TechFan@ic's GPU guide .

[TechFan@ic]

This will be a guide on how to choose a graphics card. It will include the most important metrics that you should look for in a GPU.

#1 Performance

This is the most important metric to any graphics card. The most common, most accurate and easiest way to measure this metric is via frames per second or (FPS).

What frames per second represents is essentially the number of images that appear on the screen every single second , the more images (frames) every second (per second) the better.

The target for an excellent smooth gaming experience is widely regarded as 60 FPS.

Once you go above the 60 FPS mark it'll become harder and harder to notice the difference in the image.

Now 60 FPS is usually considered as the upper limit and 30 FPS as the lower limit meaning that once the FPS dips below 30 FPS the gaming experience will be noticeably affected and you will notice "lag" or "stuttering" in the image.

Just to recap, 60 FPS or above = optimal, between 60 FPS and 30 FPS is very good, below 30 FPS is bad.

You'll be able to asses the performance of each card by reading reviews and looking at different benchmarks.

Benchmarks usually include a wide variety of games and synthetic benchmarking software (usually 3D mark and Unigine).

Just to keep this as simple as possible you can check out Tomshardware GPU chart that combines all the GPUs that they have reviewed in a single chart.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/benchmarks,135.html

Tom's Hardware Index [b} (combined performance on 1920x1080)

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/19-Tom-s-Hardware-Index-B-Performance,2976.html

Each game (application) is different and will showcase different results, some games are more demanding than others and some games are optimized for a specific brand of GPU (either AMD or Nvidia) and thus will favor GPUs of one maker over the other.

All of that should be considered when deciding on a new GPU to buy.

#2 Heat Noise & Power Consumption.

All of those factors are important and will often represent the second level of decision you need to make, the first being which specific graphics card you decide to buy e.g. GTX 660 , GTX 670, HD 7970, HD 7850 etc...

The second being which specific model from which manufacturer e.g. MSI twin frozr, Gigabyte windforce 3X, ASUS DCUii etc..

Example: (first decision) I decided to buy an HD 7870 and I want it to be (second decision) an MSI twin frozr .

Now your second decision will often be based on a number of things : cooling performance ( heat dissipation and fan noise) + overclock-ability (will come to that later) + looks and aesthetics (subjective) + other special manufacturer features (warranty, software, customer service, build quality etc..)

The power consumption of any card is usually provided in the review in which it was featured, power consumption affects heat output and power supply requirements.

As for heat, the easiest way to decide on this is to read a bunch of different reviews and look for temperature measurements.

While noise is a bit different, a lot of reviewers tend to measure noise in decibels thinking that it's the most ideal way of measuring, while it may be accurate it's not representative of the actual noise and thus not ideal.

For example a graphics card could emit 45 dB of noise represented by the force of air moving (a woosh sound) and another card could emit 40 dB and would have a very annoying high-pitched noise that could drive you insane or it could even have coil whine.

That's why the best way to know whether a card is noisy or not is to listen to it on videos.

GPU noise comparison of the same card (660 Ti) among different models :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-memory-bandwidth-anti-aliasing,3283-16.html

ASUS GTX 660 Ti DCUii :

MSI GTX 660 ti Power Edition :

GPU Coil whine :

#3 Overclocking

The importance of overclocking depends entirely on the user whether they want to overclock their GPU or not.

Overclocking is essentially manually adjusting the speed at which your card runs by changing the core clock, memory clock, shader clock etc.. and what this does is make your graphics card run faster, the rate at which you can adjust the clocks depends on 3 things.

The first is the graphics card it-self whether it's a famously good overclocker or not (e.g. HD 7950, GTX 660 Ti power edition etc).

And this could be due to the GPU itself having a lot of potential like what we see with HD 7950 or it could be due to special features the board partner (manufacturer) added, like the triple over-voltage feature on power edition cards from MSI.

The second is what we like to call the "silicone lottery" not all chips from the same model are equal some will overclock better than others and vice-versa .

So 2 people might have the exact same graphics card ( MSI HD 7870 twin frozr for example) and one of them might be able to overclock his card a lot better than the other.

