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Minecraft Graphics Card

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Soldato
Joined
25 Apr 2007
Posts
5,255
I've got an old Q6600 system in the loft that I intend to resurrect as a Minecraft PC for my 5 year old daughter. I intend buying a 32" 2560x1440 monitor to go with it (her brother has a similar monitor and children don't like to think they're losing out).

What's the best graphics card for about £200 these days? I know the system is old but I don't want it to run like an absolute dog by sticking in a £60 card. My worry is that I am out of the loop and can't even recall what kind of interface slot is on the mobo and also it has a 15-year-old Enermax 600W PSU, which I don't want to overstress by shoving in a GPU with a massive draw.

I'm aware the end result will be compromised and accept that, but if it's a total no-go with the existing hardware, I'll bin the idea for now.
 
I don't want the potentially increased hassle of used, thanks. I'd prefer to press the buy button on a retailer site and have it delivered a day or two later :)
 
My son's got my old 980ti and is actually playing minecraft at 4k on it without problems. I checked out that 1660 super and it seems a little faster than the 980ti according to the benchmarks I've just dug up, so it should be pretty much perfect even if I end up replacing the rest of the components. Cheers.
 
Thanks for the comments re: the old hardware not being able to support a new card. It's an ASUS board and I can't recall the model. Letters-numbers-something-something.

Having spoken to my wife about the potential £400 cost (monitor plus card) we're now undecided if it's a wise move, since my daughter is still using phonics, which means that typing words on a keyboard might be beyond her and the PC version of minecraft might be a step too far.

And to those who said that Minecraft can run on more or less anything, I tested it on my 9900k 2080ti 1440p UW system and with the view distance turned right up, there's noticeable strain on the frame rates! Anyway, thanks for the input guys. This mention of old hardware not working with a recent GPU has me worried so it might be a whole new system soon or when my daughter is a few months into Year 1 and a bit better with reading and writing.
 
Setting the draw distance to 96 chunks up from 64 causes the frame rate to visibly tank, though according to Google there's no in-game way to display fps and I don't have Afterburner installed.
 
I did have Afterburner installed. At 64 chunks, the CPU and GPU are 30-40% used and the FPS are between 100 and 120.

At 96 chunks, the GPU usage is higher and the CPU a lot higher, showing once at 100% across all eight cores. FPS down to 40-50 range.

If this game is so easy to run, I must need a better PC!

EDIT - once it settles down after loading, CPU drops right down and GPU doesn't go much higher than 40%, while the frames stay low. Strange.
 
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