PC owners like to get the most out of the hardware they have bought and want to extend its life for as long as possible, but can they cope with modern games?

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In this post. I aim to answer that question by testing 3 graphics cards from 2014-2015.

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Looking at the Steam Hardware Survey the Nvidia GTX 750 Ti is the most used GPU today, and less than 10% of gamers are using today's equivalent. So this made me wonder... how good are older cards at gaming today? So I grabbed a few GPUs, downloaded a couple of synthetic benchmarks and installed a mix of 3 games that have there own benchmarks built into them.

The PC I will be using to test this out on will be my trusty old system that was built about 4 years ago, so about the same age as the GPUs I will be testing and a good average for the age of computers PC gamers are using as the most common operating system is windows 7 (again, source from the Steam Hardware Survey).

So my Test Bench looks like this.

CPU	AMD FX - 8350 OC @ 4.35Ghz
RAM	Rampage 16Gb DDR3 OC @2200Mhz
Motherboard	Gigabyte 970A - DS3P
Power Supply	Dual PSU total 600 Watts.
Drive	1Tb Corsair SSD
Cooling	Corsair H45 CPU - 2x 200mm and 4x 120mm case fans.

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The GPU's I will be using are...

AMD Radeon R9 270x Powercolour PCS+
Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti EVGA FTW
Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 Asus DirectCU II OC edition

R9 270x Image Source

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GTX 750 Ti Image Source

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GTX 770 Image Source

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So for the synthetic tests I used Unigine Valley and there new benchmark software, Superposition.
For the Game benchmarks I used Rise of the Tomb Raider, Hitman 2016 and GTA V.
With the exception of Superposition, all benchmarks were at Maximum graphical settings at 1440p (I have a new 120 hrz 42” monitor to play with, Like a giddy child). Superposition was set to the 1080p high setting as it is a very demanding benchmark and the scores on the extreme setting were just to much for the older GPUs.

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Here is the graph I ended up with.

Lets start by looking at the R9 270x.
In the synthetic benchmarks, we can see that the 270x did very poorly with Valley resulting in just under 30FPS and superposition at a dismal 21FPS.
The game benchmarks were no better with Tomb raider resulting in 26FPS but that included a lot of stuttering and frames dropping constantly. In game the card performs OK at these settings but the frame drops are too frequent. GTA was only just a little better at 28FPS but was overall smooth and just about playable. Hitman yielded the best score for the 270x as Hitman is a sponsored AMD game and it produced a very smooth and playable 32FPS average with the odd dip to the high 20s.

Looking at the most used GPU, the GTX 750 Ti overall performed much better.
Unigine valley saw an average framer ate of 53FPS and it looked very buttery, while the Superposition bench performed the worst of all the cards at only 16FPS, very stuttery, even for a synthetic benchmark.
With Rise of the tomb raider, the 750 ti hit an average of 33 FPS and in game is very playable with no dropped frames or stuttering. GTA V is known to perform best on Nvidia cards and this is no exception with an average of 58 FPS, a great score and exceptional playability. Hitman on the other hand performed OK but not great at just 32FPS, same score as the 270x. It could be better, but it could be a lot worse.

And finally the GTX 770, a couple of steps up from the 750 ti.
In the Valley bench, this card got the highest score of all 3 cards with just over 50FPS average and superposition saw a 31FPS average and the both looked beautiful.
In Tomb Raider, the GTX ends up on top again with an average of 36FPS, not much more than the 750 ti, but a good improvement and you can see how much smoother it is.
GTA V was the highest scoring out of all the cards with a huge leap over the 750 ti at an average of 72FPS and in game the difference is notable and looks so much better.
Hitman saw the highest frame rate out of the 3 cards too with a good score of 38FPS which was also buttery smooth. It did dip a little to the mid 20's, but overall a good score.

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Image Source - Tech Mojo

But what do all these benchmarks mean?
Well it shows that when the cards are pushed to their absolute limit, they can perform reasonably well at the 30FPS mark which is what most console gamers have to put up with. But if you tweaked the setting enough, you can easily play games at 60+ FPS which will give you a much smoother image and a more immersive experience over all, which is what most PC gamers aim for.
All these games are playable at a good frame rate once the graphical settings have been set to accommodate what your card can handle. I've had the 270x in my machine for a long time and at a mix of high to very high, it can produce gameplay in the region of 60 – 80 FPS with no dropped frames. This is just to showcase what the cards will do when everything is turned on and set to its highest level.

Image Source - Tech Mojo

If you are thinking of buying an entry level or enthusiast graphics card new. You may want to consider buying an older card but a few steps up. What I mean is, if you are thinking of spending $150 on a GTX 1050 Ti, you could buy a GTX 970 or GTX 780 Ti which was the top end card 4 years ago and performs much better than the entry level card your thinking about buying.
On average, the cards in this test cost less than £85 GBP, $100 USD each on the used market. So when compared to the modern equivalent, the price to performance is incredible.

Image Source - Tech Mojo

My better half is chuffed with her new GTX 770 as it performs much better that the 750 Ti she has been using for the past couple of years.
When I was thinking about buying a 1050 Ti, I did a little research into comparing it with older cards and I ended up getting the 770 as it performs better.

Graphic card prices are starting to normalize after the mining boom which drove prices up so the second hand market is full of bargains waiting to be sold.

I hope this post has been helpful and your decision making is a little easier now.

Thanks for reading.

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Stu @TechMojo

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