Recommended GPU for old M3A790G

homerjay

homerjay

homerjay

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Hi all,

its been a long time (10 years or so) since ive even been anywhere near the inside of a PC.

but my 9 year old son has decided its the time to move on from xbox and onto a gaming PC.

his basic laptop is nowhere near up to the job, so the idea is to upgrade my old desktop (which was a AV media centre in a past life) with the best GPU possible to give him a fighting chance with his pocket money.

so my question is whats the best used GPU i can put on this board > https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/M3A790GXH128M

I dont even know which is the best slot to used is? PCI Express 2.0 x16 ??

Please dont say just scrap it, i'm trying to teach my son here.

cheers

PS, he wants to play fortnite and scrap mechanic which hopefully arent too strenuous.
 
I think pci express is backward compatible as well as forward compatible.

If your buying new then a gtx 1050 because it really isn't a power hungry gpu plus i don't know what power supply you have.

Plus the gtx 1050 won't be bottlenecks so much by the cpu but then yeah.
 
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Phenon II x4 i think. need to check tbh

just researched pcie compatibility, seems to work fine with little performance loss too, which is great news.

it seems the only restriction then is budget, and this cpu?
 
homerjay said:
Phenon II x4 i think. need to check tbh

just researched pcie compatibility, seems to work fine with little performance loss too, which is great news.

it seems the only restriction then is budget, and this cpu?
Click to expand...

Yea, what sort of budget was you thinking of?
 
tbh, i was only expecting to be able to spend £50 or so and something used.

not looking to break any boundaries here, as this will be his first 'rig'

his total budget is £100, if need be.
 
Looking on the popular auction site there is a 650ti for £50 and a few vids on youtube of that running fortnite at an ok speed.

There is a 660ti and 670 for under £70.

Also r7 360 around £70.

might be worth keeping your eye on local gumtree/facebookmarketplace to see if there is any bargains about.
 
was looking at 560 (£40) and cheapest option, but read its 70% worse than a modern 1050 (£110)

will look at 660ti and 670, thanks

just getting my head around gerforce numbers and performance...

will look at radeons now.
 
Just remember that most of the nvidia cards that are a 60/70 (660 760 etc) or over could potentially need quite a few amps from the PSU.
 
Noted. Will check what PSU is in this machine .

Anyway, I just pulled it down from the loft, turned it on and it seems the board is dead.

I've done disconnected all drives and removed the ram, turned it on and there are no beeps.

It's been a while but that does mean the boards dead doesn't it?

M3A790GXH/128 with phenom ii 945 and 6gb ddr3 if anyone's interested.

Do it seems my first job is to find a new board. Bugger
 
not all boards beep, but i have had many old systems where the boards were fine once i changed the power supply, it could be the board, but you could get a cheap Cit brand for example for like £5-10 to test whether it is the board or other reasons, another thing could be as its so and been stored theres a fair chance the thermal paste is very dry or non existent..

i picked up a 775 based system that has a q6600 plus ram the other day and would start then shut off, no beeps or nothing, wasnt the power supply at fault as it didnt come with one and the one i fitted is a top quality proper brand unit, after reseating ram, it turned out to be the thermal paste was dry and vanishing, so once i cleaned and reapplied fresh paste it started working fine.
 
cheers for that info...

by chance i actually have checked the paste as i was reminding myself what cpu was in it. it was all dried up so that could be a factor.

i'll let you know how a i go on..

thanks again everyone
 
homerjay said:
What makes you say that?

I would have assumed board due to lack of diagnostic beeps
Click to expand...

You should be able to pick up a mini board speaker and plug it in for a couple of quid. But not all boards have speakers, In fact i don;t think i have had a board with an onboard speaker since i can remember.

But i acquired one for a couple of quid, and it solved half of my diagnostics problems.
 
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