DO NOT BUY A GeForce GT 610!

[Coolkids]

Just recently bought this card for $40 at a local Best Buy, I wasn't expecting much from it, I thought I could at least play more modern games at Medium or low, but I this GPU is TERRIBLE. Games run like total shit on it. It's a very good card for multimedia, like movies and HD video. but for gaming, It runs like complete and utter shit. Quake III Arena cant even run maxed! Minecraft runs at low at around 30FPS, Brutal Doom runs perfect.... AT 640X480!!!! If you are a gamer. stay away from this card, wait to get somthing better. This card is only just a step up from integrated graphics, If you are going to be using it for Videos and image rendering, then its a perfect card.

[chungy]

If you knew anything about nvidia's numbering, the x10 is always the shittiest possible GPU that can just barely manage desktop compositing. It's not meant for games. Look for at least x40 if you want the bare minimum for games.

[Coolkids]

This card would be considered mid-end in 2001!

[Edward850]

So you're telling me a toaster can't run Crysis?
The card even costs $50. How was that alone not a red flag that you're buying a basic, stripped down, off the shelf GPU?

[Jaxxoon R]

They still sell GT 610s at Best Buy?

[geo]

Have you played Arkham Knight on it?

[Jaxxoon R]

You mean people can play Arkham Knight?

[Lykanthrope]

Well no duh it runs like dogshit, the specs for this thing are like below even 2005-tier. I didn't even know they sold these cards anymore. Also, don't diss toooo hard on integrated graphics chips. The one in my ASUS G60 (because I'm way out of date and poor) actually runs just fine. Literally the only upgrade I needed to make to my system since buying this hunk of plastic and metal in 2009 was a better capacitor for intaking power, so that GPU and CPU intensive games didn't just shut it off out of nowhere anymore.

[Graf Zahl]

Even Intel's integrated chipsets are better than this POS by now.
Let's hope that this kind of crap cards dies out in the next few years...

As a general advice, anything below $100 is not worth buying these days anymore.

[Maes]

Well, I've been cut-off from the bleeding edge (pardon the pun) of GPUs, but this post prompted me to check the specs, thinking that this might be some old 6200 repackaged (anybody remember for how long they kept pushing, overclocking and re-packaging those, as if they were some kind of Godsend? I remember them being sold WAY after the 8x00 series O_o )


But no, it's nothing of the sorts. How terrible can something clocked at 800+ MHz, with 48 CUDA cores, and with PhysX and DirectX acceleration be, that it can't even run Quake 3? Are you sure it's not another kind of problem you're seeing here?

Unless of course you're trying to run a game meant for one of its bigger brethren, e.g. the GT 650. That one is literally at least 5 times more powerful on every possible specification, so crappiness is a relative term.

Even so, the GT610's specs would put class it as a mid-end GPU by 2004-2005 standards, comparable maybe with a Radeon 9600/X1050 or an nVidia 7400. I'm not sure how far you could push Quake 3 with those, but if you turned on all AA, max res etc. ofc you would have problems even back then, on what was already a 5 yo game.

[Bucket]

While shader effects and post-processing have gotten worlds better, Q3A is still high on the list of games that push the most polygons. Couple that with the idea that it's played best with triple-digit framerates, and it doesn't surprise me in the least that even modern low-end cards aren't up to the task.

[Edward850]

Graf Zahl said:

As a general advice, anything below $100 is not worth buying these days anymore.

Was it ever? Hardware acceleration has never been a cheap task.

[Woolie Wool]

Bucket said:

While shader effects and post-processing have gotten worlds better, Q3A is still high on the list of games that push the most polygons.

No, it isn't.

Couple that with the idea that it's played best with triple-digit framerates,

No, it isn't, the engine actually breaks in fundamental ways around 333 fps so it actually plays worse, and most consumer grade monitors max out at 60 fps.

and it doesn't surprise me in the least that even modern low-end cards aren't up to the task.

Are you serious? This is 1999 we're talking about, the days of Voodoo cards. The 610 is more Half-Life 2/Doom 3 era. And look closely, he didn't say it ran poorly, he said it didn't run at all, most likely crashing to desktop.

However, if our OP was dumb enough to buy a 610 he might be dumb enough to have forgotten to install his drivers, and OpenGL would not be available. RV-007, is that you?

[Coolkids]

Like I said guys, I wasn't expecting much from this card, I knew it was going to be a piece of shit. I just didn't know it would be THIS bad.

[Krispy]

Having gone to Best Buy to buy a graphics card before, this pretty much sums up my thoughts (skip to 1:10):

[FireFish]

That thing supports directx 11, has 48 cuda cores, 1gig DDR3 memory, Opengl 4.2, 3D vision.

Its a low end budget card which based upon the specifications should be able to run games up to (or around) 2008 (for the AAA stuff that is). and by all logic purely based upon the specifications of the card minecraft should run at playable speeds (lol).

[MFG38]

Honestly, though, who would buy a card as outdated as the GT 610 in this day and age anyway?

[Coopersville]

Didn't need a warning to not buy an x10 card, but thanks.

[Aliotroph?]

Wow! What a weirdly shitty GPU! The one I bought in 2007 (Radeon X1950 Pro) cost $269 then and runs circles around this thing. I had to go digging in some more detailed specs to find the difference. When they just list the number of CUDA cores and the various clock speeds it all looks good. Sneaky bastards.

How does it have trouble running Quake III, though? Q3 is ancient. It ran great on that shitty Radeon I had in my laptop in 2002. I can sort of see it choking on Minecraft. That game is surprisingly good at eating computing power.

[Buckshot]

...but all the cool kids buy them...

[illYay1337]

My laptop from 2009 has a 330M and it can run Starcraft 2 on ultra if I make sure it's all dedusted and it's a 1v1 or so. Otherwise medium runs great.

And it runs most games like counterstrike GO on Ultra. So I wouldn't go so far as to say you have to have x40 or above.

[Coolkids]

Update: Running Linux now due to some problems with Windows, and I got to say the GT610 runs "decent" under Linux, most games are actually playable.

[Maes]

Then just maybe, I say maybe, there was some issue with the Windows drivers for the GT610 and/or your Windows partition being full of malware/crapware?

[Coolkids]

Maes said:

Then just maybe, I say maybe, there was some issue with the Windows drivers for the GT610 and/or your Windows partition being full of malware/crapware?

You could be right, Windows hates me bad, and I hate it.

[SavageCorona]

Thanks for the warning

[VGA]

MFG38 said:

Honestly, though, who would buy a card as outdated as the GT 610 in this day and age anyway?

People with AMD processors.

[SYS]

SavageCorona said:

http://i.imgur.com/8ZdJswj.png

Thanks for the warning

Mines bigger than yours

[SavageCorona]

You've only got double the RAM friendo.

[FireFish]

lets laugh with people their standard use desktop pc by posting our machines their specifications... yaaay !

[Dragonsbrethren]

Yay, hardware circlejerk!

I'm running a 240 GT I picked up years ago. $80 equivalent to the 8800 GT, which was an awesome card, with better RAM and less power consumption.

It still consistently impresses me with how well it runs most games. I know I'm going to have to upgrade soon, but it handled the last generation of console ports just fine. Human Revolution is the only thing that gave it a bit of trouble -- I wish I could've run that game prettier.

Build smart, not expensive.