First post, by 386SX
Hello,
I'm testing and reinstalling an old "fast" daily machine based on a Core2 E8600 and 8GB DDR3, SSD SATAII, USB3.0 PCI-EX card on a G41 chipset and the fastest card I've got are the above ones. For a dual o.s. machine with Win 8.1 and Linux, which video card would you prefer? I've seen the ATi while much older still is much faster than the low end GT610 that on its positive side has WDDM 1.3 drivers instead of 1.1 of the old ATi card.
Are there any major downsides using older driver model on this o.s., maybe higher cpu usage? Not that I'd play many games on both cards anyway but I was wondering if it's better the lower power GT610 (not that low power anyway, its huge double slot heatsink become untouchable quite soon) or the higher demanding older ATi card that has 320 shader units and 128bit bus instead of the 48 units and 64bit for the same 1GB ram memory (DDR2 vs DDR3).
On both card I've restored the thermal paste and cleaned the ATi fan, a bit old maybe but still functional.
Thanks