Help me pick a video card so my son can play Minecraft

October 23, 2022 11:03 AM

You all kindly helped me wrap my head around getting Minecraft for my kid. Now help me pick a video card!

For those who looked at the previous question:

• We tried out the old Macbook but couldn't ever get the Minecraft launcher to work, even for the demo. I got a little progress bar that got to about 90% and then it would die and pop up a long Java stack trace. I am a software engineer and I am practiced at googling the error message, but wasn't able to find something that worked. So it appears the Macbook is a no-go.
• The old Lenovo is just a bit too old. I could get the demo running but it was too choppy to be fun.

So the conclusion is that I am going to donate my current work computer to the cause and build a new one for myself. The computer is mostly fine in terms of CPU (i5-6500) and has plenty of RAM (32 GB) but I would like to add a discrete GPU. Here's where you come in.

I am pretty experienced in building PCs for work, but as I'm not a gamer, I've never needed or purchased a discrete GPU. I am lost when it comes to parsing the specs. Here's the relevant info:

• Requirements: for Bedrock Edition, the recommended graphics cards are: NVIDIA GeForce 940M or AMD Radeon HD 8570D.
• For Java Edition, the recommended graphics cards are: GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series.
• I don't even know how the recommended specs compare for the two editions, but I'd like to be able to play either Bedrock or Java Edition smoothly, so I guess that means I want a card that will satisfy the higher recommended specs, whichever that is.
• The motherboard for the computer is an ASRock H170M Pro 4, which has a PCIE 3.0 x16 slot.
• The case can accommodate a card up to 325mm/12.8" long.
• The PSU is 550W, which I think should be plenty to support the kind of card we'll need.

Would truly appreciate links to specific models. Bonus points for availability in Canada, but I'm close to the border and can pick something up in the US if necessary. Budget is somewhat flexible but the cheaper the better.

posted by number9dream to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Assuming you'll be pushing to a standard 1920 x 1080 hd display... ?

Accepting software-engineer parent setting up a rig for Minecraft will inevitably lead kid into at least some future degree of PC-gaming as a cool hobby... ?

I would look at an NVIDIA 1660 super or 1660ti, which come in a bit under €300 in my neck of the woods.

They're a refresh of mid-range 3-4 generation old cards, from the last generation before the latest marketing-says-you-must-have tech (ray tracing, AI-based super-sampling) was released.

With one of these in your old work machine you'll get a great Minecraft experience, and it should also serve really well for a very wide range of other games, barring the shiniest AAA stuff, right up to games released this year and beyond.

If you want to get the price significantly down from that I would look into second-hand NVIDIA 1060 / 1070 / 1660 cards rather than dropping down to either unused older / slower models, or second-hand newer / faster models.

At this age / performance point the commonly discussed case of stock being sold on after use in crypto farms is unlikely to be an issue.
posted by protorp at 12:07 PM on October 23, 2022

Don't look too much into the specs you've listed above - all the graphics cards you listed are long discontinued, and well below most "low end" gaming cards. For example the GeForce 700 series was released in 2013 - the slightly newer 940M was released in 2015. Minecraft is not a demanding game.

The worst graphics card that NVIDIA still makes for gaming, a GT 1660 (released in 2019), will be more than sufficient and will be able to play modern games reasonably (at a lower level of detail).
posted by meowzilla at 12:17 PM on October 23, 2022

Honestly, for Minecraft practically any card will do. But it would be best to do as the others suggest, get something currently for sale like the 1660 or this RX 580. That way it'll continue to get driver updates and not suffer weird bugs later on. Get a 6- or 8-gigabyte card made in the last few years by a reputable maker, $100-$150, and you'll be fine!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:51 PM on October 23, 2022

Response by poster: Oh yeah, forgot to mention the monitor: what we have lying around is a Dell Ultrasharp 1920 × 1200. I believe the model number is U2415. It's a few years old and not meant for gaming, but that's what we have at the moment.
posted by number9dream at 1:15 PM on October 23, 2022

As others have mentioned, almost any GPU will work.

But looking ahead, the minimum requirements for the Ray Tracing engine in Minecraft is an NVIDIA RTX 20 series or a Radeon RX 6000.

So if the budget allows and to future proof it a bit, the RTX 3050 has the lowest cost right now at about $300 (USD). See https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GeForce-RTX-3050-8G/dp/B09QB28Y5M/ for an example. (An older RXT 2060 typically costs more).

Note that the motherboard you listed has the older PCI 3.0 slots. You can put a PCI 4.0 GPU in there, but it will just run at the slower speeds. But this should be fine for what you want to do.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 1:31 PM on October 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm not at all an expert here, but if you can do used cards, it looks like there's a lot of value in used RTX 2060 cards on eBay.
posted by wotsac at 2:14 PM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

One concern about used is that, given the recent changes in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, a lot of folks are offloading cards that were previously used for mining and may have been run much harder than a used card of comparable age that only got used for gaming. I'd avoid ebay cards at this point, personally.
posted by Alterscape at 2:33 PM on October 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

The concern about “rough used” ex-crypto equipment has not really borne out afaik. All used components have risks, but used gpus aren’t meaningfully degraded in performance. Given your extremely minimal requirements, that might be a good option.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 7:30 PM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

To check for any compatibility issues, you can enter your motherboard, CPU, RAM, power supply & proposed video card into pcpartpicker.

One place to find ideas for decent-value-for-money video cards is videocardbenchmark's gpu value list
posted by are-coral-made at 1:39 AM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

An aside on ray tracing GPU system requirements: this is only for Minecraft Bedrock (not Java), and is only for getting an enhanced graphical experience in some worlds; it will work without it, just with the graphical quality you're likely used to seeing. I seriously doubt that this will change into a full-on system requirement any time soon; MS/Mojang values Minecraft's reach too much to do so.

If you are mostly interested in Java Minecraft, there are mods like OptiFine that can take advantage of higher-powered GPUs for improved graphics and don't require a ray tracing-capable card.
posted by Aleyn at 1:26 PM on October 24, 2022