Lack of choice - video cards

There seems to be a lack of real choice for video cards at retailers. I'm running a Palit GT710 2Gb DDR3 that came bundled with my machine. Anything with any oomph seems to be between £250 and £1000. I just use my machine for basic tasks such as web browsing but after scrolling facebook for a few pages the page seems to slow down and I have to refresh. Is this the limited Graphics care or not enough memory, I have 16gb DDR4 2666. My CPU i5 6 core, seems to be coping fine with load under 20%?

Monitor your resource usage with Resmon (Win+R, then 'resmon'), and click the CPU/RAM tabs to see any loads. Suggest you also run a UserBenchmark test, and post the link to the results.

Just so you know, the GT710 is sloooooow. Some simple comparisons:

GT710 vs Radeon R7 Gfx (onboard gfx on my 2014 AMD A8-7600 - just to highlight the GT710's lack of power)

GDDR5 VRAM cards:(in order of speed)
GT710 vs GT 1030 (a sub-£70 card with 2GB)
GT710 vs GTX 1050 (the card I replaced my onboard Radeon R7 - also 2GB, but can't find a price)
GT710 vs GTX 1050ti (4GB VRAM and £120 to £140)
GT710 vs GTX 1650 (4GB VRAM and £130 to £180) *
GT710 vs GTX 1660 (6GB VRAM and £200 to £230)

* some versions of the 1650 come with GDDR6 - depends on what's being sold, but it's 5-10% difference, so not a huge diff. Be aware that benchmark scores don't differentiate between versions.

GDDR6 VRAM cards:(in order of speed)
GT710 vs GT 1650 Super (4GB and £155 to £185)
GT710 vs GT 1660 Super (6GB and £210 to £260)

Given your lack of a need for higher end GPU stuff, such as gaming, I see little point in splashing out for 6GB cards, and would focus on the 4GB ones. The amount of RAM is probably not the issue, so much as the GPU and potential bottleneck of the slow GT710. You could try the 2GB GT 1030 as a cheap and cheerful improvement, but it wouldn't necessarily be too noticeable. Perhaps it's easier to list available, realistic GPUs:

(Effective speed %, wattage, approx average price, and bang per buck score):

GT 710    - 19w -  3.3% - N/A  - N/A
GT 1030   - 30w - 14.9% - £70  - 42.6
GT 1050ti - 75w - 31.6% - £155 - 40.8
GT 1650   - 75w - 41.0% - £160 - 51.3
GT 1650S  - 90w - 58.5% - £170 - 68.8

Given that for an extra £20-£30, I'd look to the 1650 Super, but be aware that it requires a PCI x16 slot and a 6-pin PCI power connector from the power supply (* as does the GDDR6 1650). It's a very decent option. If the power/slot requirements are an issue, the 1650 is the best option, then the 1050ti, but given the bang per buck, the latter isn't worth it. So to sum up:

1030 - Cheap n cheerful, might not be a huge change
1050ti - Far better than what you have, but not priced competitively
1650 - Better still than the 1050ti, and more price efficient (be aware of GDDR6 versions' power/slot requirements)
1650S - Best option, if prepared to pay £155-£185.

See PC PartPicker for all cards / prices. I don't recommend AMD cards generally, short of need for more (slower) VRAM at lower prices. I have used Aria, CCL, Ebuyer, Overclockers, Scan. I use Amazon only if supplied/backed by Amazon. My own personal pick from all the cards, brands and suppliers available:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/LBrYcf/evga-gefo... (from Scan)

Now then. That was a nice wake-me-up post. Time for a cuppa.

Brewed up, and thinking.

If all you do is basic web browsing (i.e. not videos, such as Youtube 1080p, streams, etc), the GT 1030 is probably fine. If looking to enjoy HD vids / streams, go for a 4GB option.

Additionally, be aware of any card's dimensions. Some bundled systems are cramped. You might be forced to take a short or low profile card. Best open up the case a see what space you have.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/34838894

Space is not a problem but the MB might be as its a micro ATX. PSU I think is 750W and there might be a connector for the extra power. I didn't want to spend any real dosh as I need a new phone to scan cheques unless I can find a way to run android apps on chrome from the play store. Looking at the links now after I get a brew.

Yup. Deffo the GPU is the first priority. I'd opt for one of the 4GB cards. Ideally, the 1650 Super for bang for buck, and the 1650 over the 1050ti.

