Graphics card help!

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Blundred77

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Andrew Blundred
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I need to upgrade the graphics card in my PC but I am limited due to budget.

I have found 2 slightly different models, both MSI Gforce cards.

The first is MSI GForce 630 4096 GDDR3 and the other is MSI GForce 1024 GDDR5

They are both priced at £60.

I know these are low end compared to the models that are out there but unfortunately this is the budget in place!

If anyone can offer advice that would be great as I could really do with some.

PS the machine is an i7 2600k running 8gb DDR3.

Cheers.
 
What is it for? Playing games or running Photoshop?
 
This is a great post, usually i don’t post comments on blogs but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so!
 
You don't say which chip the second card has. If you are doing standard photo editing on 1 or 2 monitors, a card with 1G DRAM is fine. Don't worry about DDR3 vs DDR5 (DDR5 is faster) you won't notice the difference for photography work.

Put it this way, I have a custom self-build PC that I could afford to put a high end graphics card/cards in if I wanted to. I run an £80 GT640 with 2GB memory as it was the cheapest/lowest end card I could find that was both passively cooled and would drive the 3 monitors properly.
 
If all you need is general use and photography software like Photoshop, Lightroom etc... then any old piece of crap will do so long as it has enough graphics memory to drive your display resolution. You probably have a 1920x1080 monitor.. most have these days... in which case either card will do fine. In fact, the MSI GForce 630 has 4GB of VRAM.. which is actually overkill unless you are trying to run 2 or more 1440P monitors. The other one with only 1GB of VRAM may not be a great idea if you have a 27 or 30inch screen, or use more than one screen. It will work, but 2GB would be better in that situation.

Therefore I'd get the MSI GForce 630 4096MB. Can't go wrong for £60 there.

If you play games however.... both those cards are utter crap.
 
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Thanks for the comments. The PC is basically used for photoshop but I do enjoy the odd game now and then, although this is usually restricted to FM or C&C. As for screens I have 2 23" IPS panels (LG IPS235).

Oops, the other card is a 650 GTX Black Knight.
 
The GTX650 will perform better in games, but the greater VRAM of the 630 will be best for larger displays if you ever upgrade your monitors in the future.
 
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