And while we can't have any control over the silicone lottery we can choose to buy cards on the basis of whether they overclock very well or not and this can change the value of one card or another significantly.

A specific graphics card could have mediocre performance but once overclocked could have incredibly good performance.

A good example of this is the GTX 660 Ti power edition from MSI (which allowed triple over-voltage an exclusive MSI feature), which once overclocked to the max yielded very close performance to a GTX 670 (which is significantly more expensive) overclocked to the max. "NOTE: The 660 Ti Power Edition has been revised and will not allow triple over voltage anymore due to warranty issues between MSI and Nvidia"

Another example is the HD 7950 which is a well known phenomenal overclocker , AMD first released this card with a modest core clock of 800Mhz, and overclockers managed to get their cards to 1000-1200Mhz a 25-50% improvement in clock rates which yielded massive improvements to performance and added a lot of "value" to the card allowing it to compete with cards that were a lot more expensive like the HD 7970 from AMD it-self and even match or outperform the GTX 670 from Nvidia.

#4 Unique AMD or Nvidia features

And these are features that separate AMD from Nvidia and vice-versa .

Multi Monitor setups:

AMD Eyefinity: supports up to 6 monitors. Easy to setup (more mature than Nvidia surround).

Nvidia Surround: supports up to 3 monitors + 1 auxiliary monitor. (less mature than Eyefinity).

AMD HD3D: supports 3D gaming on any 3D monitors but requires middle-ware and isn't as well supported (mature) as Nvidia 3D Vision.

Nvidia 3D Vision: supports 3D gaming on specific Nvidia certified 3D monitors, doesn't require any middle-ware and is more mature than HD3D.

GPU compute applications : AMD has openCL , Nvidia has Cuda.

http://developer.amd.com/resources/heterogeneous-computing/opencl-zone/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home_new.html

General differences:

AMD cards usually come with more memory and wider memory interfaces which reduces the performance hit on very high resolutions (2560x1440 or higher), high Anti-Aliasing settings and high Anisotropic Filtering settings.

Nvidia has PhysX, which adds certain graphical features to specific Nvidia supported games.

Both AMD & Nvidia have developer support programs that improve performance and features on games that they support.

AMD has "Gaming Evolved"

Nvidia has "The Way its Meant to Be Played"

[TechFan@ic]

There seems to be a problem with embedded videos so here are the links.

Video links :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuXcStgYF8

[killerx525]

A great and detailed guide Tech!

[Jay123]

Great idea and guide, I'm sure everyone will appreciate you're work!

[TechFan@ic]

Please feel free to leave any suggestions or point out things I've missed, failed to mention or need to explain in more detail.

[TechFan@ic]

There seems to be a problem with embedded videos so here are the links.

Video links :

Yellow Dragon's CPU guide :

http://linustechtips.com/main/forum/computer-hardware/cpus-motherboards-memory/7320-yellowdragon-s-basic-cpu-guide

[Dragon_Cannon]

One thing that I saw was the thing about FPS. If you are running a 60Hz monitor then you wont see a change if you get over 60 FPS this is true but you forgot about if you run a 120Hz monitor then you wont see that same flattening of visual improvement until the 120 FPS mark.

One other thing that you forgot to mention is that in order to 3D game you have to have a 120Hz panel or greater.

[Nexus]

Wow pretty good guide bro :)

Gonna redirect people here if i remember

[TechFan@ic]

The edit function is still broken, but as soon as it's fixed I'll be adding :

# PCIe Gen3, Gen2 and Gen1 differences and effects on performance.

# Crossfire & SLI scaling.

# AMD "Gaming Evolved" & Nvidia "The Way It's Meant to Be Played" list of supported games with Eyefinity & Surround.

# More details on AMD & Nvidia differences.

# List of on-going game bundles from AMD & Nvidia.

# List of reliable GPU monitoring & over-clocking software.

# List of the recommended current generation GPUs for the 100$,150$,200$,240$,300$ & 400$ price points.

# Links to the latest driver updates from AMD & Nvidia.

# List of power supply requirements for each current gen GPU.