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Which cheap graphics card? maybe low profile

Surfer

Surfer

Surfer

Soldato
Joined
31 Dec 2005
Posts
11,179
Location
Glasgow
Hi, there

My m8 gave me his old pc (as my laptop is still in for repair) and its one of those emachines 8230 with a pentium 4 530 cpu.. the graphics card is borked so im using the onboard one right now (intel gma900 i think).

Anyway luckily the graphics card slot is PCI-e (1.0 though). Which graphics card for under £100 do you reckon i could slot in there that WOULDNT be a super power hog on the PSU. The psu i have is only 570w.

So ive thought about getting either a HD6450 or HD6670 graphics card? Is a 570w psu enough?

Neither of them have their own power socket do they?

Dont want to spend much money because i know its an old pc and the cpu would be the bottleneck.

Only have 1 gig ram at the moment (DDR 400MHZ) but i will buy another 1 gig at least)
 
You could run most GPU's on a 570W supply, the 5450 will be fine for anything bar gaming, consider a 7770 or 7790 if you want a bit of gaming action
 
Gav_881 said:
You could run most GPU's on a 570W supply, the 5450 will be fine for anything bar gaming, consider a 7770 or 7790 if you want a bit of gaming action
Click to expand...
Pointless to toss in a modern (even if it is entry level) gaming card with the P4 CPU...something like a 2nd hand 5670/6670 (for under £30 if possible) would do.
 
ohh the mb is a D915gag.

Used for low end gaming (very old games e.g. planescape torment, deus ex..maybe bf2142?) and watching youtube, DVDs)

Might be able to get a HD6670 for around £30 second hand on the bay :)
 
hrmm slightly odd. started up windows and the screen is garbled...

On a complete hunch i switch the vga cable from the vga port that connects to the mbo (and thereby the onnoard graphics) to the vga port of the graphics card (x300SE) and surprisingly i get a picture no problem.

Before i had tried the graphics card slot but would not get any picture which is odd so i thought the graphics card was dead....i therefore had been using the onboard graphics connection for the last few days

Wonder why the onboard graphics produced a sortof garbled picture..perhaps because another video card was detected???

Hrmmm dunno downloaded drivers for the x300 and its working peachy at the moment. :)
 
In case you end up going for a HD6670, while it is a good card, I'd be careful buying it for a single slot machine as mine is a double slot card. Not sure about others. That 5450 looked like a good option if you do need a card in future.

Good luck with that X300 however in the meantime.
 
i have noticed better cards on the bay such as

hd4870

hd6850
hd6870
hd6770

If its same price then is it more value getting the better, more powerful card? Even though i wont be able to utilise it fully with the bottleneck of the cpu i have.
 
hrmm weird again.... now the monitor doesnt display (when connected to the x300se vga ) but i swap it to the integrated card vga connector and bam i get a display no problem. Very weird.... because it was doing this previously except the other way round! (no display on integrated connection but yes on dedicated card vga). Hope new graphics card sorts this!
 
any ideas? Ive reseated the x300se but monitor still acts as if it cant detect it...very weird if it detected it before... It could maybe be to do with the graphics card drivers as i downloaded ones for the x300/x800 (exact file name is 10-2_legacy_xp32-64_dd_ccc.exe)

Problem is cant get a hold of the emachines graphics drivers if they need specific "emachines" modified driver version.

I've ordered a cheap graphics card HD6770 so will try that. Fingers crossed its the graphics card......and NOT the mobo which is dodgy......
 
oddly enough i reseated and rearranged the 3 ram sticks. 1 512mb and 2 256mb sticks. And now the monitor detects the x300se graphics...great lol. So maybe it is something to do with the RAM. I'm buying new ram anyway. :)
 
*bump*

well this machine is more trouble than it is worth! I am regreting buying memory and new graphics card for it now!

2 x 1 gig DDR PC3200 ram sticks. new ones i bought...didnt work..tried one at a time tried various different slots (4 slots). Best i get is machine coming on and fan on full blast and screen hanging on the pentium 4 startup screen.


Dont have another machine which accepts DDR PC3200 sticks so ill have to return to ebay seller as suspected faulty.. :/

So i go back to the original 1 gig setup and try my luck with the graphics card

XFX HD6770 radeon pci-e

to replace the x300

1. so i uninstall completly the drivers for the x300.

2. switch off machine. Install new graphics card. Connect up the 6 pin power connector from the psu to it no worries.

3. Connect the VGA + DVI adaptor to the DVI slot (though it looks like 2 DVI slots on the graphics card? and 1 mini-hdmi slot) on the graphics slot. Seems to connect ok

4. switch on pc.

5. no display input signal from monitor.

Could be anything... sigh.... the PSU is 570W which should be more than enough. The fan on the XFX HD6770 comes on no worries so power is getting to it.

Its this crappy monitor i bet...no end of problems with it.

I guess a next step i take is to make sure the integrated graphics is switched off in the BIOS (though im sure i did it)

I will see if i can take the graphics card into to somewhere and they can test it hopefully

so atm :(
 
Last edited:
well turns out my bad about the memory...my mobo only accepts LOW density memory. Luckily the ebay seller is happy to take back the high density memory.

I'm still clueless why the graphics card isnt working with the monitor or starting up....if it was a monitor only problem the pc would still startup right??
 
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