Graphics cards !!! Need a cheap upgrade from 128mb Gforce 8300 gs
 

Id thought id ask on here as some peeps are very clued up on there pc's.:thumbsup:

My current setup is an advent core 2 quad 2.4 ghz
4 gb ram
Nvdia gforce 8300 gs 128 mb card. its still available on ebay and seems to be popular from some reason. Some sellers want £40 for it.:o

Now i mainly use this pc for looking at pics from my dslr, music itunes and a few games , but i have now started to watch dvd's or downloaded films on a large hd tv in the bedroom. So far it plays ok, however windows base scores are low (3.4 as opposed to 5.9's for most other performances )for graphics department so i guess its either upgrade or even replace machine as it runs vista 32 so doesn't maximize all the ram available.

Now i see graphics cards of around 1gb for a rather lowish £40. Im open to recommendations or even second hand bargains if anyone can advise of a prticular card or indeed ones to avoid ( maybe high gb speed but crap in other areas).

Any advice is greatly appreaciated.

Col.

Hi
IMO stick with nvidia something like this maybe :)
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...430oc-1gl.html

Do yourself a favour and upgrade to win 7, vista is a pig and terribly slow. Go to Win7 and you will find your computer is faster without changing anything else.

To be honest I was looking at having a dabble with windows 8 beta as I'm under the impression that if younusebthe beta version, when it's commercially available you can purchase it for a reasonable price . Something like £30

However with the sensible side, I decided to leave things ha ha.

In all honesty a new operating system and graphics card , your probably talking £150 . I bet the pc is probably worth £180 second hand value and it's more cost effective to buy a new machine. From memory my hd is only 380gb.

Or can I ask what would ou guys do.

Thanks. If people think its worth spending, I'll prob go for that or a second hand card equivalent .

Hi Colin,

Good question about the upgrade mate, and I would very much add my recommendation to go ahead and do it.
Your computer spec seems average, with a decent enough processor and a nice chunk of RAM. That 128Mb video card certainly isnt up to the rest of the spec you mention.

I would also recommend something like that Gigbyte nVidia video card which Dombrasky linked to in his post.
I run a similar machine to you; and I run it as a Media Server and currently have an nVidia 9800 GT (1Gb) in it. An older card by todays standards, but cheap to pick up and really great performance AND reliability (a key point worth considering for any video card)

The Windows Vista issue I would only worry about if you feel that the Operating System is unreliable, crashing often or you need software which only works on WIndows 7.
Dont go Windows 8 chum - or any BETA route for that matter - can be a nightmare if you dont know what you are doing, and / or you dont like spending hours tweaking and rolling back driver installs and setup features. yuk. :)

Hope it helps mate. :thumbsup:

Wow thanks for some good advice so far guys.

Im amazed you can understand my typing as well, as on the ipad oople is extremely laggy and auto corrects and errr anyways ill get my coat ha ha.

Right , hmm seems a card is the way forward, and then possibly for the future an additional hard drive.

Win7 is faster than Vista and I would strongly recommend upgrading. You will need to perform a fresh install to feel the full benefit, which you may think is too much hassle but it would be worth it :thumbsup:

Look at second hand stuff on eBay, you'll be able to get yourself a GTX260 or 280 for almost nothing now which will be a MASSIVE leap up from what you have now - an 8300GS is pretty much the same as the Intel integrated graphics :lol:

You should have a nice balanced PC then even with your (I assume) Q6600, you should be able to get 3Ghz out of it pretty easy with a bit of tweaking although be prepared for some monster heat output if you go much past that!

Spec wise how does that second hand card compare with the other recommended card. Am i reading it correct that they are both 1GB.

And is it too much hassle to overclock? Or do i risk melting everything ha ha. Any info links that i can read up on, i wouldn't know where to start.:blush:

Have a look at the HWCompare website...

http://www.hwcompare.com/1805/geforc...force-gtx-260/

You can change the two cards to compare at the top of the page, 8300GS vs a 260 is quite funny... ~1700% potential average performance increase :lol:

http://www.hwcompare.com/1825/geforc...force-gtx-260/


Unless you go much higher up in graphics cards you won't really notice any difference in games by overclocking that CPU as you'll still be limited by the card. You'd get more benefit from moving to Windows 7, although it's probably not worth the hassle/expense if everything's working fine as it is. Just pop a better graphics card in there and make sure your power supply can handle it :)

260's can be had on ebay for £50-£60
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GTX-260-Zo...item3a6f892345

Lmao. hmm a slight increase i see, like going from a silver can 540 to a 3.5r then methinks.

When i compared the new card recommended

http://www.hwcompare.com/7050/geforc...force-gtx-260/

compared to the gtx260, it also trumps that as well, see even though they are both 1gb, miles apart hmmm.

How would i find out if my power supply has enough juice or would it be the motherboard. Sorry for all the questions.

Thanks for you time.:thumbsup:

Upgrading the graphics to something that's even midrange nowadays, something like a 260GTX or a 4890 would in all likelyhood kill your current PSU. While I appreciate that there are other people with opinions, you need to look at the system as a whole before deciding what to do. If your PSU is the one that came with your case, forget about it, you might as well bin the PC and start again. If its an elcheapo no name brand like Qtec or Trust, again, bin the pc and start again.

