If it was gaming, I'd lean towards the HD4650, because it is faster. If just basic usage, then whichever is more convenient. For example if the GT610 is passively cooled, then it's silent and low(er) maintenance because you don't have to dust off the fan once of twice a year, only replace the thermal paste every 3-4 years.

Thanks. In fact a was thiking the GT610 at the end is enough but the only thing I don't like is the driver package seem quite heavy. For now I'm testing the ATi and it's ok, quite fast and stable having changed the paste and cleaned the fan but I think it's a bit old and sometimes seems to make a bit of noise even after cleaning and restoring. Beside the card is fully working after a long session of some stressing bench like Unigine Valley demo. The GT610 downside beside the speed is the double slot heatsink blocking the PCI-EX1 bus. Not so important the USB3 controller anyway. On the driver side the installation package is double the ATi size one. Not that it might be a problem on this cpu but I was wondering if oriented to more modern configs.

The low-end Kepler and Fermi cards have vastly better drivers than an HD 4650. Support was only recently moved to legacy status and they have excellent Win10 WDDM 2.x support. I run some of these at work and in some home machines of coworkers. Core 2 and Phenom 2 machines. They seem very snappy for Chrome and office stuff.

But I have not used a GT 610. I have GT 620, GT 635 and a GT 640. Also a Radeon R7 240. I bought these used a few years back to get the machines off of their ancient integrated graphics. I think a GT 610 would be nicer than GMA 3000 or Radeon HD 3200. 😁

Radeon HD 3200 deserves special note. That's AMD 780G and the awful SB700 southbridge. After years of using a few of these and suffering mysterious video driver BSODs, moving to discrete graphics made the machines rock solid. As long as the SB700 also approves of the HDD/SSD you install. Heh.

swaaye wrote on 2022-03-04, 17:05:

The low-end Kepler and Fermi cards have vastly better drivers than an HD 4650. Support was only recently moved to legacy status and they have excellent Win10 WDDM 2.x support. I run some of these at work and in some home machines of coworkers. Core 2 and Phenom 2 machines. They seem very snappy for Chrome and office stuff.

But I have not used a GT 610. I have GT 620, GT 635 and a GT 640. Also a Radeon R7 240. I bought these used a few years back to get the machines off of their ancient integrated graphics. I think a GT 610 would be nicer than GMA 3000 or Radeon HD 3200. 😁

Radeon HD 3200 deserves special note. That's AMD 780G and the awful SB700 southbridge. After years of using a few of these and suffering mysterious video driver BSODs, moving to discrete graphics made the machines rock solid. As long as the SB700 also approves of the HDD/SSD you install. Heh.

The GT610 isn't bad but I found it slower than it could be compared to the amount of heat it produce. In fact without an external fan on the case side, a stressing bench like the one mentioned can pass the 100°C value and it's not a thermal contact problem, the 40nm GPU imho required an active fan even at this low end config (48 shader units and up to 810Mhz I think for the GPU). Of course is not like the ATi GPU was a cooler gpu, the active fan keep it from 40°C to 60°C at default 600Mhz GPU clock dynamically changing.
But on the positive side has drivers designed for W8.1 instead of the older model of the ATi one. I suppose this mean an higher cpu task for the GUI and the ATi card is indeed a much more used second hand card while the GT610 I bought it as mostly unused card.

My 610 don't have a lot of hours on it either, I tend to use it for setting up stuff, then find something better. In theory, a 610 is the card you want for an OEM box with no PCIe power, maybe needing low profile, and not having a lot of expansion room.... in practice, that stupidass, tall, passive cooler stops you from fitting it in many small boxes, and even if you find one that fits, it's tight and you worry about cooking it with restricted airflow and how damn hot it gets. Any box with ample room inside, means you've got ample room for something far better*. K620 is my new golden child for low pro, single slot, but previously I have relied on HD6450s, which are still great for Win7 boxes.

My HD 4670 was stout hearted and surprised me in that it gamed quite well on "everyday" monitor resolutions. But yeah, pulling it into the Win8/10/11 morass is cruel to it, it likes win7 though.

* edit: Tight boxes typically don't have spare drive connectors either which you can stick on a 6pin PCIe to molex adapter, while roomy boxes will either have a single 6pin or have enough molexes to spare.

Yeah I am not a fan of passive GPU coolers. They do tend to overheat if you push the GPU hard and don't provide at least some airflow to it. They take up extra space but they are often not big enough for the task.

It can also be trouble for board components that would be otherwise receiving airflow from a GPU fan.

Meanwhile I tested a bit both cards on the system and found that my monitor cable must be very cheap cause seems to take all the noise around with waves random noise the monitor is a cheap fullhd Samsung 22" VGA only 2013 model the only "modern" monitor I found cheap but anyway the GT610 seems a bit slower and at the plug meter more or less around 10W less than the HD 4650 values (for 55w at idle and around 95W during 3DMark05, the HD 4650 both 10watts more) I was thinking it demanded less power while temperature with a big slow fan on the case above it seems to stay below 70°C during tests.

Time to get yourself something like this maybe
https://www.ebay.com/itm/6ft-SVGA-VGA-Male-M- … 1-127632-2357-0

Though analog interference is tricky and that may do nothing.

Yes I think I'd need a better shielded cable. I remember the old Eizo LCD having vga cables that were very heavy and incredibly well built instead of the usual thin one. I suppose that if each wire would be double-shielded as happens with analog RGB game console cable the signal would be much better but even the single wires are expensive from what I remember from these 90's game consoles.