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Graphics Card Update Advice Needed

Real McKoi

Real McKoi

Real McKoi

Associate
Joined
24 May 2008
Posts
6
Hi,

I am wanting to upgrade my graphics card in order to be able to more reasonably run some games better, specifically MS Flight Sim (Century of Flight) with addons and The Sims (for the Mrs!), ie. not the very latest state of the art games (apologies, but I'm more of a console man with the exception of the Flight Sim:eek:).

Anyway, I currently have a Radeon 7000 (0x5159) 64MB graphics card with a Viglen D945PLM system model (motherboard?), a 3.2GHz processor (2CPU's), 2046MB RAM and one PCI Express* x16 bus add-in card connector (I believe that's the info a more knowledgeable friend told me to provide....most of it's Greek to me). The following possibilities have been suggested:

Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT Silent Fanless 512MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI
Asus GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI
Gainward BLISS GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI/HDMI

Other recommendations included no external power and fanless. Would these options be on the money? If so, which one or is there an even better alternative? Many thanks for your help in advance.

Mark :confused:
 
First of all, welcome to the forums. Can you tell us what resolution you use? Unless it's very high I think you'd be fine with almost any modern PCI-e card. Do you have budget?

EDIT - What Devil_Spawn said.
 
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Thank you both for your respective advices and the welcome.
Resolution is 1280 x 1024 and 32 bit colour (is that what you were after?) The in-game (MSFS2004) resolution is the default 800 x 600 x 32. Budget is around about £50/60, definitely not more than £100....as I said earlier, I am definitively NOT a top end computer gamer....that sort of thing is left to the console. As for "any modern PCI-e card", I really was after specific type recommendations as I know absolutely nothing about computers (I find most of the contents of this forum frightening!:eek:) Regarding the current psu rating, I found the information below (I hope it's the relevant information that you wanted, but I'm really not sure).

When using high wattage PCI Express x16 graphics cards, use a power supply with a 2 x 12 main
power cable. The 2 x 12 main power cable can provide up to 144 W of power from the +12 V rail.

2.11.2 Add-in Board Considerations
The boards are designed to provide 2 A (average) of +5 V current for each add-in board. The total
+5 V current draw for both boards is as follows: a fully loaded D945PLM board (all three
expansion slots and the PCI Express x16 slot filled) must not exceed 8 A.

Many thanks once again.

Mark
 
Ati HD3650 512MB with GDDR3 RAM...

ATi's low and mid end are better than nVIDIAs IMO.

If you can stretch to 88 you can get a HD3850PRO, its quite more powerful though and you dont really sound like you need it.

Edit: You need to check the actual PSU unit itself and check the Amperes it can provide for the 12v rail. Total Wattage is more important but Amperes are more important i think. Brand plays a role in the quality and efficiency as well.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp... DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (H365P512GNP)

That one is not bad, fanless with GDDR3 and 512 MB. The only real difference between cards are Clocks and RAM type and speed.

As long as its GDDR3 you can pick whichever one you like really.
 
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Thanks once again for the very rapid reply (everyone on this forum is so helpful).
Does your recommendation of the ATI HD3650 fit in with the amperes provision for the 12v rail given in the tabled information below (which is what I think you're asking????...I hope).

DC Loading Characteristics

DC Current at:

Mode DC Power +3.3 V +5 V +12 V -12 V +5 VSB

Minimum loading 275 W 3.5 A 12 A 17 A 0 A 0.34 A (S0)
1.00 A (S3)

Maximum loading 500 W 16 A 23 A 29 A 0.20 A 0.34 A (S0)
1.10 A (S3)



Cheers, Mark

P.S. Sorry, those figures are supposed to come out lined up in vertical columns....so the +12 DC Power equates to a minimum loading of 17A and a maximum loading of 29A.
 
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ATi's website states that the recommended PSU should at 400w... They dont mention anything about amperes and as i havent really looked into it i am not really sure. Someone with the card may be able to help better but it seems that the PSU is fine as its rated at 500w.

If you bought/built the PC recently it should be relatively safe to assume it can handle it, it doesnt sound that old. Was the Radeon a PCI card? I like the reference about greek btw, since greek is my first language ~_^
 
Thanks for the continuing advice Trunks9486. The PC was bought (built???...lmao) 2 1/2 years ago and the Radeon 7000 was in it. You slightly lost me with your info about what's 400W and what's rated at 500W.....but then Greek is definitely not my first language , so it's hardly surprising ;)
 
I've opened the machine up and had a look at what's what. It appears that there is bad news which may well require a re-evaluation of the recommendations given so far. The PSU is rated at 300W....an FSP300-60THN-P to be precise. Please help? What graphics card should I be looking at now?

Many thanks for your time on this.

Mark
 
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looks like you're going to need a new PSU too, which will set you back about £50

and for a decent GPU, you're looking at £50 at least. So I think you're going to need to spend about £100 at the very least.
 
300W only? Damn thats low... Is it a branded one at least?

Anyway i cant recommend buying a card now, really cant tell if its going to be power stavred or not.

You should buy a new PSU, and wait till the new batch of cards is released i guess.
 
Many thanks Trunks and Andeh for your most recent replies....I think I have my answer now. In fact, I started to suspect as much (as I have learnt an awful lot in the last few days about this subject).

Cheers, Mark
 
An alternative: Go onto the second hand auction site, and purchase either an 7600 GT or a x1950 Pro. Both these graphics cards should be a boost from you current rig, and won't need a new PSU (certainly the 7600 GT).

Make sure they are the PCI-E models
 
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