What to know about GPU

GPU

There are two major types of GPU – on board and expansion card based built by a 3^rd party using AMD or NVidia chipsets. Expansion card solutions tend to be more powerful than those built into the CPU. For low end systems such as office computers, NVidia GT or AMD APU’s (CPU’s with attached graphics) are recommended. However, for gaming, something more beefy such as NVidia GeForce 600 and AMD Radeon 7000 series cards are recommended.

Finding the right card
You could look at all the little details and specs published by the brand and wave your clock speed around; however, do you know what that actually means? The easiest way of selecting a GPU is to allocate a proportion of your budget and then have a look at what GPU’s are in that price bracket. There are dozens of benchmarks all over the web including a heap done by Linus on the LinusTechTips channel that show frame rates between a range of consumer cards.

Generally, a 660TI or 7850 is the recommended base card for decent 1080P performance on a single 1080P display. The number of displays and the resolution will also affect frame rates.

If you happen to do a lot of video or visual work on your system such as Adobe After Effects or Premiere, it is recommended that you go for an NVidia card. These programs support the NVidia CUDA core feature which is not offered by AMD. It gives increased performance to those programs that support this technology.

SLI and Crossfire
SLI and Crossfire are NVidia and AMD’s features regarding the use of two or more GPU’s for increased performance. It is required that to run dual GPUs, the card chipsets must be identical; however, you can –whilst not recommended -use two different brands such as an MSI card with an Asus card.

SLI and Crossfire aren’t the ‘be all end all’ solution to your graphics performance issues. They do have some issues with drivers regarding being supported by some games, which could result in worse performance than using the same card, but in a single set up.