This is the main issue with Advent PC's is they are always built to a price point, and that price point requires certain corners are cut. Unfortunatley for you, it does mean that when something dies, unless you can replace with a like for like, you will almost always end up stressing another component to the point of failure, and thus begins the cascade which will end up with you going and buying a new PC.

Ultimatley, if you're planning on moving to a HTPC type setup, you really are best of spending the cash to build a proper unit, they arent that expensive, mine cost me 400 quid all in, nothing spoils a movie more than having a fan whining while you're watching a film.

Grab a cheap i3, mATX board, Corsair PSU, 4gb RAM, copy of windows 7 home premium (OEM) and a cheap silverstone case, whack your current HDD's in and jobs a good un. Nothing bad to happen wondering if your current rig will blow with an uprated card in, and nice and quiet.

AC

Rubbish. :thumbdown::thumbdown::thumbdown::thumbdown:

Upgrading your graphics card causes your CPU to implode or melt or something?
Rubbish. :thumbdown::thumbdown::thumbdown::thumbdown:

At worst, it will move the bottleneck of performance from the graphics card to the CPU, but it wont wreck it.

Fair point that the Power Supply Unit may not be up to the task, but even if it isnt, this can be replaced for about £13 for a decent one.
Compared with how much.... £400 for a decent PC?!?!?

Sorry, but in my experience (and I repair PCs as part of my job) that just isnt what I would do at all.

Top expense = £50 vid card + £13 PSU (if needed). Job done.

Questions are good mate - and as you can see has sparked some debate. :thumbsup:

The power supply (PSU) rating is easy enough to find out hopefully.
You need to pop open the side panel on your computer, locate the PSU (its what the plug goes into!:woot:) and on the side of it usually on a sticker it will say what wattage it is. 200W, 350W, 600 etc etc.

If its an older machine (i.e. > 5 years) then its probably at the lower end of the scale of say 200-300; and might need replaced.
But it also depends on what other peripherals you have in the computer - floppy disk, CD drive, DVD drive, hard disks (HDD) expansion cards (for sound, firewire, usb, etc)

Great links Richard - Cant believe the ratings for my 9800 GT against the GTX 260. I knew the GTX would be better, but it is a pretty sizeable boost in many areas... then again, at nearly twice the wattage, I would expect good things! :)

I do apologise, clearly I've hit a bit of a nerve, obviously you know best.

If however, you think 12 quid for a PSU will get one that'll support a 260GTX without detonating the motherboard mosfets and most likely taking the CPU, RAM and PSU with it, then I'd say its you speaking rubbish.

Just for future reference, http://www.scan.co.uk/products/600w-...-quiet-fan-atx is a decent PSU, thats the one I'd use for a 260GTX due to having separate rails for the 12v line, so that the graphics cards 2 PCI-E connectors dont suck it dry... As you can see, its a lot more than 12 quid...

I've been building, overclocking, benchmarking and gaming for 15 years bud, while you may have an opinion, it doesnt mean that yours is correct, or that mine is for that reason, but bad advice is the leading source of problems in the world, and replacing low end components with, for want of a better word, shit components, is only going to cause more issues in the long run.

AC

I'm not sure I'd trust my PC to a £13 PSU :woot:

For a Q6600 with a decent graphics card just look for something >500w made by a manufacturer you've heard of, as a general rule Antec don't make bad stuff so anything by them will be good :) The Q6600 is a power thirsty chip even at stock, I used to struggle to keep mine (@3Ghz) at sensible temperates without being too intusive noise-wise, yet the same cooler handles my i5 2500k @ 4.8Ghz no problems.
A good PSU is an investment as you can carry it over from machine to machine, they do loose their maximum output as the components age but that's why you buy a decent one in the first place, 500 Antec watts are more than 500 cheapo PSU watts...

I suggested the 260 as I had one which lasted me about 3 years playing the latest stuff, I only made the jump to a 580 so I could run BF3 with all the shiny on :p

A GTX460 1Gb is about the biggest bargain around right now, a little more oomph than the 260 and they are around the £100 mark brand new, less heat/power and DX11 capable too.

Well said, Mr Lowe.

Ultimatley, its Amps, not volts that decide whats right for your system, named and known brands tend to have more amps due to being built better with better components.

@AC199 - Fair enough mate, I didnt mean to get on my high horse, but I would agree with what you said...

and I think it is bad advice to tella guy to sell his whole computer, buy a new build it yourself machine and new OS, when all he asked was to watch streaming content better.
Building computers from scratch is a bit of a task with many pitfalls to avoid. You and I both know how to do it as we have been doing it for so long (and only 15 years? try 25 here!) but perhaps the guy who psoted the question isnt familiar with putting a computer together from scratch.

But look, I apologise if I came across strong - just I see this on forums all the time, that people in the know with computers recommend awesome things (and what you recommended is a great machine) but perhaps overkill for the average punter.

PSU - At that price I could buy four of my EvoLabs ATX 650W. I would rather have 1 perfectly adequate one in the machine and 3 spares (or better yet, my cash in my wallet) than invest more for just a media server machine.... but again, just my opinion.

Trying not to offend, just offering an opinion :thumbsup: