My tax-bracket sort of dictates that I get something maybe < $150. Can I do this and still become a decent CGI artist? Also, if anyone can let me in on some of the higher quality cheap graphics cards, I would be very thankful.
Hi noodledude, Blender does not need a high end GPU to work fine.
You can get a GT 630 2 GB, found some on Ebay for 50€.
This card will fit all you need for Blender except render on the GPU.
For 150$ you can get a GTX 750Ti 4 GB.
With this card you can render on GPU for mid complex projects, this make sense when you have a low end CPU.
If you have a strong CPU, i7 for example, your CPU is faster than the GTX 750Ti.
With i5/i7 you can use the internal Intel iGPU, these work fine too.
I was working with the HD3000 from my i5 for quite some time without problems.
Cheers, mib
i have a gtx 560 ti that i bought for 80 usd to put in an old pc and it works like a total boss.
beware of fraud gpus, it has been known that people will try to sell you a crappy card with a custom bios tricking the system its a different card.
used gpus are also sold that have been viciously overclocked or may have heat damage leaving little life left.
evga has been known to have transferable warranty on select models.
Blender works great with my integrated Intel graphics on my surface. So, I’d say maybe you don’t even need a graphics card.
of course, I use Blender for modelling, texturing and animation. If you’re making CG movies in Blender, maybe a good GTX 1050 would be better and still only run you around $100.
I’ve recently used an HD6450 graphics card which trust me is low low low end, and yes it works for me absolutely fine at 2560x1440 in blender. Im not sure how many triangles in a scene in the viewport it would handle but it handled 500k ok, and you could easily hide objects you were not working on or move them to other layers, so yes absolutely as long as you are sorted for rendering or happy to render on the CPU then low end graphics is totally an option. Personally i did not notice a difference in speed going from an HD7970 card to an HD6450.