What graphic card is better a raedon 5450 or geforce 420

mackpack4

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Jul 31, 2011
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I am looking to buy a gaming desktop for my son to play starcraft II. I have found 2 HP elite systems refurbished with i7
processors and most everything else is the same besides these cards. Would like to know from someone who had the experience what woulf be better. And can someone tell me if you lose a lot of performance by going wireless as opposed
to hard wire, is it significant to notice.
 
Solution
Neither of those cards is considered a real gaming card - they are more for watching videos and general surfing and office applications.

Here is a review on the HD 5450:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5450,2549.html

I did not see any credible reviews of the GT 420 - probably because the sites that normally review cards do so for gaming purposes and this was not worth considering - to them as a gaming card.

You can find some good information about graphics cards at upgradevideocards.com:

http://www.upgradevideocards.com/index.html

Particularly note the page on non-gaming cards which lists some info on the HD 5450. The other pages should help you better understand the info in the article above, such as the...

rockyjohn

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Neither of those cards is considered a real gaming card - they are more for watching videos and general surfing and office applications.

Here is a review on the HD 5450:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5450,2549.html

I did not see any credible reviews of the GT 420 - probably because the sites that normally review cards do so for gaming purposes and this was not worth considering - to them as a gaming card.

You can find some good information about graphics cards at upgradevideocards.com:

http://www.upgradevideocards.com/index.html

Particularly note the page on non-gaming cards which lists some info on the HD 5450. The other pages should help you better understand the info in the article above, such as the explanations about frames per second comparisons, on this page:

http://www.upgradevideocards.com/gaming.html

The rest of the site includes info you might find helpful as well as links and guides to using them to find out more about good video cards. Another good reference is this site's monthly listing of the best video cards at different budget levels:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2964.html

Note the quick reference table on the back that groups roughly comparable cards and ranks the groups:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2964-7.html

I did not find the GT 420 on the list but the HD 5450 is. Note that most of the cards below it are discontinued models, some discontinued many many years ago.

If you get either of those HP systems, you will need to upgrade the video card to game. A key qualification for upgrading is that they have a strong enough power supply unit (PSU) to handle a more powerful card - often systems sold with only low end video cards don't have a PSU strong enough for much of an upgrade. You should check the PSUs on thos systems as well.
 
Solution

Zero_

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Both are pretty bad actually.

Something like this would be a better buy for StarCraft II.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004L9MATK?tag=banforbucga08-20&camp=213761&creative=393545&linkCode=bpl&creativeASIN=B004L9MATK&adid=1TX253JRG3M9EPBGFZ6A&
 

rockyjohn

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What is your budget for the entire system - including the video card?
Are you open to any good brand of PC or do you strongly prefer HP?

The companion to the best graphics card article I linked above is this one on the best CPUs for gaming at different budget levels - note that you don't need an i7 and you would get much better gaming performance by spending less on the CPU and more on the GPU than what it appears you were looking at above:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-llano-processor,2989.html