EVGA GT610 and ASUS PB278q and 1080p video

[antilog17]

I need some help understanding the technical side of my situation if someone can explain it to me. I suspect my problem is an underpowered graphics card, but I was hoping for confirmation from others that may understand the technical details better than myself.

I built my rig back in 2006-2007. It has a Core2 Duo (2.67 Ghz) and previously had a high end passively cooled graphics card (XFX Geforce 6550, I think, it's so old that XFX doesn't even have in their "previous GPU" section) and a 22 inch monitor. A few months ago, the graphics card went bad (signs were showing) and due to timing of the incident, I had to emergency replace the card. There was an EVGA GT610 on sale with 2GB DDR3 memory, 8 times the capacity I used to have (256 MB) and I assumed better speed (it has been 7 years, I'm assuming the cheaper cards should be comparable to a high end card from that time...).

The GT610 worked exactly how I wanted. Everything ran smoothly, quick replacement. I do not play games, but do watch a lot of videos and video playback (local video, streaming, etc.) was perfect. This week, I decided to upgrade my monitor and got the ASUS PB278q. My resolution jumped from 1920x1080 to 2550x1440 and the initial results seem fine, but now video playback is choppy and not smooth. Streaming seems okay, but still not as smooth as it used to be. The only assumption I can make is that the GT610 is in fact not as reasonably powered as I thought and cannot handle the 1080p playback while maintaining the higher resolution, seeing as how the only change was the monitor (same DVI-D cable even).

Can someone confirm this for me, or better yet, offer a more detailed explanation as to my problem (or if it is something different altogether)? Thanks ahead for any answers and insight! Even though I think I know my answer, I do love knowing the specifics of how these things come together.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Have you tried the old monitor to confirm it's not simply a bad card with the same issues on all resolutions and just happened to coincide with the monitor change? Have you tried the monitor at lower resolution settings? Tried another cable?

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is the brand and model number of your power supply unit?

 

[nikoli707]

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/downloads.html
run this driver cleaner above and let it do the safe mode clean uninstall. then download the latest nvidia drivers from here...
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

this also could be a program issue. what program are you using to watch 1080p content?

if your really into video, especially with your beautiful 1440p monitor, you should be using media player classic and the kawaii codec pack....
http://haruhichan.com/forum/showthread.php?7545-KCP-Kawaii-Codec-Pack

though if you want max performance you would likely want to go with their recommendation of the gtx650.

 

[antilog17]

Have you tried the old monitor to confirm it's not simply a bad card with the same issues on all resolutions and just happened to coincide with the monitor change? Have you tried the monitor at lower resolution settings? Tried another cable?

In answer to darkbreeze:

I did not retry the old monitor (kind of a pain to switch), but I did lower the resolution back to 1080p (1920 x 1080) and the video did improve substantially (but still not as good as I recall the old monitor being just an hour prior). In reference to that, after reading your response, I lowered again to 1600 x 900 and perfect playback. This further confirms to me that it must be my graphics card, but I find it hard to believe that my old "gaming" quality card can outpace a 6 year newer (but much cheaper price range) card. My power supply is Seasonic SS-550HT.

In answer to nikoli707:

I will consider the driver cleaner and clean uninstall in the morning, although I did do an update to the drivers with the provided NVIDIA software. I am using media player classic with a codec pack (although not the kawaii). I did notice an interesting quirk with windows media player having a less consistent choppiness, but still having it. I guess the question I should be researching is what the exact specs are from the GT610 to the GTX650 and see if maybe there is some significant difference that would help explain this.

 

[nikoli707]

Have you tried the old monitor to confirm it's not simply a bad card with the same issues on all resolutions and just happened to coincide with the monitor change? Have you tried the monitor at lower resolution settings? Tried another cable?

In answer to darkbreeze:

I did not retry the old monitor (kind of a pain to switch), but I did lower the resolution back to 1080p (1920 x 1080) and the video did improve substantially (but still not as good as I recall the old monitor being just an hour prior). In reference to that, after reading your response, I lowered again to 1600 x 900 and perfect playback. This further confirms to me that it must be my graphics card, but I find it hard to believe that my old "gaming" quality card can outpace a 6 year newer (but much cheaper price range) card. My power supply is Seasonic SS-550HT.

