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Best low form factor card

steveoz

steveoz

steveoz

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2014
Posts
223
Location
Wiltshire, England
As above really what is it? :)

I had to hunt high and low for my little web / media servers card last year, found a XFX 2GB DDR3 HD6670, seemed way better than any of the poor nvidia offerings.

It comes in handy when the littlleun and I do some lan Gaming as it only runs a 19" 1440x900 screen, so can run borderlands 2, SWTOR and the like on decent settings, but I am thinking of grabbing a 1080 24" and sitting it in the corner, so I need something that can run reasonable details at the native res.

Struggling to find anything better at the moment, any ideas?


Cheers guys.
 
Any input guys?

I still can't find anything better than my old 2gb 6670.

I did find 2gb of bargain 1333mhz ddr3 in a shop today for a fiver to upgrade the ram on the little machine, it's running alight now :)

I think I might be a bit stuck though for a larger GPU, I can't re-home it as it is BTX and so it is a pain in the ass, and I like it not taking up much room in the corner, but I am thinking of going from a 1440x900 to a 22 + " 1080 screen, so could do with it being able to push a few more pixels.

I have thought that that I may start struggling though, the 375w proprietary PSU may start to struggle. Need to look at the amps, but I can't imagine it being any higher than 19A per 12v rail. Might be able to squeeze one 6 pin out of it.

It doesn't run too much, two HDD but one idles mostly (backup drive), stock E8500 @ 3.16 @ 1.113v, no extra fans etc and only a couple of 5v usb devices.
 
Well I can think of two upgrades in performance:

I'm using a low profile 6750 (a rebadged 5750) which I do not recommend since it comes as a two slot low profile and requires a power connector. Also had to be imported.

Slightly better and downright more reasonable in every way is the 7750 low profile single slot no power connector needed.
 
Oooh, nice the 7750 just edges in front of the 650, and it would be nice to stick with AMD seeing as the catalyst drivers etc are all in there.

I've been really impressed with the AMD offering in small form factor compared to Nvidia - seem to be more around. Just found a few 7750's now you bought it to my attention cheers :)

It looks like they all come with the half height bracket and config which is exactly what I need, and don't consume much more power than the 6670.

I'll have a little think thanks, but the 7750 is looking likely :)
 
steveoz said:
Oooh, nice the 7750 just edges in front of the 650, and it would be nice to stick with AMD seeing as the catalyst drivers etc are all in there.

I've been really impressed with the AMD offering in small form factor compared to Nvidia - seem to be more around. Just found a few 7750's now you bought it to my attention cheers :)

It looks like they all come with the half height bracket and config which is exactly what I need, and don't consume much more power than the 6670.

I'll have a little think thanks, but the 7750 is looking likely :)
Click to expand...
When you look at the 7750, don't make the mistake of simply thinking "2GB vram must be better than 1GB vram". Make sure they are GDDR5 vram not GDDR3 vram...having 2GB on GDDR3 the performance is actually WORSE than having 1GB on GDDR5 due to the much lower memoryt bandwidth.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
When you look at the 7750, don't make the mistake of simply thinking "2GB vram must be better than 1GB vram". Make sure they are GDDR5 vram not GDDR3 vram...having 2GB on GDDR3 the performance is actually WORSE than having 1GB on GDDR5 due to the much lower memoryt bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Thanks, yup I had wondered that, I have seen a couple of older 2gb DDR3 and a newer 1gb DDR5 card, the ddr5 card have slightly higher core clocks too.

Going to go for the DDR5 one :)


Cheers!
 
steveoz said:
Thanks, yup I had wondered that, I have seen a couple of older 2gb DDR3 and a newer 1gb DDR5 card, the ddr5 card have slightly higher core clocks too.

Going to go for the DDR5 one :)


Cheers!
Click to expand...
Most of us don't really care about the higher factory clock on the cards, since their overclock is to tiny that any of us can easily do ourselves. You should download MSI Afterburner and have a play around with overclocking. You can setup a custom fanspeed profile to controlling fanspeed dynamically according to the temp of the GPU, and also you can overclock simply by typing in the clock speed or dragging the tab along the bar and hit apply (and save to 1 of the 5 profiles).

Just up the core clock speed till you get driver crashes while stressing the card (running benchmarks/games), and then lower the clock till you don't get driver crash anymore. It's completely safe since you are not increasing the voltage (but of course, once you are more familiar with overclocking, you can start to try giving the voltage some bumps for pushing the overclock higher- if the particular card allow voltage increase in MSI Afterburner that is).
 
If you can use a dual slot low profile card, the fastest one currently available is AFOX AMD Radeon HD7850 2GB GDDR5 256-Bit PCIe 3.0 DVI DisplayPort Low Profile Graphics Card. Expensive at £226 and difficult to find. Available from the rainforest!

Found a link for the Manufactures web page: http://www.afox-corp.com/en/products_details.asp?proid=209&typeid=46&id=46
 
Last edited:
Sorted, scored a 2 month old 7750 for only £65.00, put it in today and coupled with the 1680x1050 screen it works a charm!

I'm so surprised with this little computers performance, it's only an e8500 3.16, 4gb DDR3 10600 and the 7750, yet will run the games I have on it (borderlands 2, Rift, SWTOR, Dishonored and others) all on highest settings with filtering and eye candy on at this native res.

I think this rez is probably the sweet spot, if it was 1920x1080 maybe it would have issues I don't know.

Anyhow, well pleased, and as this machine is on 24/7, I've found myself nipping on this one quite a bit now instead of powering up the beast, thanks all.
 
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