PCIe-x16 graphic card - any recommendations?

[papercoffee]

So ...I thought "well it's time to clean the old rig" ...the PC is getting noisy.
I opened it up and ...I was surprised about the stuff I did see...
I didn't know that I had a SATA HDD ...and I didn't know that I have a PCIe-x16 graphic card slot .
My current graphic chip is on-board. And this kind of sucks.

Soooo ...Any recommendations?
I search a cheap but great graphic card ...not the newest fancy stuff (I don't have the monitor for this) but something resilient.

[Feralidragon]

It depends a lot on your system specs as well. You can buy the best graphic card in the market, but never get as much performance due to the rest of the system bottlenecking it (namely CPU, the bus connecting to the GPU, RAM).
What are your system specs (CPU, RAM, board, operating system, etc)?

And yeah, a dedicated graphic card is always better than an integrated one.

[papercoffee]

XP service pack 2
Aaaand....

specks.jpg (3.82 KiB) Viewed 3607 times

[memsys]

What is the most GPU demanding program you use?
Also is it worth upgrading your current pc? Perhaps cheap new PC might be a better idea (even more so because your current PC is quite old, also keep in mind that new computers are much cheaper then years ago).
How skilled are you when it comes to building computers?

If you really, REALLY just want to put in a cheap GPU to upgrade your system I think this one would do LINK

[papercoffee]

Mostly for games and Photoshop and 3D modeling. I want to use Sculptris.

Ah a passively cooled MSI card. Ok sounds interesting so far.

[Carbon]

For the money, the AMD Radeon R7 265 is apparently the card to get. Inexpensive and quite fast.

[Dr.Flay]

Note: Currently I am using 2 ATI cards.

Step 1. when choosing a new GFX card that everybody over-looks.
Check to see if the chipset on your MoBo is known to not like certain cards.
REMEMBER ! Your GFX card talks to everything else via your MoBo chipset.

I have problems using my ATI card on my nForce MoBo, in my XP box
Know up-front if there are cards you should avoid.

Things to bare in mind
If Pysx game support is an issue for you, you should also make sure any ATI card you get is not a problem.

If multi-screen support is wanted I would recommend nVidia, as ATI have removed overlay mirroring from the new drivers, and nVidia have better multi-screen or desktop support, also via useful right-click options or grab-bar icons.

The extra nVidia system tools addon, adds much more configuration an info than available in ATI Catalyst.
The nVidia drivers and extra system tools have a smaller RAM foot-print than Catalyst.
ATI drivers do not use the GFX RAM for OpenGL.

nVidia drivers offer HW accelerated windows, so if you use window based software, enabling it will speed up you productivity.

Does it look like I am biased towards nVidia ?
Well yes I am. Going over to ATI has lost me a lot of the functionality I need, and eats a stupid amount of RAM.
Catalyst was not coded or programmed. It is thrown together by copy and paste monkeys.

[memsys]

For the money, the AMD Radeon R7 265 is apparently the card to get. Inexpensive and quite fast.

That may be true but the card is so new that it's hard to get(and a good bit more expensive), besides that card would run circles around the rest of papers PC (I would take a guess it is from 2005-2006)

Step 1. when choosing a new GFX card that everybody over-looks.
Check to see if the chipset on your MoBo is known to not like certain cards.
REMEMBER ! Your GFX card talks to everything else via your MoBo chipset.

Checking for compatibility is ALWAYS a smart thing to do!

[papercoffee]

(I would take a guess it is from 2005-2006)

Early 2007 ...but yes the machine itself must be from 2006

Step 1. when choosing a new GFX card that everybody over-looks.
Check to see if the chipset on your MoBo is known to not like certain cards.
REMEMBER ! Your GFX card talks to everything else via your MoBo chipset.

Edit---------
Ok... I did find something over the ID.
http://www.configurarequipos.com/foro-a ... audio.html

Aaaand this is it.
http://www.pcchips.com.tw/PCCWebSite/Pr ... 46&LanID=0

Edit----------2
Couldn't find any compatibility-problems discussion on google... can someone point me to the right direction?
I don't really know what I'm searching for.

[memsys]

On the PC CHIPS site under the specifications tab you can see the chipset is a NVIDIA MCP61P, a quick google reveals that it as an nForece 410 or 430 chipset with an integrated gefore 6100 gpu.

As Flay mentioned problems with AMD/ATI cards on nForce boards I would say going for an Nvidia card would be a safer bet.

That said I have heard bad things about PC CHIPS boards and motherboards with onboard GPUs generally are not all that good (from my experience often cheap OEM machines that are rather limited when it comes to upgrading and of various build quality ranging from utter crap to decent [I bet I make this sound like I am an elitist doucebag or something -.-;])

Could you tell us what brand of power suply you have and the wattage? Or perhaps make a picture of the label on the thing?

[papercoffee]

Could you tell us what brand of power suply you have and the wattage? Or perhaps make a picture of the label on the thing?

I hope I can read it ... I have to turn the machine upside down.

[Carbon]

For the money, the AMD Radeon R7 265 is apparently the card to get. Inexpensive and quite fast.

That may be true but the card is so new that it's hard to get(and a good bit more expensive), besides that card would run circles around the rest of papers PC (I would take a guess it is from 2005-2006)

Exactly. Check the reviews; most say that this is the card that exponentially increases performance on older systems without making a new PSU a necessity as it has no extra power connection needs. The card would do very well inside papers machine. If you are an Nvidia person, the the 680Ti is a very similar card in price - but does get fairly well stomped by the ATI card in performance.

As for the ATI vs. Nvidia, I just got a 280x (before the bitcoin-induced price hike) and there is nothing that can touch it for the money. PhysX isn't all that. Certainly not the deciding factor when choosing one card over another for.

[Dr.Flay]

Having an nVidia nForce chipset, I would highly recommend against using an ATI, no matter how well it works on someone else's PCs.
I wouldn't recommend that head-ache to anyone.
You have to have nVidia and ATI drivers both installed, and they are not friends.

The combination of the nForce and nVidia graphics, will allow to to configure them properly via the nVidia driver.

BTW. that Everest software you used, was last updated in 2005. Use something newer and fully free;
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/pc-wizard.html (ignore the links in the page header)

Once you are sure that is the support page for your MoBo, I would advise using the BIOS update as if fixes an issue with the C1 power function in CPUs.

I think you have an nForce 4 chipset, so I think this should be your current MoBo driver.
http://www.nvidia.de/download/driverRes ... px/9769/de
This installer will add the extra MoBo config options
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools.html

[papercoffee]

Wow ...the wizard got something totally different

• General Information :
  Manufacturer : ECS
  
  Product : GeForce6100PM-M2
  Version : 2.0
  
  Serial Number : OEM
  
  Support MP : Yes, 1 CPU(
  Version MPS : 1.4

Now I remember ...the board was purple and not red... (coffee please!!)

[RocketJedi]

buy a new machine. any modern video card will be useless in that old rig