CHEAP does NOT mean GOOD VALUE - Low End GPUs Explained

[tkitch]

3 hours ago, Herrscher of Whatever said:

I do note that integrated GPUs are already good enough for playing games, but I respectfully disagree with 1630s being bad value. In some countries, price/performance doesn't matter when it leads to a product one cannot at all afford.

Incorrect.
 

As linus mentioned, the price gap between a 1630 and a 1650 is 15-20% of the 1630's cost roughly.  When you're looking a the HUGE performance difference?  

Yeah, the 1630 is /still/ a terrible value.

[Guest]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:21 PM, tkitch said:

Incorrect.
 

As linus mentioned, the price gap between a 1630 and a 1650 is 15-20% of the 1630's cost roughly.  When you're looking a the HUGE performance difference?  

Yeah, the 1630 is /still/ a terrible value.

EDIT: ... Y'know what, disregard any of my weird opinions on 1630s and RX6400s, they're still not yet at a cheaper price point, at least locally. The value for these at the time of the post are questionable, even in December 2022.

 

original post:

Spoiler

You're missing the point, the price gap is potentially a lot to the people who can't afford, especially to people in developing countries.

 

There are performance deficits compared to the more expensive option but they wouldn't care as long as it improves performance of the games they are playing anyway.

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Herrscher of Whatever
I changed my mind

[HMK3]

10 hours ago, crazzp said:

This is only true if you cant find a 2nd-hand 1080s (or similar) like what Linus mentioned. If you're that short on cash, 2nd hand is always the way to go. This applies to almost everything outside of PC world. 

Someone can tellme if the old 2nd-hand gpus are still better than the newer cheaper cards (like the intel arc) for playing new and old games, with the same price range?

[podkall]

17 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Been?

Some of us are still there 

I know,

 

I had 2C CPU, now its 4C,

 

that's like slow walking vs normal walking, not even fast walking..

[tkitch]

7 hours ago, Herrscher of Whatever said:

You're missing the point, the price gap is potentially a lot to the people who can't afford, especially to people in developing countries.

 

There are performance deficits compared to the more expensive option but they wouldn't care as long as it improves performance of the games they are playing anyway.

Okay?

Even if it's legitimately all someone can afford, that doesn't magically make it a "good value"

[Kid.Lazer]

36 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Even if it's legitimately all someone can afford, that doesn't magically make it a "good value"

I would take that thought even further. I was taught growing up that nothing is a "good deal" if you can't afford it. If $20 is a person's breaking point, you probably shouldn't buy any GPU, as you have bigger problems to worry about.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

*awkwardly stares in RX 6400 powered SFF PC built from spare parts and for funzies*

 

[Max Tech Tips]

he is right in what he says

mais le RTX 4090 est une pute chère

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

built from spare parts and for funzies

A kindred spirit!

I currently have (check notes) 4 spare systems I built for the same reasons.

I don't have a problem here, I can quit at any time.....

....I just choose not too

[JEskandari]

21 hours ago, tvccvt said:

No joke, I can still run cyberpunk 2077 on a 1070ti and a Ryzen 7 1700X.

well I managed run it and finish it on a laptop with Core I7 3610qm and GTX 660m, well sort of , it was at minimum setting and HD resolution , then i upgrade to a newer laptop and felt sorry for myself when i saw the picture quality on the newer one .(well at least it was incentive enough to finish it again as a berserker and close combat character, it was a different experience looked like a total different game)

[JEskandari]

21 hours ago, GabenJr said:

Budget GPUs might look cheap, but they’re more expensive than you think for such low-end cards. When is it okay to buy one, and how can you tell if you’re overpaying for yesteryear’s cards?

 

you guys complain about the numbering on the video card , here if you don't knew what is what , you can be 100% sure that the sales person gonna sell you Videocard by the amount of ram it have and you can guess what video card have more ram in lower and middle tier 

[JEskandari]

4 hours ago, HMK3 said:

Someone can tellme if the old 2nd-hand gpus are still better than the newer cheaper cards (like the intel arc) for playing new and old games, with the same price range?

for playing old games intel never was a good choice , their driver tends to work better on newer games but when the game become older , they simply are not on par , they fix and optamize on newer games but when it come for older game , they will become slow or outright broke somethings , and that broke something, some times can be as bad as loosing texture and layers

[CerealExperimentsLain]

5 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

A kindred spirit!

I currently have (check notes) 4 spare systems I built for the same reasons.

I don't have a problem here, I can quit at any time.....

....I just choose not too

It used to have an RX 460 in it, also low profile, two slot.  I got the RX 6400 'open box' for not a bad price actually.  It's only rival would be the low profile 1650 Ti's out there but they are WAY more expensive.  It's an SFF PC I can fit in a backpack, using a recycled 4790 kit, so part of it is about recycling and the other is to make a 'small enough 'SFF PC for not heavy loads.

