Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent Video Card for a Low Price!
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2014
Pros:
- Space saving design (freed up a lot of space in my ATX Mid-Tower case compared to the old card that was twice as long)
- Powerful, energy efficient GPU using only 60 Watts directly from the PCI-E Bus (no need for extra power cables)
- Stays cool and fan runs quiet
- 2GB of GDDR5 RAM
- Supports Max Digital resolution 4K x 2K for UHD TV's/Monitors
- This model is overclocked from factory
- Excellent Bang for the Buck, Only paid $139 on Amazon
Cons:
The only problem I ran into with this Video Card, on Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, was actually caused by a 64-bit Shell Extension installed with the NVIDIA Drivers/Software. This was causing Explorer to crash when right-clicking on any Drive/Resource in the left pane to display the context menu. Explorer would close and the Desktop would be re-displayed. Event Viewer showed the faulting module in Explorer was SHELL32.dll, but did not give any other useful information.
After many hours of research on Google I found a utility called ShellExView (x64) that shows all 32-bit & 64-bit Shell Extensions installed. NVIDIA installed 2 64-bit Shell Extensions called DesktopContext Class and NVIDIA CPL Context Menu Extension. In this utility I disabled the NVIDIA CPL Context Menu Extension and this fixed the problem with Explorer crashing when right-clicking on resources in the left pane. As far as I can tell, the only thing this extension does is give a shortcut to the NVIDIA Control Panel when right-clicking on the Desktop. I don't need that since there are other ways to launch the Control Panel. I contacted EVGA about this problem on Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, and they sent the information to NVIDIA. Hopefully they will figure out the problem and fix it in the next release.
Comments:
I'm not a gamer so I can't comment on any experiences with hard-core PC games. I bought this to replace an older AMD Radeon HD 5830 PCI-E 2.0 card that was going bad in my Home Media Server (HMS) that consists of the following:
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
Motherboard: ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 Socket AM3+
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Quad-Core 3.4Ghz
RAM: Patriot Viper Extreme 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 PC2000 SDRAM
PSU: Antec True Power 650W Continuous ATX 12V 80 Plus Bronze rating
OS Drive: Adata XPG SX910 256GB SSD Sata 6Gbs
Storage Spaces Parity Array: 3 x WD Red NAS HD 2TB Sata 6Gbs
This is the only PCI-E device in my PC. This video card still takes up 2 bays, but is only about half the length of my old card. This freed up space and improves air flow in my ATX Mid-Tower case. I have the DisplayPort connected by DisplayPort/HDMI cable to a 19" LED/LCD monitor's HDMI port. I connected the HDMI Port to my Yamaha Home Theater Receiver by HDMI cable to display on my Sharp Quattron 65" LED/LCD TV. I don't use this to Extend my desktop since I'm not gaming. Instead I change it to display on the TV when I want to watch a Movie or Play my iTunes library stored on my HMS.
I'm using all the default settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel, but had to adjust the Scaling a little when displaying on my TV. The picture quality on the Monitor and TV is excellent. Configuring Surround Sound on the HDMI cable to my Yamaha HTR was easy and sounds great.
This was an excellent buy for $139 and will future proof my video needs for the next few years. I would definitely recommend this card to anyone who wants a powerful, energy efficient video card for under $150. I will update this review if I run into any future issue, but for now everything is working fine.
Update 9/19/14:
With my older AMD Radeon card Extending the Displays never worked properly, but I decided to play around with extending them with this new card and everything worked fine. My main Desktop was on my small monitor and it extended to the TV with the correct settings. Dragging iTunes, Video Player, or any other app to the TV and going full screen was very easy. Even the Video (Win 8 container app) worked fine.
Another reviewer said this video card would not work on older Motherboards that support only BIOS and not the new UEFI. I suspect that was a problem with their specific Motherboard. My ASUS Motherboard is 3.5 years old, uses the older BIOS, and it had no problem using this PCI-E 3.0 card in my PCI-E 2.0 port. If your a gamer you would want to put this in a Motherboard with a PCI-E 3.0 port to get the best performance.
The only other issue I've found so far, other than what I listed in Cons above, is that the NVIDIA GeForce Experience icon in the System Tray stops working after I turn off the monitor or let it go into power saving mode. When I bring the display back, then I can't use the icon to access the options. Not a big deal for me since there are other ways to launch the GeForce Experience and Control Panel utilities.
Update 9/27/14:
In order to get a real test of video quality and performance, I downloaded the Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark utility. This does not allow you to play the game, but plays some very graphics intense clips from the game. At the end it gives a Benchmark Score to show how well the video card performed. I'm running this connected to my 65" LED TV by HDMI port. In the utility I set the Graphics Settings & Display Settings to the max for 1080P. Running this utility 3 times gave Very High Benchmark Scores from 6642 to 6696. I used the EVGA PrecisionX 16 utility to monitor the Video Card while the Benchmark was running. The GPU never got above 50C/122F, the GPU Clock never went above 1305Mhz, & the Fan Speed never went above 50%. The video quality on my TV was super crisp, clear, & smooth without lag. I'm just wondering how much better this would have performed if my motherboard had a PCI-E 3.0 port instead of its older PCI-E 2.0 port. I've only had this card for 2 weeks, but overall I'm very impressed with quality, performance, & price.
