What is the lowest spec card which will support a 5120x1440 Ultrawide Monitor

[jweaver]

To start, I don't play PC games.. I gave up in the 90s after blowing tons of money every year upgrading to the latest hardware and spending (wasting?) most of my time tweeking the autoexec.bat/config.sys to free up a few KB of memory, for different games to work (you would have to be old to remember those days)..

These days, I just use my PC for "business" applications, CAD/3D Printing, video encoding, photos and the odd video.

I recently aquired a reasonable spec HP "server" from work which serves me perfectly and I bought a 2nd hand Radeon 7850 card to replace the onboard video.. To be honest, its almost perfect for my needs.. It has a ton of memory and a descent CPU, and the GPU is probably overspec'd for my needs.. It pretty much does everything I want and I have no reason to upgrade. I run a dual 24" 16:10 monitor setup which I am happy with and the 7850 drives this perfectly.

I am tempted to treat myself to a 49" UltraWide monitor (5120x1440) and I am pretty sure my 7850 won't drive it.

What would be the lowest spec card, that I could buy (preferable 2nd hand), that would drive a 5120x1440 display but not give me 3D performance that I don't need? Is there anything out there which is low spec (cheap?) yet supports the high resolutions I need for this type of monitor?

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

https://www.amd.com/en/partner/radeon-rx550-rx560

'RX 550 is compatible with a new generation of monitors that would make any gamer excited: 1080p at 240Hz, 1440p at 240Hz, 4K at 120 Hz - even 1440p ultra-wide at 190Hz'.

Good luck finding one. I managed to get one ages go for my backup rig for a little under £60. Used to be the cheapest thing with display port 1.4.

Also theres 'RX 550' and 'Radeon 550', the latter has a gimped 64 bit Vram bus and costs less which is what I have, but I don't think you'll be able to find one currently.

 

[jweaver]

Cheers.. I just watched an RX 550 on ebay and it sold for £70, so that would have been OK...

According to Passmark, its actually significantly less powerful than the 7850 I have, but I guess I want this for resolution and not 3d performance.

I will keep my eyes open. I am still not convinced I want to blow a gran on a monitor.. But it is tempting as I work from home at the moment, and am getting fed up with having 2 monitors offset from each other and a great black bar down the middle.

Cheers

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

Cheers.. I just watched an RX 550 on ebay and it sold for £70, so that would have been OK...

According to Passmark, its actually significantly less powerful than the 7850 I have, but I guess I want this for resolution and not 3d performance.

I will keep my eyes open. I am still not convinced I want to blow a gran on a monitor.. But it is tempting as I work from home at the moment, and am getting fed up with having 2 monitors offset from each other and a great black bar down the middle.

Cheers

Using the gimpy 64 bit one with 2 Gb Vram, and a mere Pentium G4560 and 8 Gb ram, it surprisingly runs a lot of games still on low - medium settings 720-1080p, but like yourself I got mine to connect to a 4K TV for a media PC. Not even got the TV or lounge done yet, but should be all done by the end of the year.

 

[jweaver]

CHeers.. Can you help me understand something (as I can't tell you how out of touch I am with GPUs)..

My Radeon 7850 cost me about £20 2nd hand, and has a passmark score of 3,758

I assume the cards you mention are newer? And the cost a lot more.. But thier performance is much lower.. For example:

RX 550 - 2765
RX 560 - 3628
Radeon 550 - 141 B2 (I can only find a 550X)

I guess there is more too it than the Passmark scores, but does this mean that mine is still quite comparible in raw performance to these newer cards?

As I said, I don't actually play games or do anything "3D" at all (except CAD).. So as long as these will work with the apps I am using, I am going to look out for an RX 550.

Cheers

 

[MissChief]

CHeers.. Can you help me understand something (as I can't tell you how out of touch I am with GPUs)..

My Radeon 7850 cost me about £20 2nd hand, and has a passmark score of 3,758

I assume the cards you mention are newer? And the cost a lot more.. But thier performance is much lower.. For example:

RX 550 - 2765
RX 560 - 3628
Radeon 550 - 141 B2 (I can only find a 550X)

I guess there is more too it than the Passmark scores, but does this mean that mine is still quite comparible in raw performance to these newer cards?

