say Radeons are bad at GPU Computing, the Radeon 6970 for example has a very high theoretical FLOPS count. There are example where Radeons outperform any Geforce GPU. But the f@h client is not as optimized for Radeon GPUs as it is for Nvidia GPUs (Radeons only support OpenCL and not Nvidia's proprietary CUDA technology). It is a fact that Radeons don't perform well with the current f@h GPU clients. This might change in the future, however. So for now, if you do a lot of f@h go for a Geforce.

[Tanri]

There is a new core in development for Radeons.

Currently, GPU3 is only available for NVIDIA GPUs, but we are working on a GPU3 release for ATI. For NVIDIA GPUs, we recommend GPU3. For ATI, we suggest GPU2 until GPU3 has passed through its QA testing in V7. Finally, the V7 Folding@home client (currently in open beta testing) has these functions (SMP and GPU) built in and will not require a special client.

So, Stanford is aware of this ATI vs nVidia issues and works on that. But currently, in this time, nVidia is the best.

IMHO the most important things to consider about FAH are:
1) Very good and optimized airflow in the case and enough space around VGA card to sufficient cooling. Two-slot coolers with no rear exhaust often require more space and airflow, but the true DHES cards (directly exhausting hot air from the case, not returning it inside) are very hard to find (and to pay for).
For example, my power hungry two-slot GTX560Ti running of nominal clocks requires ALL remaing slots free and additional cut through the (already well ventilated) case, with one more 12cm fan to operate at decent temps.

2) Stable and tested PSU that is capable to deliver required power for very long time. This is something obvious for higher priced PSUs designed for high efficiency, but deserves a little attention with the others.
If the required power is above 1/2 of nominal, I reccomend to disable the fan temperature regulation and let it run to max speed, if you are not limited by noise levels. You will be rewarded with increased lifetime and lower probability of some disastrous failure.