Building a new HTPC for the father in law to replace his aging Atom machine. On a bit of a tight budget but we got all the components picked out for this build now we just need to decide on the GPU. He's mostly going to be using it for Kodi to steam online and to use his USB DVB-S TV tuner card to use on his satellite dish for live TV, he will be doing a bit of gaming but mostly older games on GOG and Retroarch but he does want to play a few newer games like The Witcher 3, GTA V and Fallout 4. He doesn't mind playing them at 720p at 30FPS since he's never been fussy about graphics plus it'll save him a few pennies too which is a good thing to since the case we have for it only has 1 half high PCI-E slot. We're using a my old Silverstone ML05 from my HTPC before I upgraded it to mATX. He loves the size of it and it's what provoked him to upgrade in the first place so now we have two options and they both cost £70 on Amazon and both use 2GB of GDDR3 memory, a R7 250 or a GT 740, both are single slot and low profile. Been looking around online to find a fair comparison or benchmarks but can't find any threads with it either being wrong versions or a GT 740 vs a R7 250x. So does anyone here actually know which is better? even if it's minor since there the exact same price, thanks.
BTW the components picked out for the build is a Athlon 5370 plus a Artic Alpine M1 Cooler, a ASUS AM1I-A and 1 stick of Crucial Balistix Sport 8GB 1600MHz CL9 RAM I'll be providing the a 300W Silverstone SFX PSU from my old HTPC and he'll be taking his 64GB SSD and 1TB 2.5" HDD out of his old HTPC
Neither of those cards will fit in the budget or in the case, also the minimum system requirements for The Wticher 3 and Fallout 4 are fairly exaggerated since there are plenty of youtube videos showing that both these cards are capable of running those games at constant 30FPS at 720p at low and medium settings
kind of missing the point for this upgrade, the HTPC's main function is to stream 1080p movies and watch live TV, gaming is just the secondary feature that he could go without if he has to as long as he can still play his emulators, the upgrade makes sense since his almost 10 year old single threaded atom machine is nowhere capable of streaming at 1080p hence why get the upgrade to begin with
Looking into APUs at the moment, only problem is that ITX FM2 motherboards have become a bit rare where I am for whatever reason, Amazon have a couple but the lower end ones they won't ship to Ireland and the ones they are the high end ones that put us back out of budget unfortunately, still trying to track down a board from another e-retailers so it might still be a possibility
Asus Gtx750-phoc-1gd5 (GTX 750, single slot expansion bracket, dual slot cooler) Reference model 750 and 750Ti's, if accessible still are probably the best performers that are single slot, that I know of anyways.
Old Quadro cards could be another option; but typically their driver support is meh when it comes to home theater purposes.
There reference model 650Ti is also single slot, your best bet in these cases of finding "reference" model cards is to actually get the OEM versions such as the Dell Alienware 750Ti
Size is a factor tho since it will be going into a TV cabinet with there not being much room around the TV and the case I have will fit, the only cheap ITX cases that we could find on Amazon are cube cases which are too tall to fit, I did try to get him to increase the budget so we could get something like a Node 202 so he won't have to settle for less but he's that tight that it's just not going to happen, the ideal card in the case would be a 750 Ti since my 300W SFX PSU will have no problem powering it but since he won't spend anything on the case it's not going to happen =/
If you're looking for a low-end GPU that can do what you want whilst being low-profile enough to fit in that case, you're going to be waiting a while. Currently there aren't many single-slot low profile cards that can manage that all that well. When HBM is mainstream and cards can just consist of a power phase and a GPU on a tiny-narrow PCB, that's when you'll be able to reasonably do what you want.
I'd get a cheap microATX case, even used, just for the sake of having full-height brackets. Even a trash Dell case would work. That silverstone case just limits your options to hell and back.
First thing I tried to look for actually believe it or not XD But living in Ireland we're very limited to what's available to us, Amazon don' have it at all, some Irish retailers have it but Irish retailers are always overpriced hence why we buy from the UK or Germany from places that will ship to here
That throws a wrench into the equation for sure. There's the silverstone raven RVZ02 also that is basically the same dimensional spec as the Node 202, but a bit cheaper. It fits full size cards but you'll be limited to 2.5in drives pretty much, the node202 is overall a better case.
Ok, if the 460 is not an option, then just don't buy a card. A 5370 will do 1080p streaming and maybe some gaming. Any card you can buy for that form factor won't get you much further.
Yup, for some insane reason a GTX 750 (non Ti) will cost you close to €150 here where as I could get one from Amazon for less than €100. I just recommend the the the ML08 to him which is the same as a RVZ02 but costs only £70 but he got frustrated with me saying he doesn't want to spend anything on the case so there's just no convincing the old fool