Budget video card for minecraft/LEGO games?

[MrTeal]

Incorrect. My logic is that a second hand card should be cheaper than the same new card. Otherwise buy the new card. It's really simple.

The used card market is strange, especially locally. eBay works well because it auctions find their own price. I generally find good deals are often hard to come by locally as people tend to value their cards relative to what they paid, and someone who paid $170 for a 750 Ti at Bestbuy less than two years ago already thinks they're getting fleeced selling it at $100. Hell, just looking at things that have gone up today, there's a 280X for $170, a 7790 for $60, a 5870 for $69, an unopened 390 for $300, and a 5770 for $75 Granted I'm in a pretty small market, it might be different if you're in New York or something.

 

[ArchAngel777]

lol, insane. Video forum used to be really, really bad... Now it is even worse. The splitting hairs, hostile environment... No wonder most of the serious and more experienced posters have moved on. You guys go ahead and duke it out. You want numbers, then argue over whether they are legit and darn near have a seizure when someone has a differing opinion.

750ti is the best card in it's class. Yeah, my opinion.

 

[Headfoot]

750ti is the best card in it's class. Yeah, my opinion.

You're entitled to your opinion, but the facts don't lie. R7 370 = $115 AR, 750 Ti = $110 AR (priced via Newegg at time of posting). If we're talking which card is faster for basically the same amount of money, its the 370.

 

[Seba]

750 Ti = $110 AR (priced via Newegg at time of posting)

You somehow missed that Zotac GTX 750 Ti 2GB for $105 (no rebates):

At about $100 (no rebates) you can buy a new GTX 750 Ti 2GB, like this Zotac card for $105 (or for $125/$110 after rebate that R7 370), so $100 for a used GTX 750 Ti 2GB is obviously an aberrant price.

Deal is still valid.

 

[MrTeal]

Use "sort by price" on that list and you will have a surprise. You do not buy second hand cards at "average" price of all the listings from all the sellers (average of $100 calculated how b.t.w.?).

True, but you can't use the lowest prices either as a barometer. You have to go in a few pages to get a good idea on an average price of good value cards.
For example, in the last three months there were two functional 750Ti there that sold for $55-$60. Four sold at $60.01-$65. Three were $65.01-$70. Three were $70.01-$75. Four were $75.01-$80. Thirteen were $80.01-$85. Fifty three sold for $85-$90. I stopped there, but there's a couple pages (50 per) that sold for $90-$95 and even more at $95-$100.

So, in the last three months you have an average of 2 cards per month that sold for under $65, 2 per months that sold for $65-75, and 1.33 that sold for $75-$80. That's 4.33 cards per month under $80, 4.33 cards per month $80-$85, and about one every two days that sold $85-$90. The vast majority sold $90+

I would say that if you picked up a 750Ti for $85-$90 you did good. $80-85 you got a great deal, and under $80 you got really lucky.

 

[Seba]

For example, in the last three months there were two functional 750Ti there that sold for $55-$60.

So it is possible.

 

[MrTeal]

So it is possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRrNY0pxfM

I never said it wasn't, though given there was two in 3 months I would imagine it would be impossible for an eBay not using an automated sniping tool to buy one at that price. You could also buy the one that sold for $20 and fix it, which would be even cheaper.

I'm just saying setting a price based on an outlier several standard deviations outside the mean is kind of useless for someone wanting to buy something. $110 is a good deal on a new selling price for a new 750 Ti shipped (plus whatever you pay in tax), and based on average selling prices the discount buying used is somewhere around 15%. That's not really unexpected for a video card that's more than a year old but is still currently in the product stack. Could he get one under $75-80 if he combed obsessively over eBay for a few weeks and installed a sniping app? Probably.

 

[iiiankiii]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRrNY0pxfM

I never said it wasn't, though given there was two in 3 months I would imagine it would be impossible for an eBay not using an automated sniping tool to buy one at that price. You could also buy the one that sold for $20 and fix it, which would be even cheaper.

I'm just saying setting a price based on an outlier several standard deviations outside the mean is kind of useless for someone wanting to buy something. $110 is a good deal on a new selling price for a new 750 Ti shipped (plus whatever you pay in tax), and based on average selling prices the discount buying used is somewhere around 15%. That's not really unexpected for a video card that's more than a year old but is still currently in the product stack. Could he get one under $75-80 if he combed obsessively over eBay for a few weeks and installed a sniping app? Probably.