In answer to nikoli707:

I will consider the driver cleaner and clean uninstall in the morning, although I did do an update to the drivers with the provided NVIDIA software. I am using media player classic with a codec pack (although not the kawaii). I did notice an interesting quirk with windows media player having a less consistent choppiness, but still having it. I guess the question I should be researching is what the exact specs are from the GT610 to the GTX650 and see if maybe there is some significant difference that would help explain this.

you shouldn't need very much power to hold 1440p, and the gtx650 is recommended with the kawaii codec pack for demanding 4k playback along with madvr and lav filters which take video to a whole new level. that may be more than you need. a more realistic option is to just find a sweet deal on a haswell i3 with a decent motherboard for around $150 maybe. all the haswell 'i" chips have hd4600 and it is definitely a bit faster than the gt610 you have, not to mention the haswell based 2 core 4 thread speed will blow the doors off your aging core2duo. the gtx650 should already be close to $100 anyways, and unless you really need the gpu horsepower for the advanced video work of the codec pack or gaming, hd4600 should be more than plenty for video.

there is also a quad core amd option that costs the same but offers much more horsepower if your willing.
the amd a10-5800k can be found on a good deal quite often and has the built in hd 7660d gpu which completely destroys the gt610 you have.
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7660D-IGP-vs-GeForce-GT-610
also

 

[Darkbreeze]

Actually, regardless of the amount of RAM which is probably irrelevant to the performance of that card, the GT610 is a fairly low end card and although I don't have personal experience with both cards, the benchmarked results of both cards leads me to believe that your old card was significantly better than your new one. I would consider a different card or as a better alternative, like Nikoli suggested, some form of upgrade might be warranted. You could get a new board with onboard graphics, either of the AMD, Intel or Nvidia varieties, or a cheap board and cpu with a decent card, and vastly improve over what you've got now with that card and an old cpu that's likely going to bottleneck any decent card you pair it with.

 

[antilog17]

Actually, regardless of the amount of RAM which is probably irrelevant to the performance of that card, the GT610 is a fairly low end card and although I don't have personal experience with both cards, the benchmarked results of both cards leads me to believe that your old card was significantly better than your new one. I would consider a different card or as a better alternative, like Nikoli suggested, some form of upgrade might be warranted. You could get a new board with onboard graphics, either of the AMD, Intel or Nvidia varieties, or a cheap board and cpu with a decent card, and vastly improve over what you've got now with that card and an old cpu that's likely going to bottleneck any decent card you pair it with.

After comparing on GPU boss the oldest possible XFX Geforce card to the GT 610, I suspect you are right. I just assumed the card specs and pricing would scale over the years and that clearly isn't the case. So I either buy a new graphics card or upgrade, which is a hell of lot more expensive since I would also need to buy RAM (my RAM is DDR2, so I would need DDR3), so a minimum of Mobo, CPU, and RAM. At which point, I would contemplate a new rig and just cannibalize the parts... Time and money I'm not sure I can afford.

Thanks for the bouncing back of ideas and insight. At least I know the problem...

 

[antilog17]

I was able to find a spec sheet for my old graphics card (XFX 7600GT 256 MB Passively Cooled card) and using GPU Boss (awesome site, by the way), I was able to find a card of similar specs to my original card and compare to the 610 (main difference being my 610 has 2GB) and darkbreeze is correct, my 7 year old graphics card was in fact better than my emergency replacement card. I honestly would not have guessed it.

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Sapphire-Radeon-R7-250-vs-EVGA-GeForce-GT-610

Given time and cost, I think I will just purchase a new graphics card to try and competently support my new monitor for video playing, but maybe a massive upgrade or a complete rebuild is due...

 

[Darkbreeze]

Here is a decent card that's currently on sale. Cost is under ninety dollars so not bad. There are better choices if you're willing to spend a little more but for the price it's great card plus it's a GDDR5 card which IS an improvement over your old card. And actually it's only 64.99 after the 20.00 mail in rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130827&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL082814&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL082814-_-EMC-082814-Index-_-DesktopGraphicsVideoCards-_-14130827-L05A