Hey everyone, In this post I am going to be looking at cheap budget graphics cards. Many people don't use computers for gaming and so don't need very powerful graphics cards however if you occasionally want to watch a bit of HD video and your onboard graphics isn't quite up to it then these cards will do well for your situation. They are cheap and quiet and will play HD video. All the cards that I am going to look at have a native HDMI output.
AMD Radeon HD 5450 512mb
The Radeon HD 5450 is a very capable cheap graphics card. It will easily run HD video. You can get this cheap card at an amazing £23 ($37) which is an amazing price. You can find it
here. It's specifications are as follows;
- Engine Clock - 650Mhz
- Memory Clock - 800Mhz
- Memory Interface - 64bit
- Benchmark Score - 303
Overall this is a very capable graphics card for running HD video and even some light gaming. Having looked on youtube there are a fair few people playing games with this card which amazed me to be honest. Another good thing about this card is that it only needs a 350-400w PSU for it to run correctly so quite a few branded computers could have this card fitted as an upgrade. The benchmark score for this card is not bad at all and you can tell that it has a good high clock speed from those results.
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| AMD Radeon HD5450 512Mb |
Nvidia Geforce 8400GS 512Mb
The 8400GS has been around for some time now but at just £23($37) it is still worth a look at. You can find this card
here it has the following specifications;
- Engine Clock - 450Mhz
- Memory Clock - 800Mhz
- Memory Interface - 64-bit
- Benchmark Score 139
Overall this isn't as well setup for HD video playback as there is a much lower clock speed than on the 5450. This means that you will most likely end up with slower play back and sometimes missed frames. I wouldn't recommend this for HD film watching but if you want a graphics card just for the windows aero theme and want to take a bit of load of the CPU and RAM in the computer then this cheap card will do the trick. The low benchmark score would most likely have been down to the really low Engine clock speed.
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| Gigabyte Geforce 8400GS 512Mb |
Nvidia Geforce 210 512Mb
The Nvidia Geforce G210 is a higher performance card from Nvidia than the 8400GS. It costs £26 ($42) which is a bit more than the other 2 cards that I have looked at so far. You can find the card
here. It comes with the following specs;
- Engine Speed - 520Mhz
- Memory Speed - 1.2Ghz
- Memory Interface - 32-bit
- Benchmark Score - 203
The clock speed of this graphics card isn't quite as high as the clock speed of the 5450 but it is faster than the 8400GS. The memory speed is where this card stands out with a rating of 1.2Ghz a full 50% faster than the other 2 cards. However the card is really let down by the tiny 32-bit memory interface which would most likely take away whatever performance the extra 50% more Mhz the RAM gave. Overall yes you could most likely play HD video on this card but if it was me I would rather spend a few more £/$ and get something a bit more pokey. The benchmark of this card is in the middle of the other 2 cards which proves that it really isn't worth the extra couple of pounds/dollars.
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| EVGA Geforce G210 512Mb |
AMD Radeon HD 6450 512Mb
The new AMD Radeon 6-Series has higher performance and is DirectX11 ready which means that it is ready for all the new games for the next couple of years. This card costs just over £33 ($53) You can find this card
here it has the following specifications;
- Engine Clock - 625Mhz
- Memory Clock - 1334Mhz
- Memory Interface - 64-Bit
- Benchmark Score - 376
These numbers look rather promising for playing HD video. They have the high clock speed that is needed and also the good RAM speed as well. The memory interface is nothing to rave about but it will do for most peoples needs when running Windows Aero and HD video. Overall not a bad card for the price and a good benchmark score that is higher than all the cards before it. The high memory speed matched with the good memory interface here really shows in the performance of the card.
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| Sapphire Radeon HD6450 512Mb |
Nvidia Geforce 9500GT 512Mb
The Nvidia Geforce 9500GT is just over the £35 limit that I set for this post. This card has been around for a while but it not massively out of date really. You can find the card
here. It has the following specifications;
- Engine Clock - 550Mhz
- Memory Speed - 667Mhz
- Memory Interface - 128-Bit
- Benchmark Score - 352
This card may not have the fastest memory or engine clock but it has double the maximum memory interface speed than all the other cards.This card however costs more than the 6450 but has returned a slower benchmark speed so it isn't really worth considering it if it costs more and is slower. However I do believe that this would most likely be slightly better at gaming due to the higher memory interface speed.
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| Inno3D 9500GT 512Mb |
Overall then the best card that you can currently get under £35 ($56) is the AMD Radeon HD6450 with it's amazing benchmark score of 376 and the highest memory speed it is the best card for watching HD video on at a budget. Thanks for reading. Below are some related articles;
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