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Upgrade from ancient FirePro W4100 for light gaming - how far to go

mattie

mattie

mattie

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9 Nov 2005
Posts
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Location
Bath, UK
Hi all

I've recently updated my machine to a Ryzen 5 5600, but I'm still using an old FirePro W4100 graphics card.

This is fine for day-to-day office work, but it's simply not up to running game at any decent resolution and I'm having problems with PC crashes when gaming, which I assume is an issue with the dated card.

Is there a sensible budget option for a graphics card to replace the FirePro? I'm running a 32" 4K monitor, although tend to play most games in window mode to keep the overhead down it would be nice to not have to do that any longer.

I'd expect most modern cards would be a significant step up from the old card, I was budgeting around £150 - I appreciate it's always a case of getting what you pay for, but interested to hear if that £150 would get me something serviceable or if a few extra quid would be well invested.

All advice gratefully received
 
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If buying new then the 6500 XT is about the best you can get but it's performance is quite compromised. If you can stretch the around £250 the 6600 is nearly double the performance, but I can appreciate that's a lot more. Second hand may be the better option at the £150 mark.
 
The days of when £150 could get you nice new graphics card and would last for a couple of years are long gone I'm afraid (ATi Radeon 9600 Pro, Geforce 8800 GT, RX 470 where all value kings they just don't make these days). If that is you budget your best bet is looking at the used market. If you want to buy new then I strongly suggest you save a bit more money and spend around £250 and get an Intel A750 or RX6600 from AMD, that's where the value is these days but you have to spend more to get it.
 
Thanks both for replies - I'll aim to put a little more in and take a look at the RX6600.

I've had a look through the board and found a few threads bemoaning the prices of graphics cards, seems I'm not the only one a bit caught out by it!
 
Just a further thought, my monitor is a 32" 4K (Dell UP3216Q) which is intended mostly for phot and professional work rather than gaming, but is this a consideration in choice of graphics card?

I'm sure I can live without having every setting on the video set to ultra-high, but not sure if 4K suggests one or the other graphics card.
 
mattie said:
Just a further thought, my monitor is a 32" 4K (Dell UP3216Q) which is intended mostly for phot and professional work rather than gaming, but is this a consideration in choice of graphics card?

I'm sure I can live without having every setting on the video set to ultra-high, but not sure if 4K suggests one or the other graphics card.
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There's nothing you can buy new that is intended for playing at 4K, the RX 6600 is aimed at 1080p/high details. That said, your current card is museum-grade, so a RX 6600 would seem like a Ferrari to you and if you're playing the kind of old games that the W4100 can handle, then 4K will be doable. I wouldn't normally suggest an Intel card, especially if you like playing older games, but benches have shown that the Intel A750 (OCUK have it for £250) performs relatively better (against competing cards) at higher resolutions (review showing this), whereas the RX 6600 gets slower. Since you may be making use of XeSS or FSR later to play at 4K, I'm not sure if that should/would influence the choice there.
 
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mattie said:
Thanks both for replies - I'll aim to put a little more in and take a look at the RX6600.

I've had a look through the board and found a few threads bemoaning the prices of graphics cards, seems I'm not the only one a bit caught out by it!
Click to expand...
Traditionally when new gen cards get released after 2 years, it would would bring improved performance over previous gen cards at the same price level while bargains can be had on last gen cards with they been being put on sales at EOL pricing; but for this gen Nvidia led the way by deliberately keeping pricing of last gen cards the same as (if not higher than) when it was released 2 years ago.

They have stacked the pricing of new gen cards on top on last gen card which is why pricing for graphic cards this gen is considered THE WORST that it's ever been, especially when it comes at the time during one of the highest inflation rate in the past decade...
 
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Tetras said:
There's nothing you can buy new that is intended for playing at 4K, the RX 6600 is aimed at 1080p/high details. That said, your current card is museum-grade, so a RX 6600 would seem like a Ferrari to you and if you're playing the kind of old games that the W4100 can handle, then 4K will be doable. I wouldn't normally suggest an Intel card, especially if you like playing older games, but benches have shown that the Intel A750 (OCUK have it for £250) performs relatively better (against competing cards) at higher resolutions (review showing this), whereas the RX 6600 gets slower. Since you may be making use of XeSS or FSR later to play at 4K, I'm not sure if that should/would influence the choice there.
Click to expand...

Ta for reply.

Apols for what may be a noddy question, but what problems does the Intel A750 have with older games? I've got a pretty broad brush of games on my steam account, and a few are pretty dated (Far Cry 3 era) but a few new ones such as the uncharted ones which I'm itching to try - my old card just isn't up to it.

I've had a look at a few reviews and the Intel does seem to be well received, and quite like the fact it seems to do well for lightroom tasks as well. It seems a decent candidate.
 
mattie said:
Apols for what may be a noddy question, but what problems does the Intel A750 have with older games? I've got a pretty broad brush of games on my steam account, and a few are pretty dated (Far Cry 3 era) but a few new ones such as the uncharted ones which I'm itching to try - my old card just isn't up to it.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if this thread is still being updated (things are changing fast with Intel drivers), but to give you an idea.

p.s. Does your motherboard support rebar? You'll need it for ARC.
 
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Tetras said:
I'm not sure if this thread is still being updated (things are changing fast with Intel drivers), but to give you an idea.

p.s. Does your motherboard support rebar? You'll need it for ARC.
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Farcry 3 is on the naughty list! That's a shame.

I think the motherboard does support rebar, it's a MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI.
 
Initial observations , bearing in mind I've only tried Uncharted 4 - I installed the card and tried it, it kept crashing. I've updated the driver (didn't realise the installation of the Intel software didn't update the driver to the latest - noddy mistake) and all seems fine.

Runs in 4K on 32" Dell UP3216Q, although not pushing settings to max.

Any specific questions anyone has, please ask - might be useful for anyone thinking of the A750
 
Out of interest, it originally crashed on old drivers when trying to build shaders. I was a bit worried about hard drive space, as Uncharted 4 is hefty in terms of disk space.

I've also just updated from W10 to W11 and all is fine.
 
mattie said:
Any specific questions anyone has, please ask - might be useful for anyone thinking of the A750
Click to expand...

I'm interested in anything really, driver bugs & behaviour, overall impressions of the card and your gaming experience, performance (and how consistent, or not consistent it is across different games).
 
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