looking for affordable(200$) graphics card for decent fps during intense moments

random5

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Good afternon,
Uhm,i guess many of you faced this situation too when you wanna pay as less as possible and improve your working/browsing/playing performance as much as possible.
Well i'll get straight to the point,need a new GPU,aint have any strictly defined budget but i would like it to cost 200$ or less

It is not like i want to play extremely intensive games on ultra at 60fps or higher,I'd like to play basic everyday games on medium graphics settings while achieving as high fps as possible(if it's over 100 then wonderful)Been chasing every fps "point" entire life tried to maximize fps by setting all settings to very low,unticking effects like shadows,antialiasing..eh you know,not everyone's lucky to be born in wealthy countries.

Most games play well on my current setup too but when it comes to lots of action going on screen,fps drops to like 10 making it unbearable,-and thats on low settings,I want a card which can keep 30+fps(the higher the better again),no matter in how intense situation game currently is,I want to never,i repeat NEVER drop below 30fps on medium or atleast low settings

Got almost no idea which card can handle lot of action smoothly,neither got any idea which element of the card decides that,is it core clock?shader clock?RAM?memory bus width?memory clock?texture filtering?stream processors?

I'll just note a few games i play as examples:
Mech Warrior Online(yeah having hard time on this one .. on all minimum settings its unplayable,sometimes even when just walking),Path of Exile,Age of Empires II HD,Elder Scrolls Online,World of Warplanes,Warframe,Heroes of Might and Magic II Gold.(I understand very different genres and requirements games but eh,gotta make them all working!)

My current specifications which do not satisfy me:

W7
8GB DDR3 1866MHz RAM
Intel i3-2100 duo core
Nvidia GT 440
Using 1920x1080 native resolution, I understand its a bit too high,but ain't going to buy another monitor.
All drivers up to date,reinstalled W7 like a week ago.
 
Solution
The video card is still entry level for sure, I just do not want to see you get a new one and be playing something that is cpu bound and gain no fps in a battle.

I am sure I get under 30fps in large battles on Guild Wars 2 with a 2600K @ 4.4 and a GTX 670. Simply put even overclocked the cpu does not keep up in those battles(video card use drops.).

Also note that Vsync(if the card can handle more frames per second than the screen can) will limit video card usage but you would still have good frame rates. So something like a solid 60fps with 60% gpu usage would be not be an actual bottleneck while 25fps with 60 percent gpu would be.

random5

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I was more after nvidia cards..its way easier to differ decent one from poor performance one by those ### numbers, first # stands for generation,2nd for performance, 3rd..well its 0 or 5 anyway,ain't think i need to know about those, im not computer engineer afterall! just a simple nightwatch.

However maybe you're right,nvidia cards were dissapointing me since the childhood,besides you're graphics card expert, i am new on forums but i guess that title got some weight.

At first i've been thinking about GTX 750 or GTX 750Ti,are they any good? heard they're nice due the fact that i wouldnt need to replace my 400W power supply.
 


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-270-benchmark-review,3769.html
It's true that AMD has rebranding issues, but you can read reviews and benchmarks of specific cards.
You shouldn't buy one card or another just because of what they are called.
Good luck!
 
It will also depend on what game you play.

Some games are just so cpu heavy that under intense situations it will drop frames either way.

You can use something like Afterburner by MSI to see what the actual load on the gpu(video card) is when the frame rates drop. If it is high(99% most of the time) then a faster video card will help if the load drops then the cpu is holding you back.

This kind of heavy cpu bottleneck happens most of the time in MMO games.
 

random5

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Interesting, really helpful thank you very much,il check it right away,maybe i do not need a new GPU after all.. maybe my duo core cant handle it..i've seen some quite affordable octo-cores lately,may i ask-are they loud? and what makes most of the noise from computer?is it the GPU?

 
The video card is still entry level for sure, I just do not want to see you get a new one and be playing something that is cpu bound and gain no fps in a battle.

I am sure I get under 30fps in large battles on Guild Wars 2 with a 2600K @ 4.4 and a GTX 670. Simply put even overclocked the cpu does not keep up in those battles(video card use drops.).

Also note that Vsync(if the card can handle more frames per second than the screen can) will limit video card usage but you would still have good frame rates. So something like a solid 60fps with 60% gpu usage would be not be an actual bottleneck while 25fps with 60 percent gpu would be.
 
Solution