Guide to Choosing a New Graphics Card: 5 Key Questions Before Buying

[m3tavision]

Price/Performance is a value statement, not a performance metric. When you compare FPS against a price point that is value. If you only care about performance, then price doesn't come into play. I can create a chart of GPUs by average FPS. That is performance and only performance. It doesn't tell me anything about what it cost to achieve that performance. If I add in the cost to achieve a certain FPS, that is now a value statement. I'm not confused one bit about that.

No... (once again) you are confusing the term value and performance.

Price/Performance is simple rationale that you may be overlooking & going ovr your head. It means based on YOUR PRICE.... what PERFORMANCE can u buy..? (or vice-versa; performance/price is the same mental equation).

That is what price/performance means^
You (yourself) set one metric and weight the other, or vice versa to your personal needs and purchase based off that logical conclusion.


Lastly, as said before, value has nothing to do with performance, or how "good a deal" a card may be, if it doesn't perform to your PERFORMANCE needs.

Also, notice how you are stuck on the term FPS and I have never used that... it is bcz u are thinking in terms of a game's fps and I am speaking in terms of personal performance criteria (goal/requirements) would be needed for your purchase.

 

[JamesBlond]

In the old days...2015-2019 all my GPU's were free, they paid for themselves, when not working mining.
Last one I bought RTX2070, so far sitting with $2800 from mining part time over the past 4 yrs, but I am not spending money on GPU's till I see at least a 50% increase over the RTX4080 and minumum 16GB as the standard

 

[waclark]

nd

No... (once again) you are confusing the term value and performance.

Performance is a function of value. How do you determine the value of a GPU if you don't consider how it performs and what it cost?

Price/Performance is simple rationale that you may be overlooking & going ovr your head. It means based on YOUR PRICE.... what PERFORMANCE can u buy..? (or vice-versa; performance/price is the same mental equation).

Exactly, price/performance is a calculation that you do to assign a VALUE to a purchase. I can get 100FPS for $500. Or I can get 200 FPS for $700. Which is the better VALUE?

That is what price/performance means^
You (yourself) set one metric and weight the other, or vice versa to your personal needs and purchase based off that logical conclusion.

Performance has nothing to do with price, other than you typically pay more to get more performance. But, you can compare GPU performance without ever looking at price. We do it all the time. However, as we all know, raw performance only tells you part of the story. If you have unlimited funds, then maybe you don't care about price. But for most of us, we do care about how much a GPU costs. That is why people talk about budget builds and finding the best bang for your buck (which is another way of saying VALUE). Bang for buck is another way of saying I'm getting X performance for Y dollars, or price/performance.

Lastly, as said before, value has nothing to do with performance, or how "good a deal" a card may be, if it doesn't perform to your PERFORMANCE needs.

Value has everything to do with how good a "deal" a card may be, how can you not see that? And now, you're making my point. This is what I said in my original response to you. Simply looking at price/performance is not sufficient to determine whether the GPU can deliver the minimum performance you need. So, a $200 GPU might have a great $/FPS ratio but if it can't do 60 fps then it has no value to me.

Also, notice how you are stuck on the term FPS and I have never used that... it is bcz u are thinking in terms of a game's fps and I am speaking in terms of personal performance criteria (goal/requirements) would be needed for your purchase.

What would your personal performance criteria be for a GPU? Please tell me because the main criteria that I look at, and I suspect a lot of people do the same, is how many frames per second it delivers and how much does it cost? That is price/performance. In some cases people do look at power consumption, but that translates into the price side of the equation, because power consumption is about the cost of electricity. I am genuinely curious to know how you define performance if you don't use FPS.

 

[Fastturtle]

I'd change the order a bit:

1) determine if you need a PSU upgrade - does the current one have a PCIe 6 pin connector or an 8 pin? If it doesn't then you will need an upgrade to handle anything and keep in mind that Older Dell/HP prebuilts may use a non standard wiring for the Motherboard Connector, so any upgrade has the potential of killing the entire system as both of them want you to buy their upgrades or simply replace a working system with something better.

