Entry-level graphics cards: gaming vs function

Entry-level graphics cards are often overlooked because people associate them with being slow or poor quality. The reality is that consumers often overspend because they’re convinced by the salesmen or the people they ask for advice that bigger is always better.

Entry-level GPUs serve many purposes, and often it makes no sense to buy a more expensive card because all you’re doing is wasting money. We’ll take a look at some of the best budget cards available and discuss why you’d choose each card and which job it’s most suited for. Prices for the graphics cards were calculated from an average across three reputable online retailers – Rebeltech, Wootware and Prophecy.

Just ticking the necessary boxes: Nvidia Geforce GT210

Nvidia Geforce GT210

Nvidia’s entry-level offering has been around for quite some time and its usefulness in enabling HD video playback in media servers like the popular HP Miniserver series is quite apparent. Nvidia’s Linux drivers are a bit easier to install and maintain and for those of you using XMBC it’s an easier piece of hardware to work with. As a basic discrete graphics card, there are few other options at such a low price point.

Because it’s not Kepler-based, it doesn’t benefit from being able to output video to three monitors. Its capable of CUDA processing tasks, GPU-accelerated HD video decoding, and the drivers for it are very stable today. Beyond that it’s a substandard choice for gaming.

As the title suggests, the GT210 fills in the necessary ticks to make it a good enough for desktop usage, but don’t expect miracles for R400. TechSpot’s review engine returns many reviews for the GT210, although their results are inconclusive as it seems every review had a different opinion about what the GT210 should have achieved.

Eyefinity on the cheap: Sapphire HD6450 Flex

Sapphire HD6450 Flex

For some, using multi-monitors would be an ideal solution for the workplace, giving you more virtual desktop real-estate and allowing you to keep multiple tabs and apps open without switching between them.

Few cards give you the option to use three video outputs at once (AMD’s Radeon family from the HD5000 series and up, or Nvidia’s Kepler-based GPUs). This is where the Flex beats out its competition.

Sapphire’s Flex HD6450 gives you two DVI ports, one HDMI-out, an HDMI-to-DVI adapter in the box and a spare low-profile bracket. For around R700, it’s a good choice for use in the workplace. According to Techspot’s review engine, the HD6450 Flex scored very well in seven online reviews by reputable sites.

The minimum for games: Sapphire Radeon HD6670

Sapphire HD6670

In the last two years since its release, the HD6670 has been a bulwark in Tom’s Hardware’s GPU recommendations. It is slower than the DDR5-packing HD5670, but that card has been phased out of production a year ago and its loss heavily affected budget builds around the world.

The HD6670 still carries itself well with low power requirements, 480 stream processors, 8 ROPS and 24 texture units, meaning that the only games it’ll struggle with are ones that hit the memory bandwidth.

For the most part, you’ll be playing at 720p resolution or lower with a card of this calibre and most likely at low to medium detail settings as well. Some games will give you enough headroom to play at 1080p and enable some anti-aliasing.

For around R800 it’s not a bad choice, although a 1GB GDDR5 version would be welcome to overcome the bandwidth issues and give it much-needed overclocking headroom. TechSpot’s review engine returns an average score of 79, which makes it well worth your consideration.

Here’s where the fun begins: PowerColor HD7770

PowerColor HD7770

Few cards get as much attention as the HD7770 – and for good reason. It’s AMD’s entry-level affair for gamers and it’s been part of their Never Settle bundles for a while now. Last year AMD bundled Far Cry 3 with it, and a discount on Medal of Honor: Warfighter (good idea, terrible game) and these days it gets bundled with DiRT Showdown at participating retailers. With a 128-bit memory interface and GDDR5 RAM, it’s not as starved for bandwidth as its competitors.

Its essentially the sibling of the HD6850 – it has nearly 3/4 of the shading power, half the rendering output and memory bandwidth, and cuts power consumption requirements considerably. Despite the cut-down, it’s based on the GCN architecture and pulls in line with the larger card in most games and benchmarks, losing out only when you start to enable higher levels of AA and AF at 1080p.

It runs Battlefield 3 on Ultra settings with decent frame times and can be found on most online retailers for around R1,500. The GTX650 Ti is considered a rival, but typically it retails for R300 more and doesn’t often get bundled games in the retail package. TechpowerUp! gave the PowerColor HD7770 a score of 8.5 out of 10.