Graphics card advice needed

[GSXRMovistar]

Hi All, my arcade rig is currently running on a Pentium K Anniversary G3258 using the onboard graphics of a MSI Z97 PC Mate motherboard and all has been pretty impressive considering the spec (MAME performance and most other emulators).

However I'm now exploring HLSL in MAME and finding the onboard graphics are not up to it, therefore I'm looking for graphic card recommendations.

Ideally:-

* Nothing ridiculously expensive.
* Low noise, rig is pretty much silent so no huge jumbo jet fans.
* No cards that require a dedicated power station to run.[/li][/list]

Any ideas?

Thanks Andy.

[lamprey]

I don't have a specific card in mind. But, any modern card should work. I forget the absolute minimum requirement for HLSL, but I'm pretty sure an old NVidia 8800 series would work just fine. However, I'm not sure what you mean by dedicated power station? Are you fine with a power connector to the power supply? I picked up a lower end nvida 700 Series card (750 ti?) for my workstation and it doesn't require any external power as it runs off the PCI bus power. I'm pretty sure all the older cards were just inefficient enough to need a power connection from the PSU, though.

[GSXRMovistar]

Thanks, by dedicated power station I just meant those that have a huge power demand. I have 450W PSU that runs almost silent so ideally nothing that will max it out and have the fans running at full blast.

[Generic Eric]

My PSU only spins up the fan when it needs to.  I said it somewhere else that upgrading a PSU isn't the worse problem to have.  Do you need to upgrade anything else, besides the aforementioned video card? Howzabout one of those sweet SSD's?

My personal experience with cards right now is that I can make a sizeable jump from an $80 card to $129 card.  A remarkable jump at $199.  Anyway, that doesn't help much.  Do you have a budget?

[GSXRMovistar]

Budget wise I ideally don't want to spend more than £100, no other upgrades in scope, already running on ssd.

[bulbousbeard]

For 1080p+, you need a pretty beefy GPU for shaders. CRT Royale in Retroarch is probably the best looking one, and it requires a LOT of GPU. I'm really not sure you can do it for 100 bucks. You really have to spend around $250-$350 for 1080p shaders with no frame drops.

[keilmillerjr]

Have you thought about getting a hardware based scan line generator? It's not a perfect solution, but does look sharp. BeNifits include always working and easy install. I Have the toodles slg and it works at higher resolutions.

[mnewt]

I too have gone through this. In the end I settled on the Palit GT740 for about 60 pounds from amazon. It's pretty quiet, got a small form factor and doesn't require external power from the PSU.

Of course, what suits all depends on what HLSL settings you are using. Although I haven't done extensive testing, the card has held up great so far. This is the one I purchased

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palit-Nvidia-GeForce-Graphics-Express/dp/B00KO1GVAI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423028285&sr=8-1&keywords=palit+740gt

You can get a benchmark comparison of different video cards from this site if it helps

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

[lamprey]

For 1080p+, you need a pretty beefy GPU for shaders. CRT Royale in Retroarch is probably the best looking one, and it requires a LOT of GPU. I'm really not sure you can do it for 100 bucks. You really have to spend around $250-$350 for 1080p shaders with no frame drops.

You are joking, right?


EDIT: I see you are talking about Retoarch. It may need more horsepower. But, MAME's HLSL is very light-weight for a shader.

[Generic Eric]

For 1080p+, you need a pretty beefy GPU for shaders. CRT Royale in Retroarch is probably the best looking one, and it requires a LOT of GPU. I'm really not sure you can do it for 100 bucks. You really have to spend around $250-$350 for 1080p shaders with no frame drops.

I'd like to know more about this.   I think you are making assumptions that aren't explained.  Do you have any statistics to back up a $350 suggestion?  You can buy a SAPPHIRE TRI-X OC 100362-2SR Radeon R9 290 4GB 512-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card from newegg for $289.99.  I think if you are going to tell a person they need to spend $350, you need to be more specific as to why.  Give him a link to a white paper or a graph or something.