2) Do you have enough case room? You're right about that. The new cards have gotten outrageous for size and slots. To many smaller cases and Motherboards may not support anything newer/larger then the 3070/6700 series or cards due to slot placement. Ran into that problem with a B450M Pro4 board. Couldn't upgrade until I replaced the board to a B550 with enough room to support a triple slot card - claimed 2.7 but figure anything larger then 2 slot is at least a three slot card.

3) What games do you regularly play? This is important because if you go with an Intel card, you must have Resize Bar available plus running Win10 and Gaming with DX12. I'm firmly in the camp that I need DX11 support though some of my off-line games simply require DX9 to run well. Very important in that aspect and no, it has no bearing on whether you play at more then 1080 - I play GW2 and they recently upgraded to DX11 as the required version.

4) Flat out Fail. Unless you're upgrading the monitor, then it's not going to be a concern if you're simply looking for slightliy better performance or added features. Although I have a 2k (2560x1440) monitor, I still use 1080 due to my aging eyes, which is why I don't even consider it.

5) Don't even bother with any of the Radeon 64/65 series card. They've been crippled by Design way to much to be viable in this day and age. You'd be better off looking at the 6600 as their prices have dropped below $200 now while the 64/65 series are still overpriced garbage. If you prefer Nvidia, a 1050 Ti/1650 will also out perform either of the crippled Radeons the the 6600 is going to be very close.

In the Mid Range (200-350) I'd seriously look for a 1060/5600xt card as are solid 1080. Both support DX12 so you have the option of playing some of the newest games depending on that feature set.

Unless you're finally upgrading a decent performance system - No difference between Gaming/Workstations, then your budget is what ever you are willing to spend. My personal preference is for AMD but I understand many folks prefer Nvidia so I wont make a recomendation other then avaoid the 4060 Ti 8GB when they've anounced a 16GB version is coming.

 

[hwertz]

Just to comment on the "no cables" option -- I got the GTX1650 (DO watch out, the ones with GDDR6 the more power-hungry RAM pushes them over the limit and they DO have a power connector; the GDDR5 models don't.) This GDDR5 versus GDDR6 *is* usually clearly listed, but I saw some that had a power connector and some that didn't and wondered why, that's why.

My mini review -- I went to move over a GTX650 over to my current system and found I did not have a power connector for it (and probably not enough wattage on the PS either) so I got a GTX1650. The short of it, it's great, and if you have an older CPU there may not be a point of buying something faster even if you DO have the power connectors for it.

I have one in a i5-3470 (that's an Ivy Bridge, 3rd gen), Ubuntu with current Nvidia drivers, steam+proton, current wine+dxvk+vkd3d, it's run everything I've thrown at it (naturally, since it supports full OpenGL+Vulkan, and fully up-to-date DX9/10/11/12 in Steam & Wine.). Vast majority of games on high settings, the heavier ones on medium or something like "The Last of Us Part I" needless to say on low (amusingly, due to how Wine does their thing, TLOUI pops up a box recommending I upgrade my Catalyst drivers even though it's Nvidia..I hit OK then it runs fine.)

Games run very well but it is almost always CPU-limited, GravityMark is the only thing I've had get it to 100% utilization, games will either hit their frame rate cap (and not really be CPU or GPU limited), or get CPU limited (with about 40-80% GPU utilization, of course on any older games that's 40% utilization getting like 150FPS or something anyway but still). I got about 30-40FPS in CP2077 on low settings, but honestly it looks a bit crap on low.. saw GPU utilization was only 40% so I cranked the settings up some and got it to 80% utilization with only a 1FPS frame rate drop.

 

[Ben Myers]

Price/performance is the best metric..

Agreed, but the card has to fit in a system with a power supply that meets wattage requirements and it has to d what you want it to do. Hence all the leadup in the article to price/performance.

