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

[AC199]

Originally Posted by Cardnim

I think it is bad advice to tell a 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.

Heh, having done tech support for my whole family and friends for the better part of 10 years, its easier in the long run, without having 12 conversations like this, so simply buy properly in the beginning, but everyone has to start somewhere...

Originally Posted by Cardnim

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 posted the question isnt familiar with putting a computer together from scratch.

With the greatest respect, Tab A in Slot B is all thats involved with building a modern day PC, no messing with bios, worrying about compatability etc, its the easiest its ever been. So long as you arent wearing nylon pants and licking 9v batteries, its very difficult to do anything wrong.

Originally Posted by Cardnim

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.

Built the EXACT same machine for my brother for his company not 3 months ago, and my brother is the ultimate technophobe. I dont think its overkill at all, its pretty much an entry level PC with some upgrade capability for in 2 years when they want to game harder... but I see your point.

Originally Posted by Cardnim

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.

I'd rather blend my head than use a budget PSU. As someone who used to game hardcore, the 3 parts of the PC you NEVER try to save money on are PSU, Motherboard and RAM. If you buy cheap, you'll buy more of them and wish you'd bought properly in the first place. Its just a fact of computing.

Originally Posted by Cardnim

Trying not to offend, just offering an opinion

Heh, you'll have to try harder than that to offend me fella, I just dont want someone to spend money in the wrong place.

Also, by the time you've bought a PSU that'll cope with a decent Graphics card, bought the decent card and fitted it, found out it wont fit in the case, bought the exhaust fans to cool the case etc, its almost 400 quid, you might as well have bought the new PC and had the faster processor and ram in it...

Its different sides of the same coin, both achieve the same goal.

AC

[Cardnim]

Fair points all of them.

Couple of questions though - genuine ones, not me trying to be a prick!

I am still struggling to see how buying a whole new computer and then building it and setting it up is better for the original poster of this question.
From the problem he described which he wants a solution to, surely an upgraded video card is perfectly adequate?

Secondly, I agree with you about budget parts for a hardcore, topend machine which is going to be pushing performance benchmarks; but again, I dont think this is what the original poster wanted.

You and Richard seem to be going down a tangent talking about hardcore gaming machines, the latest hardware to run BF3 with all the graphic options turned to max, and overclocking.
The original poster simply wants a bit of a better video performance from his machine.

ergo... I stick to my original recommendation:
Better graphics card and cheap PSU if he needs it.

However, (genuine question!) do you really believe its better to invest in the good PSU at this stage? (bearing in mind this guy may never build his own PC and therefore the fact that the PSU can go from machine to machine may be irrelevant).
If so, then I am maybe not being as good as I could be with my computer repair business and need to rethink.
Thanks for the advice and discussion.

[Richard Lowe]

I'd wouldn't really put a GTX260 level card and Core 2 Quad into the league of 'hardcore' gaming hardware these days, more like lower mid-range!

In my experience cheap PSU's are a bit of a lottery, they might be able to power what you plug them into but if anything does fail there's a 75% chance it will take everything else connected to it with it. Whereas the better PSU's just die quietly and leave everything else intact, you also get better warranties with branded PSU's

It's like risking driving round without a seatbelt on, you might arrive OK if everything goes fine, but have an accident and you're in trouble.

[Rich D]

Rich - whats the difference between DX10 and DX11 ?

I built myself a new machine about a year ago. Reasonable spec. Pre overclocked mainboard/cpu combo from overclockers.co.uk

GTX470 GPU, SSD for the OS, Intel i5 260 OC@4.01 ghz, 4 gig ram

Scores 7.4 on the windows 7 benchmark - the SSD is the bottleneck.

Says its DX10 though ?

I pretty much only play Counter Strike Source but theres a new version in the pipeline.

Cheers

[AC199]

Originally Posted by Cardnim

Fair points all of them.

Couple of questions though - genuine ones, not me trying to be a prick!

I am still struggling to see how buying a whole new computer and then building it and setting it up is better for the original poster of this question.
From the problem he described which he wants a solution to, surely an upgraded video card is perfectly adequate?

I'll answer this the same way I did for my other brother.

You buy the uprated graphics card, we'll say £100 quid for arguments sake, ideal card for HTPC that does some gaming.