As I said, I don't actually play games or do anything "3D" at all (except CAD).. So as long as these will work with the apps I am using, I am going to look out for an RX 550.

Cheers

Passmark looks at things that are more relevant to gaming like VRAM frequency, texture fill rate, Memory bandwidth and GFLOPS which are unimportant for your usage.

 

[jweaver]

Passmark looks at things that are more relevant to gaming like VRAM frequency, texture fill rate, Memory bandwidth and GFLOPS which are unimportant for your usage.

I get that and thats my point.. I realise that resolution is MY priority, which is why I want a 550/560 based card... But I am just intreagued how my 7850 (Which i assume is old) is 30% more powerful than a more modern RX 550..

Why would someone buy a RX550 for close to £100 (2nd hand) when you could get a 7850 which is apparantly more powerful (for games) for 1/5 of the price?


I am not doubting anything you say, just trying to learn about which "generation" these types of cards are from.

Edit: I just looked at the specs.. My 7850 card draws 130W, where as the RX550 is only 50W.. So clearly its a different breed of card, which is much more efficient, but not quite as powerful

This means that its got an added benifit for me as its lower power (Wattage)...

So does this mena that my 7850 is still a fairly powerful card and could run games to some extent? I had never thought to try to be honest, to see how it actually performed compared to my PS4.. Perhaps I should look to try something, just out of curiosity to see how it performs?

 

[MissChief]

The 7850 is certainly an older card but it was a mid to high end card at release. I wouldn't try anything like Cyberpunk on it but it'll run Fortnite, Minecraft and some older games easily enough if you turn down some details. I'm not sure how well these games will run at 5120x1440 though!!

 

[jweaver]

The 7850 is certainly an older card but it was a mid to high end card at release. I wouldn't try anything like Cyberpunk on it but it'll run Fortnite, Minecraft and some older games easily enough if you turn down some details. I'm not sure how well these games will run at 5120x1440 though!!

I am think more about seeing what the 7850 can do on my current setup with 1920x1200 monitors.

If I go to 5120x1440, I won't be doing anything 3D (Except CAD).

I am going to keep my eye out for a RX550.. That will serve me well for what I want.

 

[jweaver]

I have been keeping an eye on eBay and this has come up:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124749751752?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

But I don't think that its a standard RX560 is it?

First of all the cooling surprised me as it looks quite basic, compared to other RX560s.. But then I noticed the PCIe connector and saw that its only half populated with pins.. What exactly is this card? I guess its not going to help me?

Whilst I am on the subject, what about the RX460? I read that the RX5xx series is based on the RX460 and it appears to have DP 1.4, so would that support the resolution I want?

 

[MissChief]

I have been keeping an eye on eBay and this has come up:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124749751752?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

But I don't think that its a standard RX560 is it?

First of all the cooling surprised me as it looks quite basic, compared to other RX560s.. But then I noticed the PCIe connector and saw that its only half populated with pins.. What exactly is this card? I guess its not going to help me?

Whilst I am on the subject, what about the RX460? I read that the RX5xx series is based on the RX460 and it appears to have DP 1.4, so would that support the resolution I want?

That's clearly from a Dell prebuilt machine. If all you are doing is CAD it'll support the resolution you want. The PCI-E pins show it'll only ever run at PCI-E 8x speeds as it's only has half the full amount of pins. Again that won't be an issue.

 

[jweaver]

Cheers. I will hold out for a 16x card... I am not likely to use the extra bandwidth, but there is no point in adding a bottle neck

What about the RX460 card? Anyone know if that can be considered for my application?

 

[MissChief]

460 should be OK. AMD Radeon RX 460 specs (gpuzoo.com)

 

[silversurfer]

7850 was a great card, very respectable and reasonable backup even now it'll run probably most things. It wont do the best job but anyone casual may not even notice a difference. Its very common the older cards are better in some ways, newer will be more efficient, less power, heat, noise and cheaper to make, clever tech on there the latest protocols and ciphers but its built like nylon vs leather, old is gold

Im on a 4870 hewn from the finest granite, it was first with ddr5 and even now it runs gta5, league few others. 12 years old, it wont shift these giant res in any way

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

RX 550 at the only place I could find it in stock is now £209 (4 Gb one).

