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Help needed with graphics card!

Shyam

Shyam

Shyam

Associate
Joined
18 Apr 2010
Posts
9
looking for a graphics card for about £100. its for a HP Compaq dx2450 Microtower, graphics onboard at the moment as it was for business. specs of the computer are...

AMD Athlon Dual-Core processor 5000B, 2.60ghz, 2.00gb ram, 32bit

Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 6100 nForce 430 (Integrated)

Power supply - 300w (not sure if this helps)

looking to play some games now and then. any help would be greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance! :)
 
With that PSU you don't have a lot of options. Even the efficient 5750 uses 86W of power at load. This extra load on a 300W PSU (especially one that is probably not made to the very best standards) could bring the PSU down.

What kind of gaming do you plan to be doing on your system? If it anything vaguely new or high resolution, you will want to invest in a new PSU as well as a GPU. If its pretty basic stuff - then you could try out a 5450, these things use less than 20W and will blow your current IGP away in older/low res gaming, it will also do 1080p video with no sweat.
 
well...most likely looking to play a bit of call of duty and quake. not too fussed about really high settings medium if possible would be great.
 
i used to play quake 3 arena online, i guess its now going to be quake live. call of duty isnt that important. really more than anything i would like to make the most of what i have got therefore use the best graphics card i can in this situation.
 
What Graphic's Card are you running at the moment?

From a review by GURU3D -

Recommended Power Supply For A 5450 / 5670

Radeon HD 5450 (single GPU)

System in IDLE = 154 Watts
System with GPU in FULL Stress =177 Watts
Difference (GPU load) =23 Watt

The card requires you to have a 300 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a MAINSTREAM system. That power supply needs to have (in total accumulated) at least 30 Amps available on the +12 volts rails.

Radeon HD 5670 (single GPU)

System in IDLE = 164 Watts
System with GPU in FULL Stress = 222 Watts
Difference (GPU load) = 58 Watt

The card requires you to have a 450 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a HIGH-END system. That power supply needs to have (in total accumulated) at least 35~40 Amps available on the +12 volts rails

Hope's this helps. :)
 
onboard graphics at the moment. i am able to get hold of a friends power supply - Arctic Power 500W PSU With PCI-E 2x SATA, 20+4 ATX12V 8pin +12V Connectors - think this would do with the 5670 or 5750?
 
Shyam said:
onboard graphics at the moment. i am able to get hold of a friends power supply - Arctic Power 500W PSU With PCI-E 2x SATA, 20+4 ATX12V 8pin +12V Connectors - think this would do with the 5670 or 5750?
Click to expand...
Arctic Power PSUs are rated at 75%+ efficiency, so it is an 'ok' brand (there are better) for PSU. As for 500W, it is more than enough for 5750.

Because you CPU is rather old and slow by today's standard, that's no point going any higher than 5750 for graphic card, and getting faster cards won't improve performance...unless you can upgrade your CPU to a newer/better architecture CPU. Check if your motherboard is a AM2 or a AM2+ board.

Also, if you are certain that you won't be upgrading monitor anytime soon, you can just grab the 512MB version instead of the 1GB version and save yourself £15, as 512MB is sufficient for 1440x900.
 
Last edited:
A 5670 or 5750 will be fine with your PSU!

OLDPHART said:
Radeon HD 5670 (single GPU)

System in IDLE = 164 Watts
System with GPU in FULL Stress = 222 Watts
Difference (GPU load) = 58 Watt

The card requires you to have a 450 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a HIGH-END system. That power supply needs to have (in total accumulated) at least 35~40 Amps available on the +12 volts rails

Hope's this helps. :)
Click to expand...

Using a 5670 a Core i7 Extreme 965 overclocked to 3.75ghz drew 222w full load from the wall. So about 180w from the PSU.
 
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