That card generates more heat, so you have to put extra fans in, you want quiet, mainly because 120mm Deltas are noisy buggers, secondly because you want something thats not going to blow your elcheapo psu. Figure 3 fans, 120mm so a tenner each. £30 and thats ignoring the fact that you'd probably want to put a better cooler on the CPU as you're getting random reboots due to the extra heat in the system...

Your psu dies, not an occurance thats going out of the realms of possibility with a new gen card, so you put another cheap one in, £20.

You realise that the new game you've bought wont run with the amount of ram you have, or you realise that its chugging, buy new ram £60.

You then realise that you've got 4gb of very nice ram, but its just not running right or you arent seeing all of it, suddenly Windows 7 64bit looks nice, so you buy that £120 quid...

All of a sudden we're talking near as makes no difference £350 quid. Thats just to upgrade, and we're assuming that the cheapo PSU doesnt brown out, overheat or cause a ton of BSOD's due to the amps dropping below critical.

While the solution that you're giving is a viable solution if the graphics card being mentioned wasnt a power hungry SOB, eventually something will give and if its the psu and you end up with 240v going down the 12v rail (It happened to me, and its painful let me tell you) then kiss good bye to your CPU, Mobo, RAM, HDD's and graphics card. Not only at this point do you have to buy completely new internals, that nice shiny graphics card you put into the PC 1 month ago is an expensive ugly looking paperweight, and you have to buy another, no manufacturer is going to RMA something thats dead because of a cheap component.

Upgrading when the tech is new is the way to go, when the tech is old, is a complete false economy, the cascade of upgrades means you may as well have bought new at the start of this process.

Originally Posted by Cardnim

Secondly, I agree with you about budget parts for a hardcore, topend machine which is going to be pushing performance benchmarks; but again, I dont think this is what the original poster wanted.

You and Richard seem to be going down a tangent talking about hardcore gaming machines, the latest hardware to run BF3 with all the graphic options turned to max, and overclocking.
The original poster simply wants a bit of a better video performance from his machine.

ergo... I stick to my original recommendation:
Better graphics card and cheap PSU if he needs it.

Thats something for the original poster to think about, its his call what he spends his money on at the end of the day, all I'm trying to do is save him from doing what I've done in the past.

Originally Posted by Cardnim

However, (genuine question!) do you really believe its better to invest in the good PSU at this stage? (bearing in mind this guy may never build his own PC and therefore the fact that the PSU can go from machine to machine may be irrelevant).
If so, then I am maybe not being as good as I could be with my computer repair business and need to rethink.
Thanks for the advice and discussion.

Always, absolutley! The PSU is the only part of the PC which has a direct and potentially deadly effect on every single other component. Buying cheap is saving money where money should never be saved. If he was just wanting to replace his PSU, then go for it with elcheapo, its a like for like replacement. Given he wants more performance, then you have to ensure that the system is going to be able to give the power when its needed. The cheap PSU's may have 500watts rating, but if they were asked to provide 500watts for more than an hour, they would blow, thats the peak wattage quoted, my old Enermax 500w was a 700 peak psu, 500w was a sustained draw rating.

For the common home user who browses facehack and watches Youchoobe vids, cheapo is fine, as soon as performance heardware is put into the equation, it has to be a performance PSU or you are genuinely asking for trouble.

AC

[Richard Lowe]

Originally Posted by Rich D

whats the difference between DX10 and DX11 ?

Not a lot, I think it's more about making certain shaders more efficient so feature for feature 11 will run faster than 10 on the same hardware. You turn on stuff like tesselation that 11 supports and your performance drops down again depending on how much graphics horsepower you have.

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by Richard Lowe

Not a lot, I think it's more about making certain shaders more efficient so feature for feature 11 will run faster than 10 on the same hardware. You turn on stuff like tesselation that 11 supports and your performance drops down again depending on how much graphics horsepower you have.

Ok cheers, so as its not been downloaded via auto update can i assume that im best off sticking to DX10 for now ?

[Richard Lowe]

7 actually comes with DX11, any DX updates you get are just runtime updates. There's still lots of games now that don't support 11, I wouldn't worry about it too much

What exactly is telling you yours only supports 10?

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by Richard Lowe

7 actually comes with DX11, any DX updates you get are just runtime updates. There's still lots of games now that don't support 11, I wouldn't worry about it too much

What exactly is telling you yours only supports 10?

Hmm not sure now Rich as you can see DXDiag tells me its DX11 anyway having looked. Just noticed it when i did the windows 7 benchmark. What do you reckon ?

Sorry for the thread hijack Colin

To add my 2p, for something that most of us use daily, i think that money spent on a well specced pc is money well spent. I tend to spend as much as i can afford and build a mid high system every 4 years. Prices only seem to come down each time you do a new one anyway. This way, you always have a system thats fast and can run pretty much anything you wish to throw at it with speed. You`re not having to find the complete new purchase price anyway, as your second hand components are always worth something if they were mid/high end when you bought them.

Each to their own i guess. Provided you dont try to build the very best, you dont have to spend a fortune each time you build another system that will be fast for 4 or 5 years. I dont do it for a living like Rich, just dabbled since the days of the spektrum 16k

[Colinevan]

No problems Rich. Fire away pal!

Its more learning for me anyways.

Its good to see and read peoples advice and opinions.

[AC199]

@Rich D

Dude, you have a gorgeous PC, stunningly well specced, (i know, mine is literally identical) and yet for some godforsaken reason you're using 32 bit windoze? Sort it out! 32 bit windoze will only use 3.5gb ram....

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by AC199

@Rich D

Dude, you have a gorgeous PC, stunningly well specced, (i know, mine is literally identical) and yet for some godforsaken reason you're using 32 bit windoze? Sort it out! 32 bit windoze will only use 3.5gb ram....

Cheers mate

Had some peripherals at the time that i couldnt find 64bit drivers for ! They have since been removed so ill maybe think about that. Is it worth it for the sake of the extra 512MB do you think ?

[Colinevan]

Wow mine only goes upto 5.9 for most.

However graphics wise is a poor 3.4

Iv read about cheap windows 7 oem deals of £79 for 64gb however iv researched and found people selling dell windows cd's and the serial number of a destroyed machine.

I was told a while back that you could buy serial numbers that were supplied for the likes of graphics card/motherboard manufacturers and they were legal(ish),

Might be an option for you as well Rich. ALthough at the moment I cant seem to find any.

Col.

[AC199]

Yes, its not just the ram, the 64 bit instruction set makes a huge difference...

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by AC199

Yes, its not just the ram, the 64 bit instruction set makes a huge difference...

ok cheers, ill have a think about that. Just at the time i built this, 64 bit OS drivers were a pain so i didnt wish to have more aggro than i needed !

It seems pretty good all round really although the overclock isnt 100% stable. It does crash on rare occasions. If i use the std clockspeed BIOS settings in the memory it runs faultlessly.

[Richard Lowe]

Don't worry Rich mine says DX10 on that section too...



Ignore where it say's the CPU's at 3.3Ghz, Windows doesn't see the overclock for some reason. It'd be interesting to see what the actual numbers are as the 7 benchmark stops at 7.9


The memory limitations on 32bit Windows are 3.25Gb TOTAL addressable system memory (which includes stuff like your graphics card). So if you had a graphics card with 1Gb of VRAM that would be taken off the 3.25Gb total too, giving you a maximum RAM amount around 2.3Gb. Applications running on a 32bit OS can't see use more than 2Gb of RAM at once either, so no single program will use more than 2Gb.

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by Richard Lowe

Don't worry Rich mine says DX10 on that section too...



Ignore where it say's the CPU's at 3.3Ghz, Windows doesn't see the overclock for some reason. It'd be interesting to see what the actual numbers are as the 7 benchmark stops at 7.9


The memory limitations on 32bit Windows are 3.25Gb TOTAL addressable system memory (which includes stuff like your graphics card). So if you had a graphics card with 1Gb of VRAM that would be taken off the 3.25Gb total too, giving you a maximum RAM amount around 2.3Gb. Applications running on a 32bit OS can't see use more than 2Gb of RAM at once either, so no single program will use more than 2Gb.

Cheers Rich, that explains it then. Nice system ! Whilst we are geeking off about PC specs , what SSD are you using for your primary ? Mines a patriot which was one of the early ones, i heard good things about the Corsairs !

[Richard Lowe]

Originally Posted by Rich D

what SSD are you using for your primary ? Mines a patriot which was one of the early ones, i heard good things about the Corsairs !

Corsair Force Series 3 120Gb

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by Richard Lowe

Corsair Force Series 3 120Gb

That will explain that 7.9 then !

[cigbunt]

What games do you play?
Your current card is good enough for hd play back there's no point upgrading on the basis of your windows score. Unless your going Push you graphic it's fine!