True, but you can't use the lowest prices either as a barometer. You have to go in a few pages to get a good idea on an average price of good value cards.
For example, in the last three months there were two functional 750Ti there that sold for $55-$60. Four sold at $60.01-$65. Three were $65.01-$70. Three were $70.01-$75. Four were $75.01-$80. Thirteen were $80.01-$85. Fifty three sold for $85-$90. I stopped there, but there's a couple pages (50 per) that sold for $90-$95 and even more at $95-$100.

So, in the last three months you have an average of 2 cards per month that sold for under $65, 2 per months that sold for $65-75, and 1.33 that sold for $75-$80. That's 4.33 cards per month under $80, 4.33 cards per month $80-$85, and about one every two days that sold $85-$90. The vast majority sold $90+

I would say that if you picked up a 750Ti for $85-$90 you did good. $80-85 you got a great deal, and under $80 you got really lucky.

Don't bother. That dude, Seba, is just trolling at this point. He knows exactly what we meant.

 

[Seba]

I never said it wasn't

Others did.

 

[Madpacket]

OP, with your existing gear being pretty decent wait for a deal. Save a few more bucks and locally grab a used 750Ti or 2GB 7850. You want a card that will have driver support for at least a few years. There's a lot of bickering here but I think we can all agree spending $50.00 on a discrete card is pointless (unless your kids really only plan on ever playing Lego and Minecraft). The 6950 is attractive at that price but ultimately the 1GB of RAM unbalances the card in that the fill rate of a 6950 is fully capable of using 2GB of RAM (and IIRC was never released with 1GB of RAM). With 1GB the card is artificially held back and also partially why they're so being unloaded cheap. Plus the lack of future driver support could also really kill the performance.

The rest of your system is good enough to support much better cards. I prefer 750 Ti's for their power usage but they can be a little hard to find used for a good price (please don't touch fleabay for used video cards, buy local or from trusted forum members with a reputation to worry about). The 7850/7870 are excellent cards as well (7850 is also pretty power efficient and very overclockable) plus these AMD cards have the benefit of future Direct X 12 likely helping them out.

You have a few options but please stay away from the $50.00 cards given your CPU. If you had a crappy old dual core CPU it wouldn't matter but you have a decent processor, RAM and SSD.

Buying a $50.00 GPU is akin to adding $10.00 neon pink racing stickers to a decently fast car, just don't do it ;D

 

[Shyatic]

OP, with your existing gear being pretty decent wait for a deal. Save a few more bucks and locally grab a used 750Ti or 2GB 7850. You want a card that will have driver support for at least a few years. There's a lot of bickering here but I think we can all agree spending $50.00 on a discrete card is pointless (unless your kids really only plan on ever playing Lego and Minecraft). The 6950 is attractive at that price but ultimately the 1GB of RAM unbalances the card in that the fill rate of a 6950 is fully capable of using 2GB of RAM (and IIRC was never released with 1GB of RAM). With 1GB the card is artificially held back and also partially why they're so being unloaded cheap. Plus the lack of future driver support could also really kill the performance.

The rest of your system is good enough to support much better cards. I prefer 750 Ti's for their power usage but they can be a little hard to find used for a good price (please don't touch fleabay for used video cards, buy local or from trusted forum members with a reputation to worry about). The 7850/7870 are excellent cards as well (7850 is also pretty power efficient and very overclockable) plus these AMD cards have the benefit of future Direct X 12 likely helping them out.

You have a few options but please stay away from the $50.00 cards given your CPU. If you had a crappy old dual core CPU it wouldn't matter but you have a decent processor, RAM and SSD.

Buying a $50.00 GPU is akin to adding $10.00 neon pink racing stickers to a decently fast car, just don't do it ;D

Fair advice

I think I'll wait on my tax returns and buy the kids something a bit better. I just didn't want to spend too much given they are young, but having value over time makes sense also.

 

[tweakboy]

750 GTX ... gl

 

[Shyatic]

So as an update -- I waited until tax return time and bought the kids an R7 370 for $125 (after the rebates). It seems a pretty good deal for my purposes and should last them a few years as well. They have a dedicated PSU (500W EVGA) so I'm not worried about the power savings, but rather a card I know that won't get obsoleted overnight.

Appreciate all your help and comments!