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Graphic Card Upgrade

viperfx

viperfx

viperfx

Associate
Joined
8 Nov 2008
Posts
121
Hi,

This is my system:

OcUK Value Bundle Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Case / Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT Eco 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
4GB RAM
CPU - Q6600 Quad Core @ 2.4Ghz


What options do I have for upgrades for the graphics card?

Thanks
 
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Is your cpu overclocked? I'd recommend that you look into that to get the most from your purchase. What resolution does your monitor support? How much memory do you have? What is your budget?

Something like an AMD 7770 might be a good card to go for.
 
arc@css said:
Is your cpu overclocked? I'd recommend that you look into that to get the most from your purchase. What resolution does your monitor support? How much memory do you have? What is your budget?

Something like an AMD 7770 might be a good card to go for.
Click to expand...

Monitor support 1920x1080. CPU was overclocked, I had it at 3.2Ghz.

Budget is £100
 
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I had an overclocked Q6600 @ 3.4 along with a factory clocked GTX480, and the performance on the whole was excellent, though I could see that the card was being held back somewhat by the cpu. Therefore, I wouldn't advise to go for anything higher than a 7850, and even that may be restricted a little, though still worth getting imo. :)
 
arc@css said:
I had an overclocked Q6600 @ 3.4 along with a factory clocked GTX480, and the performance on the whole was excellent, though I could see that the card was being held back somewhat by the cpu. Therefore, I wouldn't advise to go for anything higher than a 7850, and even that may be restricted a little, though still worth getting imo. :)
Click to expand...

The 7850 at around £150 is quite expensive. Will these cards need extra/better cooling than a stock fan? What about the Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz?
 
Thanks for the help everyone. I have convinced myself to go with the 7850, even though I expect some bottlenecking - I don't mind as I think it will be a big step up from my current card.

Hopefully the system takes the new addition well!

After I have done the usual driver installations etc - is there some tests I should run to check for system stability?
 
I would simply check the idle temps when at desktop / browsing / youtube vids etc. Then, I would run a game you currently have installed, and check the load temps as well as the boost in performance. I use MSI Afterburner for a frame rate check.

Enjoy your new card. :)
 
I am finding that when I do anything intensive such as playing games, the temp of the CPU using CoreTemp shows high's of 89/81/87/83. At IDLE the cores are around 50-60. I also sometimes experience crashes within a particular game, and at times even a reboot while ingame - is this the CPU overheating and protecting itself? The game is in a beta state at the moment, so it could very well be their issue, but is this something that could continue to happen after the new card? or is it CPU related?

Last time I had high temps like this, I cleaned up the fan and before reattaching it on CPU I applied some new thermal paste after a wipe. Should I do this again?

The CPU is currently OC'd at 3Ghz
 
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Hi,

I have installed the new GPU and at IDLE everything seems to be OK. I have not tested it under load but will very soon. I just wanted to post something I noticed when I run Prime95, to test my CPU load after a bit of a clean up.

With Prime95 running for a few mins, the temps went up to a max of 86/82/81/85. What worried me though is that the first worker thread failed.

[Jul 23 14:01] Worker starting
[Jul 23 14:01] Setting affinity to run worker on logical CPU #0
[Jul 23 14:01] Beginning a continuous self-test to check your computer.
[Jul 23 14:01] Please read stress.txt. Choose Test/Stop to end this test.
[Jul 23 14:01] Test 1, 800000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M172031 using FFT length 8K.
[Jul 23 14:02] FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
[Jul 23 14:02] Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
[Jul 23 14:02] Torture Test completed 0 tests in 0 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
[Jul 23 14:02] Worker stopped.
Click to expand...
Is something wrong?
 
Right ok. So set the FSB from 333 to 300 now. So its at 2.7Ghz and the small FFT's went up up to test 3 and ongoing. It seems more stable now. Thanks
 
Right I have tested the new GPU with a game called Firefall. Which is actually a game advertised while I was installing their Catalyst software. The game set most of the settings to high. I set the resolution to 1920x1080. However I am getting < 30 fps during play.

I have not extensive testing yet, but from brief testing, the results are not promising. Is this the CPU bottle necking it? or is something more to it? The card I went for was Sapphire HD 7850 1024MB GDDR5. Would the same card with 2GB vram make a difference to the framerate?

Thanks.
 
Hi,

I have been testing some other games, and overall the performance is good. There is some occasion lags even in games like deus ex. However this game called Firefall, I am experiencing increasing crashes. Sometimes the whole floor is missing, and its a big world hole. This did not happen at all before the GPU upgrade.

Is my PSU enough for this graphics card? What could be wrong?

Any help appreciated.
 
Reduce your CPU overclock to stock settings and try again. If it goes away, that's your problem.

Otherwise, if you installed the drivers etc. when you were at a high overclock, reinstall them and make sure you're on the latest. The 7850 doesn't draw a huge amount of power -- though if you're within the return period I'd swap it for a 2GB 7850, the 1GB ones are EOL and not as good.
 
I doubt it is related to your PSU, however, which one is it?

It is far more likely to be a CPU bottleneck, especially as the Q6600 is now getting a bit long in the tooth. Try overclocking it and see what happens to the performance then.
 
Yep I had returned it to 266 FSB after the crashing and glitches. So its at stock now 2.4Ghz.
I have a Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU.
These types of glitches did not happen with my Nvidia though, it crashed but I think that is when there was a lot of things happening ingame. However the ATI seem to just crash randomly.
OC'ing the CPU again, will surely make it more unstable? How would that help?
The GPU memory is usually around 600-700MB ingame.
Is there anything else I can try before returning it?
 
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