Onboard graphics better than low-end video card?

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DocDick1965

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Jul 14, 2013
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Purchased a VTX3D Radeon HD 6670 2Gb DDr3 card to take some of the load off my processor as I originally used on-board graphics. I'm not a gamer and use the PC mainly for office and internet tasks, but I also do quite a bit of Photoshop editing.

My Win7 Windows Experience Index was running at 6.6 (max poss 7.9) due to using on-board graphics (Asus P8Z77-V LX). I have processor (i5 3570) and RAM (8Gb) scores of 7.7 and my SSD turns in 7.9 for the hard-drive; consequently, this gave me a score of 6.6 (score is based on weakest component). I realise it's not a cutting edge card, but perhaps my expectations of a card with 2Gb DDR were too high, as it only raised my graphics performance from 6.6 to 6.7 (less than 2 per cent improvement).

I regard the motherboard as being medium-good and currently costs around £80 (approx USD120), so was quite surprised when this graphics card (currently about £40 or USD60) offered no benefit to the onboard Intel graphics and added so little to the performance scores.

Not sure what kind of system you'd have to be running to be able to use this card to get a significant improvement over your on-board graphics? Perhaps a ZX81?

What should I have bought without spending hundreds of dollars/pounds to boost my Photoshop and occasionally watching vids (still pixelated at times)?

Thanks
 
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OcelotRex


Tom's Hardware's Graphics...
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OcelotRex

OcelotRex

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I too have a core i5 3570k with an ASUS P8Z77-M Pro and 8GB of Ram. I do not have a SSD; instead I have a 1 TB WD Caviar Blue. I did not install any Video Card though I am purchasing one at the end of summer. I use the on CPU IGPU Intel HD 4000 graphics on the processor right now.

That being said I stream videos in 1080p flawlessly from the internet and from my storage computer upstairs. I made the computer to handle the 1080p 60fps raw video from my HD camcorder and it runs without a hitch. Perhaps you could expound where you are having issues with videos?
 
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DocDick1965

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Jul 14, 2013
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Hi

Thanks for all your remarks so far.

Yes, video can be problematic - just .avi files, no HD or anything like that, and when I FFWD using the slider bar, the images become pixelated and take a few seconds to recover. Photoshop can also be slow to apply changes.

Display is running at 1920x1200.

I understand from reading around that the Windows Index is about as scientific as raising a wetted finger to see which way the wind is travelling, so I may run some graphics benchmark tests on the system, with and without the card, just to see if there is a quantifiable difference, as no perceptible changes have been made in image quality.

Thanks guys, from a very hot (31 degrees Celcius) England!
 
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OcelotRex

OcelotRex

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Tom's Hardware's Graphics Heirarchy Chart shows that your DDR3 6670 is a few orders better than my integrated HD 4000 so your card should not be the issue unless there's something wrong with the card. Anecdottaly I can offer that when I search in videos using the scroll bar in VLC, WMP, and XBMC the files can pixelate and take some time to recover as well. I think this has to do more with the compression of the video, what container that the video is in, and the software rendering the video than any specific issue with your hardware. What software are you using to watch the media? Is it purchased or downloaded? Do you know what the compression method was used to get it into the .avi container?

For the photoshop issue -

Is the program installed on your SSD? This will increase the loading times of the program and should make it "snappier" to use. As far as the issues when applying changes: I am not a heavy photoshop user so I am not sure how OpenGL can help with Photoshop performance. Here's a link from Adobe that goes into some of the benefits of OpenGL. Here's another link on how to manually enable OpenGL in CS6. I would make sure your drivers from AMD are up to date along with installing all updates to Photoshop then checking to make sure that OpenGL is enabled in Photoshop.
 
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DocDick1965

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Jul 14, 2013
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Thanks for your suggestions and shared experiences of the movie playback - it's what I'm also experiencing with VLC, so perhaps that's not down to the card.
Photoshop CS6 is loaded onto the SSD (Samsung 840 series 256Gb) and takes about 3 seconds to open from clicking the desktop icon (no real change pre/post graphics card, it's all down to the SSD), so I shall check out the links you have kindly provided.
I'm currently downloading PC Mark 7 and 3D Mark v110 (slow as both around 1Gb each on a 1Gb ADSL line), which I'll run with and without the graphics card.

On the plus side, although the manufacturer's comments were along the lines of 'performance is similar anyway', the online retailer has come back to me saying it sounds like the card's faulty and I can return it. Will probably just run the benchmarks first, if only for my own interest.

Many thanks for all inputs!

Card mailed back today... any suggestions on what I should replace it with, budget of around USD100-130 ??

 
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