- Dec 8, 2013
- 2
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- 10,510
I'm looking to buy a graphics card as a gift, but I'm a bit hazy about what's out there - it's been quite a long time since I was up to date on technologies. Since it's not my PC, some of the following is not all that complete - apologies. Let me know if you need more info.
budget £40-50, will buy online for UK delivery before Christmas. If I can achieve everything he wants for less, that's also cool and I'll get some beer too...
What for?
His setup:
Linux support I realise that predicting driver support in the future is a pain, but it would be nice to have a card with good driver support now, and a good chance of support down the line in 8 years. Probably closed drivers to start with, then open as closed support becomes ropey. I think Nvidia do better on that one, but I might be behind the times. A chipset that's selling well will probably have better open source support in a few years time than one that's selling in smaller numbers.
My thinking so far
All this had lead me to look at the GT 620/630/640. What do the experts think?
budget £40-50, will buy online for UK delivery before Christmas. If I can achieve everything he wants for less, that's also cool and I'll get some beer too...
What for?
■ Useage Videos/multimedia on a huge screen, possible CAD, though unlikely, no gaming.
■ Life He tends to buy decent kit, but not often, so the card should last, and should remain useful and have modern features. IT will probably move into a new machine at some point in the future.
■ Overclocking His processor and memory are overclocked, and his clock rate is limited by the onboard graphics. He'll probably increase the FSB if that's not bad for the new GPU. I have no idea how that works with a discrete GPU, he proabably won't need to overclock it.
His setup:
■ Mobo ASUS P5Q-EM (quite old) http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5QEM/#specifications
■ Processor Core 2 duo, probably a wolfdale, overclocked.
■ Old GPU The G45 chipset on the board.
■ PSU Not sure exactly what, but about 400W, decent brand. Has 6-pin fly leads for PCIe
■ OS Ubuntu Linux
■ Resolution Now Currently dual head 1600x1200(screen) + 720x1280(projector)
■ Resolution Soon Dual head 2560x1440(screen - dual DVI) + 1920x1080(projector - HDMI)
■ Multi-GPU He is very unlikely to want to do Crossfire/SLI stuff
Linux support I realise that predicting driver support in the future is a pain, but it would be nice to have a card with good driver support now, and a good chance of support down the line in 8 years. Probably closed drivers to start with, then open as closed support becomes ropey. I think Nvidia do better on that one, but I might be behind the times. A chipset that's selling well will probably have better open source support in a few years time than one that's selling in smaller numbers.
My thinking so far
■ In the interests of long term reliability I was thinking Gigabyte, Asus, not sure who else
■ In the interests of long term usefulness, I was thinking of the more recent generations, but lower performance, rather than previous gen, higher performance. I don't know if it actually works like that though.
■ I was assuming that for big screens, big textures would be needed, so big lots of memory?
■ It doesn't have to be silent running, but it should be fairly quiet. Case is fairly well cooled.
All this had lead me to look at the GT 620/630/640. What do the experts think?
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