GTX 1050 Ti is £275.

I paid £53 for my 2 Gb one, and the 1050 was the cheapest Nvidia card with Display Port 1.4 (GT 1030s only have DVI and HDMI) which started at around £100.

I lose G Sync but can at least plug my Pentium build into any screen. Currently using it to dual box in an MMO .... Might need a third PC to continue doing that unless I can also remote stream the lounge PC back to a second monitor on my main one hmmm.

Planning for multi room gaming is getting complicated.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

Just been playing around with my 550 again for fun after using it to dual box in Maplestory, which it is perfect for running along with any other 2D games:

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/20754467

Can push to a whopping 1350+ with unstable overclocks too.

I customized the bios to unlock 1075mv voltage, and it goes from 1206 / 6000 stock to 1425 / 8000. Installing drivers is a pain due to windows refusing to verify any slightly modded bios, but atikmdag patcher fixes it.

The 64 bit ram holds it back a lot, but it was £20 more for the 2 Gb 128 bit, and £30 more for the 4 Gb 128 bit ones at the time and I only needed it for the monitor outputs.

Runs any current and modern 2D game perfectly, and surprisingly runs a lot of 3D ones well at 1200p low to medium settings, even games with a much higher min spec.

With current pricing and shortage issue, I regret not having purchased a 1050 Ti at the time instead for a little over £100, but I didn't need one, and this thing is quite amazing for the £53 it cost.

I'm hoping Intel's next gen has some <£80 pentiums with better CPU and iGPU performance to upgrade to, 11th gen ones are reusing 10th gen cores and UHD 630 graphics which is useless (10900K with UHD 630 iGPU only gets 560 Time Spy points).

Going to need a third min spec PC anyway if I want to continue being able to dual box in MMOs and also have a PC in the lounge.

I can't wait for 4K Cuphead / Blasphemous / Dead Cells / Niffelheim etc from a couch.

I had a look for the new Intel UHD 750 benchies, the lowest CPU it comes on is the 11500 for over £150, and its still less than an overclocked £53 GPU

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/eUBADy9JKrj6nLZBK99raY-970-80.jpg.webp

AMD don't seem to offer much for a sub £150 CPU either, my pentium and 550 were £103 together.

 

[Goosy]

RX 550 at the only place I could find it in stock is now £209 (4 Gb one).

GTX 1050 Ti is £275.

I paid £53 for my 2 Gb one, and the 1050 was the cheapest Nvidia card with Display Port 1.4 (GT 1030s only have DVI and HDMI) which started at around £100.

I lose G Sync but can at least plug my Pentium build into any screen. Currently using it to dual box in an MMO .... Might need a third PC to continue doing that unless I can also remote stream the lounge PC back to a second monitor on my main one hmmm.

Planning for multi room gaming is getting complicated.

At that point just build a cart setup, wheel the PC into whatever room you need

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

As people have recently mentioned that prices seem to be coming down now, 2 Gb 64 bit 550 is now between £90-£110.

That's still too much for a card that's meant to be £50-60, also the 128 bit 2 Gb is meant to be £70, the 4 Gb £80.

I'm trying to snag an msrp 4 Gb 550 or 1050 Ti as soon as I can to fill a third empty case I have, after realizing I wont be able to dual box after moving my pentium build to the lounge, but would like to also wait for Intel's next gen of CPUs, or AMD's new APUs coming out later this year. though they are still rumoured to use Vega graphics that are about half the speed of a 64 bit 550.

If Intel's next gen brings UHD 750 or better down to the Pentiums and I3s, that would also be sufficient without a GPU, but currently the least you can get that on is an I5-11500, I'd rather have a £90 I3 and similarly priced adequate for 1080p GPU. AMD 3300X could do but is never in stock.

At that point just build a cart setup, wheel the PC into whatever room you need

Well £250 pentium build connected to a lounge TV with Steam OS installed can stream everything and the UI is optimised for couch gaming. The G4560 can only do 4K at 24hz though over HDMI, and the motherboard doesn't have a display port output in which case it would have been able to output 60hz. Just need to run an ethernet cable to each PC.