I downloaded Gunman Clive from steam.  I can't play it because of shaders.  I have a geforce gx 260 or something.  A fine card for its own time.  I can't tell you if its graphically intensive, but it doesn't look like at it at first glance. 

I was taken down by a $3 game from a steam sale, and that is my story.

[nitrogen_widget]

There isn't much difference between a 19 inch 4:3 LCD and 1080p 16:9 display when it comes to mame.
The games will use roughly the same resolution.

Personally I think if you have to use a widescreen and can't find a 16:10 display stick to 720p.
There really is no logical reason to scale a roughly 320x240 resolution video game to 1440x1080 when 960x720 will not only suffice, but the lower resolution also lowers the graphic card requirements for HLSL.

[bulbousbeard]

Running CRT Royale in Retroarch at 3840x2160 requires a $350+ video card. I'm not joking. Try it.

[Liveinabin]

I have the same chip in my arcade cab (the G3258 anniversary, overclocked to 4.2G).  My graphics card is an GeForce GTX750ti (http://www.palit.biz/palit/vgapro.php?id=2252).

Does the job beautifully and it's quiet.  Supermodel (Model 3 emu) looks great in 1080p and it can do all the HLSL effects in MAME without missing a beat.
Aside from that, it'll run most PC games with all the sliders up too.  The only emu that skips occasionally is Dolphin but I suspect that's more down to our plucky little processor.

[nitrogen_widget]

64bit linux
mame .0157
3.0 ghz single core Celeron D.
HD radeon 4650
Timothy Lottes GLSL CRT Shader for sdlmame.

I have scanlines & screen curvature on a 17" 1280x1024 LCD panel and it runs classic games at 100%.
I have not turned on pincussion yet but will play with that this weekend to see how it runs.

[GSXRMovistar]

I have the same chip in my arcade cab (the G3258 anniversary, overclocked to 4.2G).  My graphics card is an GeForce GTX750ti (http://www.palit.biz/palit/vgapro.php?id=2252).

Does the job beautifully and it's quiet.  Supermodel (Model 3 emu) looks great in 1080p and it can do all the HLSL effects in MAME without missing a beat.
Aside from that, it'll run most PC games with all the sliders up too.  The only emu that skips occasionally is Dolphin but I suspect that's more down to our plucky little processor.

That looks ideal. Thanks.

[GSXRMovistar]

Picked up an Asus GTX750ti seems to do the trick.

[berger]

GTX750ti

[bulbousbeard]

I don't think that card will do CRT Royale with everything enabled at full speed, but let me know.

[Liveinabin]

Picked up an Asus GTX750ti seems to do the trick.

Nice.  Which model was it.  If it was the GTX750ti OC then you can also overclock it a bit for even more power.  Either way, it's a lovely card - super low power and noise.

[Enverex]

I have the same motherboard and CPU as you and I'm running RetroArch on Linux with the 3xBR shader (x3 scaling) with an AMD RadeonHD 7770 just fine.

I thought the CRT Royale was less intensive than this, but I'll test it tomorrow anyway just to check.

That said, I am looking for something better (I want 5xBR really). Does anyone know of any other single-slot, half-height cards? (it MUST meet BOTH of those criteria).

[atwood]

What games are you playing?

[atwood]

Does this one could meet your need?  http://pcgamerhome.com/intel-hd-5500-graphics-benchmark-what-games-can-it-run/

[Enverex]

Does this one could meet your need?  http://pcgamerhome.com/intel-hd-5500-graphics-benchmark-what-games-can-it-run/

That would require the person to buy a new 5th gen i5 or i7 CPU which would be more expensive than buying just a mid-range GPU.

Given a comparative performance review, it's really not worth it. It's a step up from the 4000 series, but a discreet GPU would still be notably better.