 

Not cost effective but not the point.  Also, wow, the RX 6400 may not be as economical as a used RX 590 (If size isn't an issue) But I'm amazed what this card can do with nothing but bus power.  It's quite efficent.

[powertoys]

GOOD VALUE means nothing if it just points towards a component I can't afford

[HMK3]

7 hours ago, JEskandari said:

for playing old games intel never was a good choice , their driver tends to work better on newer games but when the game become older , they simply are not on par , they fix and optamize on newer games but when it come for older game , they will become slow or outright broke somethings , and that broke something, some times can be as bad as loosing texture and layers

Yeah, but what about the new driver. any news yet? 300 usd might be the most i can afford, so im taking a cloose look at arc

[Radium_Angel]

10 hours ago, HMK3 said:

so im taking a cloose look at arc

From what I have read and seen, if the driver plays nice with the game, then it's a solid option, but overall, Arc needs more time to mature the drivers to be a good overall choice.

[JEskandari]

On 12/15/2022 at 4:26 AM, HMK3 said:

Yeah, but what about the new driver. any news yet? 300 usd might be the most i can afford, so im taking a cloose look at arc

maybe consider rtx 2060 or rx6600

don't knew maybe accept the risk and get this shipped from china

https://www.newegg.com/p/1FT-00J4-00001?Item=9SIAVXDJNH3602

 

[John_GR]

On 12/13/2022 at 9:31 PM, GabenJr said:

Budget GPUs might look cheap, but they’re more expensive than you think for such low-end cards. When is it okay to buy one, and how can you tell if you’re overpaying for yesteryear’s cards?

 

You have a mistake in your video. At 11:14 you talk about GTX 1630's price compared to second hand GTX 1080. Then you are taking WRONG numbers from TechPowerUp, where you compare the performance of GTX 1650 and NOT 1630 to GTX 1080.

 

GTX 1630 is 33% of the performance GTX 1080, not 50%.

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

 

I am also puzzled why you haven't shown the huge difference in performance between GTX 1630 and GTX 1650. The close model numbers, 1630 vs 1650 and the huge performance difference (1650 is 50% faster), was the perfect example. The fact that GTX 1630 was released in 2022 while GTX 1650 in 2019, could also point at the fact that newer is not necessary better, or even truly newer. Granted you used other cards as examples, but you should have focused more on how bad GTX 1630 is.

In fact it is also the perfect example about how companies drive consumers to the more expensive models, by destroying the value of the cheaper models, which is what this video tries to show.

[Bitter]

At this point if you're building on the AM4 platform and need to make a cheaper PC that just works then one of the Zen2 APU's is a pretty good pick. A 4300G performs pretty OK for the $50-$70 they go for these days and the iGPU isn't terrible, I'd bank that any stand alone GPU you'd pickup for $30-40 would be much worse and you'd still need to spend $40-50 for CPU of equivalent performance.  If you're on an Intel platform going back a few years (socket 1151) then yeah a budget GPU buy makes sense for an older gen budget Intel build. For everyone saying that they can get X card and Y price, that won't be the universal experience for everyone else. Great, you can get a $100 GTX 1080 in Olathe Kansas on Facebook Marketplace. I don't live there lol and the prices here are different.

[HMK3]

12 minutes ago, Bitter said:

 you can get a $100 GTX 1080 in Olathe Kansas on Facebook Marketplace. I don't live there lol and the prices here are different.

Good lord! where i live they are at least $350

[DarkSwordsman]

On 12/13/2022 at 3:13 PM, cmndr said:

Cheap cards are for 720p with OKish settings
main-line is for 1080p with decent settings
mid-high end is for 1440p with good settings
High end is for 4K with GREAT settings

I'm not sure what you'd qualify as "cheap" or "mainline". Even a 1070 today, I can run quite a few games (even decently demanding ones) at high settings at 1080p. Many of the 20 series cards, even the 2060, are capable of very good 1080 performance at high, and even good performance at 1440p. These cards today are incredibly powerful. Though I guess I have been into gaming computers for a decade now, so my scale for "good' is basically 60+ FPS, at least for non-FPS titles.

[DarkSwordsman]

On 12/13/2022 at 3:25 PM, cmndr said:

With his video card the CPU probably won't matter THAT much.

Depends what resolution they're running. Also I do think Cyberpunk is an edge case of poor performance regardless of what settings you use. I find the majority of games these days are very CPU bound unless you're running max settings at 1440p, unless you're playing bleeding edge AAA titles.

