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Graphic card explained??

About once a month (ish) Tomshardware do a list of the "best" graphics card in each price range currently available. On the last page is a list of most GPU models and how they line up against each other. Here's the most recent:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32611-7.html
The rule of thumb is that a 3 step move updwards is a very noticeable improvement when buying a replacement GPU.

If you're looking to directly compare two recent-ish cards, Anandtech's Bench site is perfect for that: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU12/372
 
It is best to look at benchmarks and see what the actual performance numbers are like for indvidual cards, rather than using the naming schemes AMD/nvidia use. They are pretty confusing and meaningless, except when you're comparing GPUs within a single make and generation of graphics cards. I would recommend review benchmarks from Techpowerup as they benchmark a wide range of cards at various resolutions and then give useful summaries. For example, try this review:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan/27.html

Also Anandtech have useful GPU benchmark comparision site:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU12/372

In terms of compatibility with games, it's mostly a question of what DirectX level the game can run at and what DirectX level the graphics card supports. Most games these days have backwards compatibility with DX9 and DX10, so you should be ok with pretty much any card thats come out in the last 5-7 years. That said, it would make no sense to get a graphics card that is anything less than DX11 capable, as the cards that support anything less are really slow and outdated anyway.

The video RAM requirements are pretty straightforward. For current games, you want at the very least 1GB, with 2GB/3GB being the sweet spot. This would be for 1080p resolution and medium, high settings in a paticular game. For higher resolutions and more premium quality settings (e.g. high levels of anti-aliasing), you will definitely want at least 2GB.

You will also of course need to take into account the rest of your system. A good system will have well matched CPU, RAM and GPU. There's no point having a very fast GPU if your CPU is too slow to feed it enough data, etc. For this it would be best to ask here for a system spec for a given budget.

For starters, you're current HD2400 is way too slow for pretty much any recent game, even the less intensive games. Those that do run, will look like very poor and at low fps. Therefore, it's not just a case of will the graphics card run the game, but how well it can run it. Even a budget laptop will run the latest game, but it certainly won't be anything near playable.
 
How would I know that the CPU would be enough to feed it?
I'm looking at the core i5 types, preferably the 3570k. And I'll be buying the MSI z77a-G45 mobo.
The benchmark sites would be very useful for me to look at!!!!
 
Dibbley247 said:
How would I know that the CPU would be enough to feed it?
I'm looking at the core i5 types, preferably the 3570k. And I'll be buying the MSI z77a-G45 mobo.
The benchmark sites would be very useful for me to look at!!!!
Click to expand...

A 3570k would need to be teamed up with two or more top end graphics cards before the CPU became the limiting factor. Again, there are comparison sites to give you an idea of how a CPU compares to minimum/recommended ones in games' specs:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,review-32634-5.html
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2
 
Dibbley247 said:
Ok so here is a random game with graphic card requirements:
Guild wars 2: Graphics card NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better
(256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

Let's look at the intel one... What's better than a HD 3000? Or worse???
And the same with the X1800. The RAM I understand, higher the number is more. It's the rest if these numbers and letters I don't get.
Click to expand...

There are 3 main gpu companies for PC, Nvidia, AMD/ATI and Intel.
Each has a different namig scheme for their cards, but essentially the first number increases with each subsequent generation. However every now ant then they reset and alter it slightly when they reach 9xxxxxxx.

This is what you're looking for, gpu hierachy chart:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html


edit: that'l teach me to refresh the page, anyway as the other also posted that hierachy chart is what you want.
 
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Dibbley247 said:
@Bacon - No worries.
So what is generally the better make or best value for money between the manufacturers? Or is there not much between them?
Click to expand...

I think most people would agree that AMD currently offer the best value for money right now, especially with their latest drivers which have introduced substantial performance gains. Something like a 7950 should run pretty much everything you want at 1080p, near max detail and good fps. They also have 3gb of video ram, which is plenty. That said, nvidia are not far off and do have exclusive features like Physx and CUDA, which may or may not be of use to you.

Also, the 3570K will be plenty fast CPU, especially when overclocked. I'd also recommend 8GB of ram as a minimum.
 
dacads said:
AMD is better value at the moment due to the games they throw in with their cards such as Tomb Raider and Bioshock. For example a good starting place would be a Radeon 7900 series card such as the 7950 which is around £150
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-191-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

Big brother of this card is the 7870..then we move onto 7900 series where things start to get expensive, or are they already? :p
Click to expand...



LOL, now you are throwing more confusion at the OP - 7950's are not £150 i think you should have said 7850 as that is what you linked too.
 
It's all good! Lol.
Here's one then, sli/crossfire. Something I'm not interested on doing, BUT, say I go and buy an AMD HD7850, then a few years down the line I find some games are struggling. Would I be better off buying the exact same card second hand and using it as SLI or how many models up would be better working as one rather than these 2 combined?

As mentioned before it'll be 1080p on a 18-20" screen, and when the mrs is out, it'll be on a 42" screen.
 
Well let's use an example my previous card was a Radeon 6870 which I could have crossfired by buying another but I decided to go with just a new card as there are a number of advantages including less power usage, more space, no micro-stuttering etc I think it's just more convenient to have a single card. Of course if going crossfire/sli means better performance than a single card for the same price than by all means do so as long as there's no issues with the particular game you intend on playing on.

So I got my 7870 Tahiti LE for £150 where as another Radeon 6870 would have been around £80 used so add this to the original whch was around the same equals £160. So getting a current gen card not only worked out cheaper but also better as it out performs 2x 6870. Now you might wonder how it was cheaper well simple I still have to sell the 6870 but expect around same as I mentioned before so £150 spent on new card minus £80 is £70 spent technically ;)
 
I'll be sticking with the one, was just wondering for future and if it would be worth doing.
I think that's me done now!!!! Time to look at what's out there!!! :)
 
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