Budget HD HDMI Graphics Cards - 2011

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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;

Budget AMD AM3 Motherboards

Budget CPU Coolers Reviewed

Budget Intel Socket 1155 Motherboards Review

In this post I am going to be briefly looking at some the cheapest socket 1155 motherboards that there is. Socket 1155 is the newest socket offering from the CPU giant Intel. It supports all of Intels latest CPU offerings including the 2nd generation of Intel's Core i7 CPU's. I am going to start by looking at the cheapest 1155 motherboard that eBuyer features on their website.

Biostar H61MGC- http://www.ebuyer.com/product/274290

The Biostar H61MGC is the cheapest 1155 motherboard that there currently is on sale. Priced at an amazing £39.60 ($63.82) This is clearly a Budget motherboard and is well worth a good look at when building a 1155 Setup. The motherboard it self has no real stand out features. It only has 2 RAM slots, It doesn't have a Legacy PCI slot or IDE plug. It only has one PCI-E x16 slot. However it does feature onboard graphics which has DVI output and VGA output this means that you could plug it into any monitor including HDMI ones by using a DVI to HDMI adapter.
The H61MGC does come with solid capacitors in the CPU VRM area which means that voltages to your new Core i3, i5 or i7 will be very smooth and well regulated. It supports a maximum power of 95w which is enough to power the i7 2600K, It can also support the cheaper Pentium offerings as well which shows this board can support both high speed expensive hardware as well as lower speed cheaper hardware. It only has SATA 2 however which is a bit of a let down, It most likely won't effect many people however as at the moment the only things that come close to maxing out the bandwidth of SATA 2 ports are SSD drives and not many people use them.
Overall the Biostar H61MGC is a very well priced offering from Biostar and I would recommend it to anyone that simply wants a computer that is good for high speed internet and also some light gaming if fitted with a graphics card.

MSI H61M-E33-B3 - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/260862

The H61M-E33-B3 from MSI is a lot more of a rounded motherboard. It has more of the new features that the new Core series supports. It costs quite a bit more than the Biostar however priced at just over £50 ($80) Having looked at this motherboard the first thing that I noticed was the amount of high quality solid capacitors. This is a good sign as this usually means that the manufacture has not skimped on the quality part of this motherboard to gain extra specifications. The next thing I noticed is that it features a Legacy PCI slot as well as two PCI-E x1 and a PCI-E x16 slot as well. It only has 2 RAM slots like the Biostar but that can be expected at such a good price. It can support upto 16Gb of RAM if you can find the compatible 8Gb RAM sticks.
The H61-E33-B3 also only features SATA II which is a bit disappointing but it is a budget board and remember that not many people max out the bandwidth on SATA II anyway. It supports CPU's upto the i7-2600K just like the Biostar and can handle the slower cheaper Pentiums as well. This board also has a Native HDMI output as well which shows that it was built for HDMI output. I would say that this motherboard would be great paired with an i3 or i5 and put into a media center PC as it also features 8 channel audio output with the 6 needed sockets.
Over all the MSI H61M-E33-B3 looks like a great quality budget board with good features for an amazing price and I wouldn't hesitate to recommended it to anyone looking to build either a budget gaming PC or a Media Center PC.

ASUS P8H61-M - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/261401

The ASUS P8H61-M is the cheapest ASUS board that I could find for socket 1155. It does come with more features than the H61MGC and H61M-E33-B3 and that is to be expected as it costs just over £60 ($96) Having looked at the P8H61-M I noticed that the board is full of ASUS's well known quality, It has only Solid Capacitors, Anti-Surge protection which protects your hardware from Electrical surges, and C.P.R which ASUS claims to help recover the origional BIOS settings should an overclock fail and the board not boot. This sounds like a very useful feature for those people that are always trying to push their components for the best performance they can get.
The P8H61-M supports the same CPU's as the other two budget boards and also only features SATA II again just like the other boards. It has the same card expansion slots as the MSI H61M-E33-B3 and also features only 2 RAM slots. It also lacks the feature of USB 3 which is disappointing as well.
On the positive side this board does have a HDMI output and also a S/PDIF output which the MSI and Biostar are lacking. This shows that ASUS are aiming the P8H61-M at the Media market as S/PDIF is a Digital audio out plug which is the best way to transmit HD audio.
Overall the ASUS P8H61-M seems to be aimed at the media market again but there is no doubt in my mind that a board of this quality couldn't easily handle some gaming work as well so long as it is fitted with either a i5 or i7 processor and a decent graphics card. Who ever said budget gaming was a bad idea?

Gigabyte GA-H61M-D2-B3 - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/261350

My final board is the Gigabyte GA-H61M-D2-B3. This board is the same price as the ASUS and for that I would expect the same sort of features as well. The first thing I notice about this board is the 2 RAM slots. Once again another board that can only have 2 RAM sticks in it. The next thing I notice is the CPU VRM area. It is packed with high quality chokes and capacitors and also features Lower RDS mosfets lowering the power usage and heat output than standard VRM's. The final thing that stands out on this board is the fact that there is no legacy PCI slot, only 3 PCI-E x1 slots which I think may cause some people to shy away from this board as many PCI-E x1 cards a more expensive than PCI cards that offer the same features.
The GA-H61M-D2 also supports the same CPU's as the Biostar, MSI and the ASUS and can support the whole range from the Pentiums to the i7's. What I don't understand with this board is that they haven't included a HDMI output which is very disappointing, They also haven't included the full 6 3.5mm sockets that is usually required when usinging 7.1 audio.
The GA-H61M-D2 also only supports SATA II and USB 2.0 which is also quite disappointing considering they haven't got a HDMI port either.
My overall descision with the GA-H61M-D2 board is that I don't know what audience Gigabyte was aiming this board at. It can't do proper multimedia as it doesn't have a HDMI socket and it also doesn't feature S/PDIF audio output. The quality of the VRM is better than the ASUS's but personally I wouldn't buy it over the ASUS as it seems that it is just lacking features and for the same price it is not worth it.

