Hi all,
Never got around to getting a new video card in last 12months. But planning to try TW 3 (better play 1 and 2 beforehand eh as well?). I realise people will be saying get a 1050 TI or the like, but i am wondering are there any budget cards which will play at least TW series @ say 1440 res maximum? (my monitor is only 20inch and thats max display available). Im talking secondhand cards i could get on the cheap (cheap means < $100 for me) as well.... ..all the cards like GT 710.730 and Ati series all start to get confusing with the names and especially when comparing specs and performance....

cheers

I'm like you, currently looking to buy a budget GPU. People advise me to choose among these four : Gtx 1050, Gtx 1050 TI, amd radeon R460, and R470. Check prices of those four and pick one you want

Maybe a 2nd hand 750 if not 1050. the 50ys are the entry gaming cards from nVidia. The numbers below all suck to some degree.

edit: Even with a 750 do expect to not play TW3 with max details. It might work; the 750 is quite powerful considering its price & age; but from all I heard TW3 IS demanding. After all it is a AAA state of the art game.

thanks guys. im not picky about framerates.....only expect to game on medium @ 1440

I'm not sure what your budget is, but the 1050 will be able to run The Witcher 3 in 2560x1440 using probably mid to low details. The game is so beautiful that you want to run it at least using high details. Even the 1060 is slightly underpowered for that resolution/detail combo. So if I'd were you, I'd finish the first two games while saving money and buy at least an 1070.

I think his max resolution is not 2560x1440, but 1440x1024 or 1440x900.

It does indeed depend much on what budget means in that context ;-)

The cheapest solution still providing an acceptable gameplay experience would be a 2GB RX460 from MSI or Gigabyte
It's not the most cost effective though as a card based on a GTX 1050 offers 25/30% more power and costs 10/15%

If you go up one category, the situation is reversed. The MSI gaming 4GB 1050ti and the MSI 4GB RX470 are priced at the same level, but the 470 offers a serious boost in terms of performance against the Ti.

If you go down one category (cheap segment), you end up with a choice between a Geforce 740 and a Radeon R7 250. In that segment I'd ... add some bucks and get the Rx460, as the weakest polaris chip is much better ( as in 2x the perf ) than the R7 250. And the 740 trails the 250.

The "budget" and "1440" don't align well.

Anyways...

Open this list: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php
FInd a card that performs around 6000 or higher.

If you want newer generation, that would be noVideo 10xx series or Iam"D" 4xx series.
Likewise, pick no lesser than noVideo 7xx series or Iam"D" 7xxxx series.

Am I the only one who thinks the 1440 resolution meant the horizontal pixels, not the vertical ones?

Are there even any 20 inch monitor with such high resolution as 2560x1440?

7970 Ghz edition is selling currently for 80-100.

No. But 19.5 inch monitors with 1440x900 resolution do exist.

It can't really be done. Also, we'd need to know more about your system.

You can't really get a $100 card anymore. The cards that should be $100 just aren't anymore. Perhaps because of the technologies that a ride e making cheap cards now.

If I were you (and I basically am), I'd buy the cheapest x50Ti card I can get (I got the 650Ti around the time Thief came out) and then I played with her 1 and 2.

And then I bought an Xbox one and played witcher 3. It was the cheapest way to play it. And Witcher 3 has a great method for getting your choices plugged into it.

I tend to play games that a 650Ti can handle just fine,and the 1050 doesn't have enough power yet to make it worth an upgrade. So I'll keep what I have for a while.

All of that said, if you really want to on your PC , don't play at full resolution. Resolution will kill your frames faster than you can imagine. And you said you don't care about frames, but on a budget card, we're talking about going from 15 frames to 2. So, assuming you have a decent PC, I'd recommend the cheapest X50 or X50TI nVidia card you can find (or similar ATI card, but I can never figure out their naming convention and I always hear bad stories about ATI cards not working quite as smoothly, but recently I've heard just the opposite).. and then set the resolution to may e 720 vertical lines and put it on roughly medium. I've seen videos that were acceptable under such conditions. And it basically how the Xbox is set up.

You can sell your 650ti for like $ 40-50 and then add another $40-50 to get used 960 (if you are on nvidia side) which is equal to gtx 1050 ti, and delivers double performance.

Here is ebay code: 142304744993