• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Need some help finding a new gfx card

geordie12

geordie12

geordie12

Associate
Joined
12 Nov 2005
Posts
56
Hi All....my GFX card is getting a long in the tooth and I have been thinking of an upgrade...however I am hoping to avoid replacing my mobo, cpu etc etc.

At the moment I have a gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3. If has a PCI Express x 16 slot but I think it's running an older standard of PCI Express 2.0 wheree all the newer cards seem to be on 3.0.

So I guess the help I need is whats the best card for sub £200 that I can get that will run with this mobo?

Thanks in advance for any help!
 
Which graphics card do you have currently and which cpu. Also what resolution is your monitor. Just to let you know pcie 3 is backwards compatible with pcie 2 and 1.
 
Currently running a Radeon HD 6900, and I have an intel i5 2500K which is overclocked to about 4GHz.

Ah good news on the backwards compatable stuff...so if I wanted to I could go for a new Radeon RX 470 or something?
 
geordie12 said:
Currently running a Radeon HD 6900, and I have an intel i5 2500K which is overclocked to about 4GHz.

Ah good news on the backwards compatable stuff...so if I wanted to I could go for a new Radeon RX 470 or something?
Click to expand...

Yes.
 
geordie12 said:
At the moment I have a gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3. If has a PCI Express x 16 slot but I think it's running an older standard of PCI Express 2.0 wheree all the newer cards seem to be on 3.0.
Click to expand...

You won't notice the difference between 2.0 and 3.0.

If you can squeeze a few extra pennies, either the RX 480 or the GTX 1060 will be fine choices.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £439.98
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​


​
 
that 480 is a good bet at £209 but also the 1060 is a good bet as well as it uses hardly any power there's no real need to have these big fancy coolers on it and with that said a plan blower type will suffice :) personally yes I'd look at the 1060 or 480
 
Just a note, you night need to flash the beta UEFI BIOS for your board for these cards to work.

Both 480 and 1060 will be a great improvement from your 6970/50 card however :).

EDIT: Just checked your board, only the rev 2.0 has a UEFI BIOS, but rev 1.0 doesn't. Any idea which revision your board is? You can check here: http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/faq-page.aspx?fid=864
 
Last edited:
geordie12 said:
It's revision 1.0....is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it. What I would worry about is the card you would like to buy and use. Just make sure to have the latest BIOS available at the time for your motherboard installed before installing the new card.

Most new cards don't have problems with legacy BIOS, it's normally more common I have found when UEFI BIOS is out of date problems can occur with new hardware.


I would recommend a Nvidia 1060 GTX for your system, would be a nice match.
 
Last edited:
Orcvader said:
Just a note, you night need to flash the beta UEFI BIOS for your board for these cards to work.

Both 480 and 1060 will be a great improvement from your 6970/50 card however :).

EDIT: Just checked your board, only the rev 2.0 has a UEFI BIOS, but rev 1.0 doesn't. Any idea which revision your board is? You can check here: http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/faq-page.aspx?fid=864
Click to expand...

So do u need a uefi bios for new cards to work then. reason why I am asking I just sent a 1070 back on rma what would not boot on my mobo. I checked everything from leads to monitor. I just checked my mobo bios and the pci setting is legacy and I can swap it to uefi. Do you think that could have caused my card not to boot? I have more or less the same setup as Geordie12.
 
Last edited:
geordie12 said:
It's revision 1.0....is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...

Well there's no UEFI BIOS avaliable so there's a chance the card might not work in your system.

andyuk74 said:
So do u need a uefi bios for new cards to work then. reason why I am asking I just sent a 1070 back on rma what would not boot on my mobo. I checked everything from leads to monitor. I just checked my mobo bios and the pci setting is legacy and I can swap it to uefi. Do you think that could have caused my card not to boot? I have more or less the same setup as Geordie12.
Click to expand...

With older boards, sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. There was an issue with older boards not booting with a newer GPU but a BIOS update usually solves it. For GB Z68 boards from what I've seen the fix is usually with the UEFI BIOS.
 
Orcvader said:
Well there's no UEFI BIOS avaliable so there's a chance the card might not work in your system.



With older boards, sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. There was an issue with older boards not booting with a newer GPU but a BIOS update usually solves it. For GB Z68 boards from what I've seen the fix is usually with the UEFI BIOS.
Click to expand...

I have the Rev 1 board. Can anyone confirm this 100% as if I have to budget for a new board it is goint to impact on which card I get.
 
Thanks for the help all...I decided to go with a RX 470...it's a massive jump from what I have no and for the use I have it's probably plenty good enough.

Ordered with OC yesterday so should be being delivered in the next hour or so!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom