[Solved] Wanted: Graphics Card Recommendation

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[Solved] Wanted: Graphics Card Recommendation

Postby yankee495 » Feb 8th, '18, 22:36

Hello,

I have a ATI HD6870 that is just fine, functionally. I'd say the only drawback is power consumption. My problem is AMD dropped support for it in their official driver. This really upsets me because they did this to me once before with the built-in graphics on my two year old laptop. This card is plenty fast, faster than some of the newer cards but they just decided they were not going to support it anymore. Well, I'm not going to support them anymore!

I'm not a gamer so I don't need the newest, fastest card, but I do use the OpenGL co-processing of the graphics card for photo processing in Darktable and any other program that can use it. The other reason I like to have dedicated card is more outputs and a little bit of horsepower for dual monitors etc. I don't mind buying a good used card and I'd like something at least as fast as what I have. I've been looking at GTX650 Ti. I know driver support can change overnight (boy do I know), and I've read about problems with the newer Nvidia drivers, but that's been quite awhile back. I'd like a card with the lowest power and cash requirements as possible but with enough horsepower to make it worth the cost. Ideally, it'd be nice to trade with someone wanting an ATI card but that just isn't going to happen. I'll just buy an Nvidia card and sell my ATI card.

The 6870 has 1GB DRAM and a 160 watt rating. I almost forgot. I don't mind an older card but I know the newer cards support more sync rates and resolution, so I really need some help here. A 2GB that's as fast as my 6870 with a 80-100 watt rating would be just what I'm looking for.
Last edited by yankee495 on Feb 25th, '18, 08:17, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wanted: Graphics Card Recommendation

Postby Lebarhon » Feb 8th, '18, 23:24

Hello,

I also use pretty often RawTherapee on two screens, one of 2560X1440 and the other one 1280x1024. I have an old Nvidia GT520 and it works fine with no delays. I don't know its power consumption but a power supply of 300W is recommended.
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Re: Wanted: Graphics Card Recommendation

Postby yankee495 » Feb 25th, '18, 08:16

Thank you Lebarhon.

I got a ASUS GTX 760 2GB (dual fan model)for the big desktop that has a 530 watt power supply. The 760 is rated at 170 watts with 1152 Cuda cores, but when it's doing little work or idle, like browsing the web, it uses very little power compared to my old ATI HD 6870 1GB which was rated at 160 watts. The 760 is much faster than the 6870 too, and has 2GB DRAM.

I got a EVGA GTX 750 Ti 2GB (single fan model-card is about 7 inches long) for the Shuttle SH67H3. The 750 Ti is rated at 60 watts with 640 Cuda cores. This smaller machine has limited power supply options and currently has a 300 watt in it. It's also limited on space. In fact, the price of those EVGA 750 Ti's are quite high exactly because they fit machines like this.

This is the Shuttle: http://global.shuttle.com/news/productsDetail?productId=1477

So how do they do? I haven't installed the 750 Ti yet but I did get the 760 installed in the big desktop under Mageia 5 and 6, they're on different drives. So far, it seems to perform fantastic. The 384.111 driver installed with no problems in Mageia 5 and 6 and seems to run great. I ran a few GPU benchmarks to check the card for heat and power related crashes/artifacts and it seems ok. I need to know because I only have so long to return it if I find a problem.

The big desktop is my main computer, the one I use most of the time and the Shuttle is in the ham radio room. It's got a hyper threaded i3, dual core with 4 threads, so the 750 Ti will help it when I'm using Darktable on it. Sometimes I use it quite a bit and I've been wanting to put a good card in it for a long time. I'm sure the 750 Ti is going to be really good in it.

I haven't done a lot of testing but OpenCL in Darktable seems to be really fast now, faster than my 6870 was, by quite a bit I believe. I did a few adjustments on some 24MP raw images, adjustments that used to cause a pretty good pause, and there is hardly a stall now. Exporting is noticeably much faster. I recommend either of these cards, the 750 Ti from what I've read online so far, but I will update with more details once I install it, probably tomorrow.

I don't spend money on my machines often, unless it's big storage drives or like this, a hardware change. Upgrading was not the reason. I got a good deal on both cards so I just did both computers at once and be done with it. The Nvidia drivers can be troublesome from what I've read but I've been having trouble with my ATI driver for quite some time. The Google Chrome sandbox crashed causing screen corruption and all kids of things. Then AMD just dropped the driver so I just dropped the card. I'm tired of fiddling with it and if these Nvidia cards continue to have drivers available, then I'm happy.

I hope this information helps others who are thinking of switching cards (or buying one) and I'll be glad to answer any questions you have, if I can. Once I figured out higher model numbers didn't mean more horse power, it was pretty easy. Crazy as it is, but a 950 doesn't beat a 770.

Thanks again.
There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary & those who don't.
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Location: Carthage, Mo. USA


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