P8Z68-V PRO Onboard video to Zotac GeForce GTX 450

[Lazybones]

So my current home PC has been around for a while and the whole time I have been using onboard video for Steam games and Mine-craft... After the latest updates I noticed that my mincraft framerate even with optifine was down to the 13-20fps range (with setting one low).

So last night I poped in a Zotac GeForce GTX 450 810MHZ 1GB 3.6GHZ GDDR5 For $60...

Minecraft now runs at stable 60fps (settings on high) with v-sync on (haven't tried with it off.

Nice to see such a big improvement for a fairly small investment.

[Thorin]

Yeah, turn off the v-sync, set it to unlimited, and see what that puppy can do!

Also, make sure you're running Java in 64-bit mode so that you can set the view distance to Far and not crash.

Also also, I'm not too well-versed on video cards, but a 450 is several years old and a middle-of-the-pack design, isn't it?

[Tom]

Optifine actually can make things worse with newer versions of minecraft. Many of the tweaks that optifine tries to make are already done, and potentially done better in minecraft itself.

My GT 640 is pretty swish with minecraft. max fps is like 400 at 1080p? pretty insane. pretty darn smooth. The only problem is I like to watch youtube when minecrafting, so I more often play mc on my laptop and use the tv (where the 640 is) for the youtubes.

[Lazybones]

Yeah, turn off the v-sync, set it to unlimited, and see what that puppy can do!

Also, make sure you're running Java in 64-bit mode so that you can set the view distance to Far and not crash.

Also also, I'm not too well-versed on video cards, but a 450 is several years old and a middle-of-the-pack design, isn't it?

Correct... I went from hobbled to middle of the road.. but it was cheap... Next step up is almost twice the price.

Ill turn v-sync off and see what happens, didn't have much time to play around with it last night.

[Thorin]

Heh, I'm still running Minecraft, successfully and pleasantly, on Core 2 Duos with 8400GS fanless video cards.  Optifine and tweaking the settings a bit has done wonders for me (especially switching most settings from Fancy to Fast).

[Tom]

That 450 should be pretty good though. I expect 120fps with decent settings.

[Lazybones]

With all details at on / fancy and mostly maxed I get between 60-100 FPS on plain 1.7.2 and with optifine I get 88-150fps (while flying)

Edit:

Frame-rate is fairly solid over 100 when walking and with long stretches of up around 200 if for example digging or walking around normally..

Might have to toss on a high res texture pack / resource pack.

[Thorin]

Well now, I'd say that's barely playable, wouldn't you?

I've found that Minecraft is playable at 30fps or higher, as long as the CPU isn't de-powered for some odd reason (like being on a power-saver battery plan).

[Lazybones]

I can maintain about 29-30 fps with the faithfull32 texture pack and MrMeep lite shader pack running
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1927168-152-17x-mrmeep-x3s-shaders-the-cats-shaderpack/

[Darren Dirt]

someone here a while back mentioned a PC parts site:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/

Interesting site, includes Canadian retailers and it is really easy to share your build if you want someone to take a look