Old GTX Cards Still Have Life: Gaming and Video Encoding Options

Nvidia's GTX cards may have seen better days, but that doesn't mean they're useless. In fact, you can still get a lot of use out of an older card, especially when it comes to gaming and video encoding.

Before you start using your old GTX card, though, you need to know what you're working with. Nvidia used the GTX branding for many years, which means there's a wide range of performance levels between different models. Even within the same generation, cards can vary greatly in terms of their capabilities.

Taking my own experience into account, I've found that even an older card like the GTX 1060 can still play games at 60fps in 1080p without any issues. However, you may need to turn down your settings or use frame generation techniques to get the most out of it.

One of the most useful things about old GTX cards is their video engine. Starting with Kepler, Nvidia GPUs came equipped with NVENC, a dedicated hardware video encoder that can handle video encoding separately from the main CUDA cores. This makes them perfect for use in media servers, where you can take advantage of hardware-accelerated transcoding.