Yuriman
Diamond Member
- Jun 25, 2004
- 5,530
- 141
- 106
Last gen offerings at the low end from AMD are the HD6450 / HD7450 / R5 230 (same card, different names). This card is about twice as fast as a 5450 on paper, and Newegg has one for $38 after rebate. The cheapest current gen card you can get (GCN) is the R7 240, which starts at around $70.
I'm not as familiar with nVidia's offerings, but the it looks like the last gen GTX 650 and current gen GTX 750 both start at around $100.
Have you considered a platform update? AMD and NV's current integrated GPU options should have no trouble. A Celeron or AMD A6 iGPU should be plenty for your HTPC needs, and motherboard + CPU will be less than the price of a new card. You'll lose some CPU performance but probably get a quieter and less power hungry system out of it. Either should still be plenty adequate for day to day desktop use, and should run on a ~90w PSU. An Atom or Kabini quad might even do, and you can get a completely fanless Baytrail quad and motherboard for less than $50:
ATX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157513
ITX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135391
EDIT: I suggest this because I've just moved to ITX myself and found no real compromises, while cutting my computer's size down 80%, and noise and power consumption basically in half.
I'm not as familiar with nVidia's offerings, but the it looks like the last gen GTX 650 and current gen GTX 750 both start at around $100.
Have you considered a platform update? AMD and NV's current integrated GPU options should have no trouble. A Celeron or AMD A6 iGPU should be plenty for your HTPC needs, and motherboard + CPU will be less than the price of a new card. You'll lose some CPU performance but probably get a quieter and less power hungry system out of it. Either should still be plenty adequate for day to day desktop use, and should run on a ~90w PSU. An Atom or Kabini quad might even do, and you can get a completely fanless Baytrail quad and motherboard for less than $50:
ATX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157513
ITX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135391
EDIT: I suggest this because I've just moved to ITX myself and found no real compromises, while cutting my computer's size down 80%, and noise and power consumption basically in half.
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