Budget GFX Card Upgrade

[greg2302]

I'm currently running a low end (compared to modern machines) Overclockers Gaming PC I bought second hand on Ebay, Quad Core i5 3540 CPU with 8GB RAM, on Windows 10 with a GTX 650 Ti. I'm using it for business plus I get a couple of hours on GTA V a the weekends. I'm getting frequent crashes even on the lowest settings and although the spec is theoretically mid-range for the GTA V requirements I suspect the GFX card may be the issue. The machine runs perfectly stable and fast for all my business software including Office 2016, Project Pro etc.

I don't want to spend a lot on a new GFX card as the whole rig only cost £300. Would a GTX760 be a worthwhile investment, and would I need a new power supply ? Or is there a cheaper alternative that will significantly improve performance ?

 

[arc@css]

What power supply do you have?

 

[AlamoX]

gta5 crashing doesnt mean the gpu has a problem, check if you have latest drivers, and patch from the game.
760 would be a decent upgrade, 450-500watt psu should be fine.

 

[Snypa]

A 760 would be a generation newer and a tier higher then what you have now. You'd be looking at shelling out almost 1/3 of the cost of the system to get it though.

Regarding the crashes I wouldn't assume it was lack of GPU horsepower. I'd do some trouble shooting first. What kind of crashes are you getting, have you googled the error messages. Is there system shutting down/blue screening (and thus no error messages), I'd be monitoring temps in that case etc.

 

[greg2302]

Regarding the crashes I wouldn't assume it was lack of GPU horsepower. I'd do some trouble shooting first. What kind of crashes are you getting, have you googled the error messages. Is there system shutting down/blue screening (and thus no error messages), I'd be monitoring temps in that case etc.

Reason I suspect the GFX card is the nature of the crashes - no warning, no error message, no bluescreen. It's always during gameplay or scene loading, and the screen just turns into a mess of different colours whilst the sound sticks on a very short loop. No CTRL-ALT-DEL to task manager, just freezes.

 

[subbytna]

Reason I suspect the GFX card is the nature of the crashes - no warning, no error message, no bluescreen. It's always during gameplay or scene loading, and the screen just turns into a mess of different colours whilst the sound sticks on a very short loop. No CTRL-ALT-DEL to task manager, just freezes.

Sounds similar to what I had my last graphics card. Probably is the GPU imo.

You can get a second hand 680 for not much money these days. Might be a better option for gaming but not sure how your PSU would hold up trying to run that.

 

[Claire Drew]

Check the temps on the card and maybe reseat the cooler after a clean if needed.

 

[greg2302]

K thanks for all the advice. Power supply is 550W. I have the latest drivers and patch. Opened up the case and the cooler fan was minging. So hopefully it was just overheating cos it was so dusty. Fingers crossed.

 

[Gze]

Run furmark and see how it copes.

 

[greg2302]

Furmark - yeah, maybe tomorrow. It wasn't just the fan on the GPU that was minging, it was all the fans and heatsinks. Kept me busy for half an hour or so.

 

[greg2302]

Well, that didn't work, possibly even worse than before. But it did okay on Furmark, just ran the standard test, averaged 34fps (which is not great) but the temp didn't get higher than 77C, which is way less than the 105C maximum. And I'm running GTA V on low settings, using around 964MB of video memory (out of 1024MB). So WTF ? Maybe the card is okay, no point upgrading if something else is causing the crashes ?

 

[jonclark]

I have seen this happen when the 3.3v rail really drops off - it powers the pcie slot I think?

Greg, can you post the spec of your PSU or a photo of the spec on the side of it?

 

[greg2302]

I could have last night when I dismantled half my office to get the machine out ! I can tell you it's an Overclockers built system and it's a 550W PSU. I'll see if I have time later this week Jon.