 

[Ben Myers]

Very thorough article. Well done, Nick.

 

[Ben Myers]

Just to comment on the "no cables" option -- I got the GTX1650 (DO watch out, the ones with GDDR6 the more power-hungry RAM pushes them over the limit and they DO have a power connector; the GDDR5 models don't.) This GDDR5 versus GDDR6 *is* usually clearly listed, but I saw some that had a power connector and some that didn't and wondered why, that's why.

My mini review -- I went to move over a GTX650 over to my current system and found I did not have a power connector for it (and probably not enough wattage on the PS either) so I got a GTX1650. The short of it, it's great, and if you have an older CPU there may not be a point of buying something faster even if you DO have the power connectors for it.

I have one in a i5-3470 (that's an Ivy Bridge, 3rd gen), Ubuntu with current Nvidia drivers, steam+proton, current wine+dxvk+vkd3d, it's run everything I've thrown at it (naturally, since it supports full OpenGL+Vulkan, and fully up-to-date DX9/10/11/12 in Steam & Wine.). Vast majority of games on high settings, the heavier ones on medium or something like "The Last of Us Part I" needless to say on low (amusingly, due to how Wine does their thing, TLOUI pops up a box recommending I upgrade my Catalyst drivers even though it's Nvidia..I hit OK then it runs fine.)

Games run very well but it is almost always CPU-limited, GravityMark is the only thing I've had get it to 100% utilization, games will either hit their frame rate cap (and not really be CPU or GPU limited), or get CPU limited (with about 40-80% GPU utilization, of course on any older games that's 40% utilization getting like 150FPS or something anyway but still). I got about 30-40FPS in CP2077 on low settings, but honestly it looks a bit crap on low.. saw GPU utilization was only 40% so I cranked the settings up some and got it to 80% utilization with only a 1FPS frame rate drop.

Third gen i7 CPUs are now cheap. Upgrade the CPU to the fastes i7 you can find to raise the CPU bottlenect higher. Check to make sure your motherboard BIOS supports the i7 before you buy it, and maybe you'll need to upgrade the BIOS to handle the i7 you pick.

 

[m3tavision]

Performance is a function of value. How do you determine the value of a GPU if you don't consider how it performs and what it cost?

(snip) ...

What would your personal performance criteria be for a GPU? Please tell me because the main criteria that I look at, and I suspect a lot of people do the same, is how many frames per second it delivers and how much does it cost? That is price/performance. In some cases people do look at power consumption, but that translates into the price side of the equation, because power consumption is about the cost of electricity. I am genuinely curious to know how you define performance if you don't use FPS.

You might want to re-read all of that^

I'll flip your word game back at you: How can you determine value, without first knowing a cards price and performance..? 0.o....

Not sure why this is so hard or tough for you... but all that gibberish above is just you simply trying to convince yurself on what is price/performance. Most people know how to read a GPU chart and look at prices. And using a set criteria of price & performance, make a logical decision based on those^ 2 metrics.

Price / Performance = most performance for least price paid.
Using a set $ VALUE (ie: $500) assigned by individual buyers budget. Where the BUYER sets the criteria of price limits and/or performance goals, then shops them.

Once your criteria is set, you start by weighing one against the other, hence " / " <----



Now,
If you are looking for a value option, you may start to consider/weigh in other options... such as upscaling, or power usage, noise, game optimization...etc.

But again, none of that superficial stuff matters to the average Gamer and logical buyers... they buy as much raster as they can afford. They are not swayed by marketing, or cupcakes and gimmicks.

Perhaps this is so hard for you, because you have bias for NVidia, but AMD offers more performance per dollar.... and it hurts your bias?

 

[godrilla]

Wow what just happened GPU prices are In a free fall

Via Amazon 10 to 15 % below MSRP
for eg 7900 xtx as low as $882
and 4070 for $540 FYI.

 

[theUnforgiven]

Just get as much as you can afford at the time,
it will save you updating too early