[cmndr]

8 hours ago, DarkSwordsman said:

Depends what resolution they're running. Also I do think Cyberpunk is an edge case of poor performance regardless of what settings you use. I find the majority of games these days are very CPU bound unless you're running max settings at 1440p, unless you're playing bleeding edge AAA titles.

for nearly everyone, CPU is less of an issue. 
If you have a 2060 (better than average - $300ish GPU from 2019), going to a 3090($900ish GPU from 2020) will more than triple your frame rate in most titles, even at 1080p. 

If you have a 1600x ($200ish CPU from 2017), going to a 7900x($700ish CPU from 2022) won't triple your frame rate in most titles. 

 

It hasn't been 1997 for 25 years. Most of the calculations that USED to be done on the CPU for games got moved to the GPU long ago. Hardware T&L is mandatory for example. 

Imagine a 2060 at 1080p as being equivalent to a 3090 at 4K. 
The difference between the best and the worst CPU is like 25%...
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-13600k/20.html


The difference between a "middle of the road" GPU and a 4090 is 300%
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4090.c3889

GPU matters on the order of 3-10x as much as CPU overall (with the range depending on the assumptions used, background tasks and willingness to make visual fidelity tradeoffs), with the caveat being that "YMMV" depending on use case (e.g. Factorio LOVES the 5800x3D).

[DarkSwordsman]

On 12/19/2022 at 3:23 PM, cmndr said:

If you have a 2060 (better than average - $300ish GPU from 2019), going to a 3090($900ish GPU from 2020) will more than triple your frame rate in most titles, even at 1080p.

This is an overgeneralization. "Most titles" includes many of the older titles and games that are easy to run. Most of the games I play don't max out my 1070 at 1080p, even on higher or max settings. For example: If you did this in Tarkov or Cities Skylines, you generally would probably not be able to max out the GPU at 1080p, and a 3090 would not magically give Tarkov 250+ FPS all the time (where the game usually sits around 70-90 FPS for most people).

On 12/19/2022 at 3:23 PM, cmndr said:

Most of the calculations that USED to be done on the CPU for games got moved to the GPU long ago

This is blatantly just wrong. I'm not sure if you have any experience in game engines at all.

Sure, we have been able to optimize some things, and there are some types of things that have been moved to the GPU (PhysX for example, or FXAA -> MXAA/TAA/etc.). But that is highly dependent on the game. Most games require at least some sort of memory management and draw calls to be done on the CPU and this hasn't really changed in a decade or two. Add in other calculations and you'll see why a game like FS2020 is CPU limited even with a 4090 at 21:9 1440p and High/Ultra settings.

The only game that has been able to drastically reduce its CPU bottleneck is Doom. Though it's because they manually wrote their engine and were able to effective delete the concept of a "main thread", where data can asynchronously be compiled in draw calls for the GPU and keep it fed. This is why even at 1440p or 1080p, the GPU can still be fed plenty of work and many CPU cores can be utilized.

[cmndr]

On 12/24/2022 at 12:14 AM, DarkSwordsman said:

This is an overgeneralization. "Most titles" includes many of the older titles and games that are easy to run. Most of the games I play don't max out my 1070 at 1080p, even on higher or max settings. For example: If you did this in Tarkov or Cities Skylines, you generally would probably not be able to max out the GPU at 1080p, and a 3090 would not magically give Tarkov 250+ FPS all the time (where the game usually sits around 70-90 FPS for most people).

This is blatantly just wrong. I'm not sure if you have any experience in game engines at all.

Can you provide a benchmark showing a 5x increase from a mid range CPU to a high end CPU? I showed a 5x uplift for GPUs. 

Do note that I DID intentionally generalize. I used an aggregate benchmark. I also noted that YMMV and listed factorio as an edge case. I suspect that CS and a few others are also more CPU dependent. It's important to know your use case. 
 

On 12/24/2022 at 12:14 AM, DarkSwordsman said:

This is blatantly just wrong. I'm not sure if you have any experience in game engines at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform,_clipping,_and_lighting

This has been done since the 1990s. 

It was a big deal back then. It came out on consumer video cards right around when you were born. 
 

Quote

Nvidia's GeForce 256 was released in late 1999 and introduced hardware support for T&L to the consumer PC graphics card market. It had faster vertex processing not only due to the T&L hardware, but also because of a cache that avoided having to process the same vertex twice in certain situations. While DirectX 7.0 (particularly Direct3D 7) was the first release of that API to support hardware T&L, OpenGL had supported it much longer and was typically the purview of older professionally oriented 3D accelerators which were designed for computer-aided design (CAD) instead of games.

I'm admittedly more of a statistician than a programmer (professionally, though I do bits of both). I'm usually looking at charts and thinking in terms of numbers.