You might wonder why just 720p or 1080p??, isn't 4K the new standard for modern gaming??. The problem is of course, not everyone can afford a 4K monitor. Even worse, the graphics cards that are made for such resolutions are quite expensive. Furthermore, many gamers still play with their small HD and Full HD monitor, and maybe you're one of them.
Note:
* You need at least quad core CPU to fully get the maximize power of the video card below.
* DDR3 graphics card, even though they're not as fast as DDR5, are still worth to get, for 720p of course.
* 400W power supply is recommended to run the video card in this article.
GT 1030, the best budget graphics card for 720p gaming
Nvidia previously already have their best selling GPU for this entry level class with the price under 100 dollars, GT 730. And now, after years of their dominance for the high end market, Nvidia, with Pascal 10-series video card, is ready to challenge AMD's entry-level positions with the GeForce GT 1030.
Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 is released with the goal to compete against the Radeon RX 550. Unfortunately, if we compare both GT 1030 (with 48.06 GB/s Bandwidth) and RX 550 (with 112.0 GB/s Bandwidth) in term of technical specs, GT 1030 looks far inferior. Even so, i still recommend GT 1030 due to its cheaper price and also because RX 550 is rather overkill for 720p gaming.
Standard Specification
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| source: www.techpowerup.com |
GeForce GT 1030 uses the latest graphics processor called GP108, which consists of 1.8 billion transistors. The processor is pretty tiny with only 70mm², thanks to the same 14nm FinFET process used to produce GP107. We can compare it with GK208 GeForce GT 730 chip with 1.02 billion transistors at 84mm² die or with GeForce GTX 750 Ti.
Benchmark video test
As you can see from the video above, GT 1030 is quite strong to running some AAA games like GTAV on high preset with average framerate above 30fps. Still from the video above, GT 1030 can run the Witcher 3, Arkham Knight, Fallout 4 games on medium settings, also with average framerate above 30fps. One thing to note that, the uploader of benchmark video above, tested this GT video card on 1080p resolutions. So imagine its better performance on lower resolutions!.
30 Watts Max TDP
Not just wins in term of price compared to RX 550, GT 1030 also wins in term of power consumption. With 30W max TDP, you can run this GT video card in a computer with 400W power supply. Furthermore, Nvidia in their GT 1030 official page recommended 300W power supply as its minimum requirement!.
Click here to buy GT 1030 from amazon
GTX 1050 Ti, the best budget graphics card for 1080p gaming
I'm not trying to exaggerate here, but we need to admit if GTX 1050 Ti is the best gift from Nvidia for budget gamers. Just imagine a 4GB memory size graphics card powered with 7008 MHz Memory Clock (effective) and has 112.1 GB/s Bandwidth. Technically, you can play the latest AAA games with the best setting as possible (for 1080p res) with this GTX video card.
Standard Specification
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| source: www.techpowerup.com |
Benchmark video test
The gamer in the video above tested GTX 1050 Ti to running GTAV, the Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Ryse Son of Rome and more AAA games on high setting or even ultra and the results are great. As you can see, Nvidia successfully designed this card for 1080p gaming. Therefore, you don't need to waste your money for expensive video card if you wanna play games for 1080p resolutions.
75 Watts max TDP
Unfortunately, the GTX 1050 Ti is not as efficient as GT 1030 above. The good news is, 400W power supply is enough to run this affordable video card.
Click here to buy GTX 1050 Ti from amazon
RX 550, affordable Radeon graphics card for 1080p gaming
Of course it's not fair if i don't include graphics card from AMD in this list. Well if wee see the price range of this RX video card, the RX 550 is designed as the successor of HD7750 and R7 250 DDR5.
RX 550 is available with 2GB and 4GB memory size. Note that if you want to get this RX 550 then personally i recommend you the 4GB DDR5 version which is more ideal for 1080p gaming.
Standard Specification
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| source: www.techpowerup.com |
Radeon RX 550 is based on Polaris architecture with 14nm FinFET technology that is equipped with 8 compute units and 512 stream processors with GPU speeds in the range of 1100MHz base clock with 1183MHz boost clock which is certainly quite fast for a low end graphics card. Technically, the RX 550 should run faster then GT 1030 and slightly slower than GTX 1050 Ti.
Benchmark video test
50 Watts Max TDP
Thanks to the GPU's new architecture that operates in lower TDP, this highly efficient graphics card does not require much power to run your favorite video games. Therefore, the Radeon RX 550 is designed to only take power from the PCIe slot of the motherboard, without requiring power connector.
The features offered by RX 550
* DirectX12 & Vulkan API compatible, that makes this RX 550 are decent for current AAA games.
* Radeon FreeSync to eliminate shuttering when you're playing games.
* AMD Eyefinity Technology to support playing with multi monitors.
* And the best thing about the RX 550 is it's featured with AMD LiquidVR that allows you to play some games with Virtual reality (VR).
Click here to buy Radeon RX 550 from amazon
Thanks for reading.