[SOLVED] Advice on cheap 4K graphics card

[cpmiller22]

Hi all,

I recently picked up a 28” 4K monitor to use at home. I have an “older” computer that doesn’t have 4K support onboard (or even an hdmi port). I’m looking for advice for a lowest cost option to add a graphics card that can support 4K. Here is the motherboard that I have:

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/GA-H61M-D2P-B3-rev-10#ov

Thanks!

Chris


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[drivinfast247]

What do you want to do @ 4k, browse the web, watch movies or play games? Or all the above?

 

[cpmiller22]

Browse the web, maybe some YouTube, but no plans for gaming.


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[BFG-9000]

Lots of cheap cards can show you 4k on the desktop but the issue is playing 4k videos smoothly.

Your system may have enough power to play H.264 AVC video at 4k60 even in software, but the earliest cards that can offer hardware assist are nVidia Fermi (like GT 520), and AMD GCN 3.0 (like R9 285 or Radeon 530). I don't suggest the Fermis or Keplers or even Maxwells for 4k though as they are technically HDMI 1.4 which nVidia's current drivers seem to overclock to work at 60Hz!

The trick is H.265 HEVC which requires a lot more power to play smoothly--the first nVidia card that could fully hardware accelerate that is the rare GTX 750SE but you'd probably have an easier time locating a 950 or 960. The first AMD cards were Polaris like Rx460 or Rx540. These all have HDMI 2.0 so officially support 4k60.

Youtube defaults to VP9 which also requires the same nVidia cards as H.265 above for hardware acceleration. AMD's first card that can accelerate VP9 just came out--the Navi series Rx5700.

If you don't get a card that can do VP9 (or H.265) acceleration due to the expense, you could always use the H264ify plugin when playing 4k60 Youtube videos.

 

[cpmiller22]

Thanks for the info.

How about a GIGABYTE Geforce GT 1030 low profile graphic card (GV-N1030D5-2GL) which I can find online for ~$85?

Is that overkill, under powered? Pretty sure it would work with my mobo?

Thanks again for the help, I’ve never followed graphics cards very closely.




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[BFG-9000]

That is a fine card that's available new-with-warranty and only uses 30w. It can decode in hardware all of the previously mentioned codecs but cannot help encode them. In other words it's great for watching 4k videos but not for making them!

Should work fine with your board but I will suggest BIOS F10 or newer. There were a lot of problems with GPUs in early UEFI implementations on Sandy Bridge motherboards, and the twelve BIOS revisions for your board suggest they were probably busy fixing them!

 

[cpmiller22]

That is a fine card that's available new-with-warranty and only uses 30w. It can decode in hardware all of the previously mentioned codecs but cannot help encode them. In other words it's great for watching 4k videos but not for making them!

Should work fine with your board but I will suggest BIOS F10 or newer. There were a lot of problems with GPUs in early UEFI implementations on Sandy Bridge motherboards, and the twelve BIOS revisions for your board suggest they were probably busy fixing them!

@BFG-9000 Got the card installed and it works great. Thanks for the awesome advice!!


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