Budget Graphics Card Round-up: 13 Sub-$150 Boards Tested

User Comments: 38

1. May 12, 2011 10:58 PM
   

   red1776, Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, said:

   "Run roughshod" huh? Me likely when you use dat ol' fash-und kinda power speak..........It be time to break out the Village People's greatest hits......

   OHHH, son of a seacook! why must you make sport of me dagnabit!

   Reply
2. May 12, 2011 11:04 PM
   

   captaincranky, TechSpot Addict, said:

   I guess a fair question here, is why wasn't the GTX-460 1GB included, as it seems these fall into the price range, if only from time to time by virtue of promotions

   Reply
3. May 13, 2011 2:39 AM
   Guest said:

   Nice review, however I want to point out that it is unlikely that a person which is buying such a card will go for a core i7 and more than this that it will overclock it to 3.7.

   This should have been tested with a mid-range processor. Maybe a core i3, core i5 entry (not overclocked), athlon II X4, Phenom II X4.

   At the end of the day this is what people buying this kind of cards have in their systems, and maybe due to the processor they will not see any difference between a GTS450 and a GTX460, so what's the point to pay more.

   George

   Reply
4. May 13, 2011 2:57 AM
   Staff
   

   Steve said:

   At the end of the day this is what people buying this kind of cards have in their systems, and maybe due to the processor they will not see any difference between a GTS450 and a GTX460, so what's the point to pay more.

   George

   I'm not sure that testing with an Athlon II X2 215 processor and telling our readers that they all perform the same would make for a very objective review but thank you for the feedback.

   Reply
5. May 13, 2011 4:29 AM
   Guest said:

   I am afraid he is right though, budget cards means budget CPUs as well and if the results mean all cards perform the same, buy the cheaper! The round-up is interesting but not representative of actual performance in the reader's target rig.

   Reply
6. May 13, 2011 6:00 AM
   

   Archean, TechSpot Paladin, said:

   Any performance change will only occur in games which have some sort of dependency on CPU, otherwise I think it is not that big of an issue.

   Reply
7. May 13, 2011 6:03 AM
   Staff
   

   Steve said:

   Any performance change will only occur in games which have some sort of dependency on CPU, otherwise I think it is not that big of an issue.

   It's not and you are right. The idea is to remove the CPU as a possible bottleneck as you are concentrating on GPU performance. This is common practice when testing GPU's of all calibers. Overclocking the Core i7 to 3.7GHz was not necessary, the standard 2.66GHz would have delivered the same results but I saw no need to change the standard GPU test system configuration.

   Reply
8. May 13, 2011 8:16 AM
   Notis said:

   Why no mentioning of Nvidia's CUDA? It should effect some peoples choice greatly. (In my case I need it for digital film editing.)

   [link]

   Reply
9. May 13, 2011 1:31 PM
   ohsilly said:

   I am not a gamer but I like fast graphics if it will help with my browsing or opening huge graphics files like PDF , etc. . I keep noticing that PDF files do not scroll smoothly in most cases meaning the pages kiind of goof around as you scroll down or up in halting styles or manners like that.. what do you recommned the minimum standards for discrete graphics for guys like me.. Remy, I am not a gamer. I also hear about how some graphic cards acutally help cpu with some of the tasks.. What are they? What about AMD Fusion?? I suspect that Intel's Sandybridges is actually a mush up of the old integrated graphics once found on the Intel mobos which controls over half of the mobo market, anyway.. nothing so grand about Sandybridge as if Sandybridge include the level of discrete graphics cards which it is not by a long shot, right? Is AMD Fusion going to blow SAndybridges in this context that is if users want powerful discrete level graphics to go along with CPU which Sandybridge do not .

   Reply
10. May 13, 2011 3:21 PM
    Guest said:

    Well one card IS missing here

    HD5850!

    Seling in germany for about 120$ TROUNCES everything on offer here.

    In crossfire quicker than a GTX580 by some games!

    Reply
11. May 15, 2011 7:13 AM
    Guest said:

    What drivers did you use for Sandy Bridge? And which CPU as well as Memory

    Reply
12. July 31, 2011 2:30 AM
    Guest said:

    Interesting to read but sadly of little value as the bit width and DDR level is unspecified.

    Reply
13. July 31, 2011 4:02 AM
    Staff
    

    Steve said:

    What drivers did you use for Sandy Bridge? And which CPU as well as Memory

    Core i7 2600K (it was added at the last minute using the latest drivers at the time and DDR3-1866 memory).

    Interesting to read but sadly of little value as the bit width and DDR level is unspecified.

    How does that make it of little value? Since when does the memory bandwidth make any difference to Core i7 (LGA1366) performance? Also whats the bit width? Anyway it was DDR3-1600 memory as specified on the test system specs page...

    Reply

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