Be interested to see a return benchmark once you upgrade. I found that my storage bench scores rose after my GPU upgrade.

Lots of choice, just depends on how much you want to pay, while your card is slow, I thought it would be ok for normal use, even the GPU built into processors these days will cope with stuff like that.

Facebook is always slow, even on my machine it slows down if there are a lot of photos on facebook.

i disagree with camieabz about AMD video cards, I have used them for years, even when they were ATI, and they have done well for me, the drivers are good now, I know they went through a stage where the drivers were rubbish.
i have never been a fan of Nivida, AMD cards will certainly work ok for you if you go for one. A mate used an AMD card for video editing, an R7, I used an R9 for video editing, and they both worked fine. I still have AMd, but it is a bit more expensive than what you want to pay.,

At the end of the day, set the price first and go from there, which every chipset you go for, I recommend sapphire, they are well-built cards and have decent cooling.

Your PSU is fine as long as it has connections for video cards and is a good quality one , I was using use a 750 and running a RX 5700 and a AMD R7 1700 CPU.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i disagree with camieabz about AMD video cards, I have used them for years, even when they were ATI, and they have done well for me, the drivers are good now, I know they went through a stage where the drivers were rubbish.
i have never been a fan of Nivida, AMD cards will certainly work ok for you if you go for one. A mate used an AMD card for video editing, an R7, I used an R9 for video editing, and they both worked fine. I still have AMd, but it is a bit more expensive than what you want to pay.,

My point was that the AMD price vs performance is less attractive, generally. However, if you want 8GB of VRAM at a budget price, it's probably a good option. I can't think of situations where I'd want more than 4GB VRAM at low performance though. It's probably more useful for video processing work. In addition, AMD cards are less efficient, power-wise, so equally/more expensive in the long run.

A comparison of PC Partpickers available cards under £250, including two benchmarks and power usage (and bang per buck scores for all). Then each score is ranked, and each rank awarded 10 points for 1st and so on:

https://i.ibb.co/9GpZ2r5/GPU-comp.png

So I'd ignore the 2GB cards as they don't have the perf. The 470x and 1050ti price to performance isn't great, while the 570x is so so, but more hungry with power.

The 580x and 5500XT benchmarks are good, but they too are hungry, power-wise compared to the others. If not using a PSU cable was a must, the only option would be Nvidia from this list. And the 1650 Super wins everything here, except for not having 8GB of VRAM (if that's wanted).

Banger suggested a PSU cable would be ok, and 8GB VRAM wasn't (as) important. Hence why I ignored the 6GB cards, such as 1660 / 1660S / 1660 Ti (which all tend to be £200-£250, similarly to the 5500 XT). Not sure if I said anything else about AMD cards. Not got a problem with them at all. I just don't recommend them for cost / perf / power consumption reasons, given the alternatives available.

I'd suggest that your problem lies elsewhere than the graphics card. You have a reasonably recent Intel processor - even the integrated graphics on that should be more than capable for the tasks you describe. Use resource monitor to see what is happening in the way of memory and disk usage. You may find that the problem lies there.

I can't see the point in spending money on a new graphics card for the tasks you describe. You could even try Linux; you'll probably find that your computer flies.

As for variety, the problem would seem to be the huge choice available rather than a lack of choice.

I have HWmonitor and when graphics memory load reaches 90% then it starts slowing down. Twitter a similar style doesn't do this. Ram is only 50%.

Have you tried the integrated graphics instead? I believe it's faster than that card.

It's a 9400F i5 no graphics on board.

Then shell out £75 on a GT1030. It's considerably faster than your current card. Or, if you can afford it, a GTX1050TI for about £135.

Think I may have solved the FB slowdown problem by turning off hardware acceleration in firefox so I can scroll seemingly for ages with no slow down and Video ram load doesn't increase from 20%. More testing needed.

Revisiting this. Turning off Hardware Acceleration on Firefox is the cause of the slowdown as using Chrome doesn't have any slowdown. I have upgraded RAM to Vengeance 32gb as I thought that might help but turning off HA in firefox does seem to do the trick and using Chrome hardly uses any graphics memory. I am still contemplating the 1650 upgrade to complete the machine with 4gb vram I need to look at Camie's comparisons and pricing after the new year.

Should I choose GTX1050 or GTX970?