Thanks for reading. Please Join this site for hardware news and updates. Also check out these related articles;

Budget AMD AM3 Motherboards

Budget AMD AM3 Motherboards

Many people these days are looking for computers that are in a certain price range. If you are looking to build a PC in the budget range from around £200-£300 ($300-$500) then these motherboards will work very well for you. They are from good quality manufactures such as ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI and most feature Solid capacitors for better voltage regulation to the CPU.

MSI GF615M-P33

I am starting with the MSI as it was the cheapest AM3 motherboard that I could find from the more reputable and respected motherboard manufactures. It has a 4.5 star rating on the eBuyer website which is where I personally source my computer components from. It features an AMD socket AM3 and supports CPU's that are upto 125w. This means that this little Micro ATX budget motherboard can support many of the AMD 6 core CPU's upto the 1065T. This is very very good support for a motherboard that costs just over £34 ($54) It doesn't support any amazing features such as UEFI BIOS or onboard HD video but it will work for many users that only need a simple office computer. Technically with the PCI-E slot and the support for an AMD Hex Core cpu you may even be able to make a budget gaming computer out of it. I say well done MSI for providing such a great motherboard at such a competitive price.

ASUS M4N68T-M LE

ASUS have really managed a lot with such a small budget with this board. Getting one at such a good price is a bonus really. I found this board at the price of £35 ($56) The ASUS M4N68T-M LE has some pretty basic features if you compare it to high cost motherboards but it has all you need really if you are thinking of just building an office PC or even possibly a low cost gaming machine. It features 4 SATA ports which is enough for most people. It has a PCI-E slot so you can put any modern graphics card into it.
The main problem that I see with this board is the fact that it only has 2 DDR3 RAM slots. I suppose this can be expected on a board like this though. The audio is 8 channel HD but when you run in 8 channel you will loose the other two 3.5mm jacks as they turn into audio outputs for the different channels. The board supports CPU's upto the massive power house of the Phenom II x6 1100T. This means that is can power AMD's best AM3 offering. Overall ASUS have managed to make an amazingly cheap motherboard which can power the best CPU AMD offers on it's AM3 platform and also have basic things such as onboard video and 4 SATA ports. Great board.

Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2

I am not sure what it is about Gigabyte but they always seem to have very neat looking boards. The look of good build quality and quality components. I think it may be the color scheme that makes it look neat and tidy but then again I am not sure. Anyway, This board is a great board. It costs just under £37 ($59) and it is build by one of the leading motherboard manufactures, Gigabyte. Recently some people have been saying that Gigabyte are better quality boards than ASUS but I personally think they are about level now.
This board has basically the same features as the ASUS board that we looked at above. It has 2 RAM slots which is usually sufficient now that you can easily get hold of 4GB memory modules. It has 4 SATA ports and features onboard VGA graphics. It also has the same 8-Channel HD audio that the ASUS has. This board however can only support up to the Phenom II x6 1090T not the full blown 1100T that the ASUS supports. The build of this board is the main feature really. It has solid capacitors in the CPU VRM's and also has Dual BIOS so that if one fails the other one can take over and repair the failed one.


MSI 760GM-E51

Having looked at a fair few full budget motherboards I decided to move up a few steps and show you a board that feature HDMI onboard. This tidy offering from MSI really looks pretty good. It costs a little over £44 ($70) It features 4 RAM slots and has 5 SATA ports (one of which is mounted as an E-SATA port on the back) The board looks like it has been built using good quality parts, The CPU VRM has fully solid capacitors and it also features solid coils which offer better voltage stability. This board also features the ability to unlock the hidden cores in AMD CPU's and also a flick switch overclock setting which increases the FSB automatically. It has built in 8-Channel audio and also has built in HDMI which makes this board great for using as a cinema system computer. Overall a great board by MSI for such a good price.

Thanks for reading everyone, I hope this has made your decision of budget AMD motherboards easier and better. Jack-O-Bytes

MSI and Gigabyte introduce new custom GTX 500 series based graphics cards

MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 570 & 580: 

MSI today officially unveils its N500 series of graphics card featuring the award-winning Twin Frozr II Thermal Design. The Twin Frozr II Thermal Design has garnered unanimous praise from professional media and end-users for providing the best balance between cooling performance and lowest sound levels. With the Twin Frozr II cooler, noise output is reduced by up to 8.4dB (when compared to the reference design). More importantly, operating temperatures are reduced by up to 20°C versus other cooling solutions. Thanks to MSI Afterburner, unsurpassed clock speeds can be achieved with the combined features of the excellent Twin Frozr II Thermal Design and MSI's N580GTX and N570GTX GPU.

Gigabyte GTX 570 WindForce3X Edition:

Gigabyte released a new overclocked non-reference design GeForce GTX 570 graphics that makes use of its WindForce3X custom cooler. The GV-N570OC-13I from Gigabyte uses clock speeds of 780 MHz core and 1560 MHz CUDA cores, against reference speeds of 732 and 1464 MHz, respectively. The WindForce3X cooler keeps the beast cool. It makes use of a dense aluminum fin array to which heat is conveyed by a number of copper heat pipes, and ventilated by three 80 mm fans. The blue Ultra Durable VGA PCB by gigabyte makes use of top-quality components and 2 oz copper layer board. Other specifications are standard: 480 CUDA cores, and 1280 MB of memory across a 320-bit GDDR5 memory interface. Gigabyte did not give out pricing information.

MSI:

Gigabyte:

www.customdesktops.moonfruit.com