Graphics Card Question

donmeister

Okay,im a newbie at this so if this sounds wrong im sorry! I want to upgrade the GPU on my Dell Dimension e520 to play a few modern games.(Moto GP 08,Grid,and PES 2009)

I have a nVidia Geforce 7300Le already,would it be possible to add another graphics cards to the motherboard,and use them together,or would one cancel out the other? Any help appreciated!

uberpixie

donmeister wrote: »

Okay,im a newbie at this so if this sounds wrong im sorry! I want to upgrade the GPU on my Dell Dimension e520 to play a few modern games.(Moto GP 08,Grid,and PES 2009)

I have a nVidia Geforce 7300Le already,would it be possible to add another graphics cards to the motherboard,and use them together,or would one cancel out the other? Any help appreciated!

1) do you use vista or XP?

2) what do you mean by use together? Do you mean have 2 seperate gfx cards installed to use amny monitros at the same time or do you mean have 2 gfx cards work together to improve game performance?

If you mean game performance then no. You need a board that supports SLI (nvida cards) or Crossfire (ATI cards)

3)what wattage is the power supply in your pc? You needa half dacent PSU t opower a good gfx card, if you do not have a good PSU and want a better gfx card you will need to buy a better power supply unit as well and fit this.

donmeister

uberpixie wrote: »

1) do you use vista or XP?

2) what do you mean by use together? Do you mean have 2 seperate gfx cards installed to use amny monitros at the same time or do you mean have 2 gfx cards work together to improve game performance?

If you mean game performance then no. You need a board that supports SLI (nvida cards) or Crossfire (ATI cards)

3)what wattage is the power supply in your pc? You needa half dacent PSU t opower a good gfx card, if you do not have a good PSU and want a better gfx card you will need to buy a better power supply unit as well and fit this.

1) Im using XP

2) Trying to improve game performance,so much for that! :rolleyes:

3) Its a 305 watt PSU

uberpixie

donmeister wrote: »

1) Im using XP

2) Trying to improve game performance,so much for that! :rolleyes:

3) Its a 305 watt PSU

SLI and crossfire are a waste of time for most people unless you have a 30" screen and a very deep wallet and even at that the performance increase is not great and only applies to games that actually support SLI/crossfire as opposed to every game......

The 305 PSU severely limits your choices to lower powerd gfx cards, the good news is that most gfx cards in that bracket are much better than a 7300LE.

Have a look at a radeon 4650 or a 4670. You should get away with one on a 305W psu

€70-90 quid should cover one off komplett.ie

uberpixie

Also what CPU and how much ram do you have in the pc?

donmeister

Its a Pentium D 915 (2.80ghz with 800 fsb) and also 1gb of ram(im going to upgrade that aswell me thinks)

TerrorFirmer

CPU will limit games anyway, best best is to get a Radeon 4550. Nice card, 500-600% faster then a 7300LE - good card for the money. Totally silent as well.

There are better cards like the 4670 and 9600GSO that would work on that PSU but their ceiling wouldn't be reached due to the slow Pentium D - no point wasting money.

uberpixie

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

CPU will limit games anyway, best best is to get a Radeon 4550. Nice card, 500-600% faster then a 7300LE - good card for the money. Totally silent as well.

There are better cards like the 4670 and 9600GSO that would work on that PSU but their ceiling wouldn't be reached due to the slow Pentium D - no point wasting money.

I would disagree: he will only be slapping in 1 gfx card ever into this box he may as well go for the best he can possibly fit, granted the CPU will be the major bottle neck on the system a 4670 will still make games faster over a 4550.

Feck it a dual core CPU + half daent gfx card will get most games running pretty well theses days especially on 1024x768.

I would also get an actively cooler card over a passively cooled one: very few case fans in a dell and the airflow usually only cools the CPU properly.

Sqaull20

I agree with Uberpixie, go for the 4670 its only €20 more and a much better card.

Your cpu wont limit it that much, like Uber said its a dual core and if your graphics card is quite good you can get away with a slow enough dual cpu on a 19" monitor.

The likes of Pro Evo, Call of Duty, Moto Gp will play fine on your system with the 4670.Just make sure you have 2gb of ram, which is more important than the cpu these days.

donmeister

thank you all for the help,looks like im gonna go for the 4670! (........And a 1gb of ram):pac:

TerrorFirmer

I've used a Pentium D 915 with an 8800GS - even cranked up to 3.4Ghz, I was being seriously throttled in Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 (30-40fps vs 60-80 with a core 2). The OP here will be running 600mhz slower at stock - you have to remember a Pentium D @ 2.8Ghz is about the same as a theoretical Core 2 at something like 1.3Ghz...really poor for modern games. Look at Toms Hardware CPU charts, in cpu intensive and multi-core optimized games like Supreme Commander , the Pentium D's lag miles behind even the slowest Pentium Dual Core (2140, 1mb l2).

The 4550 is a bit faster then an 8600GT and with 512mb of DDR3, a good match for such a CPU I still think. The 4670 will not be fully utilized.

uberpixie

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I've used a Pentium D 915 with an 8800GS - even cranked up to 3.4Ghz, I was being seriously throttled in Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 (30-40fps vs 60-80 with a core 2). The OP here will be running 600mhz slower at stock - you have to remember a Pentium D @ 2.8Ghz is about the same as a theoretical Core 2 at something like 1.3Ghz...really poor for modern games. Look at Toms Hardware CPU charts, in cpu intensive and multi-core optimized games like Supreme Commander , the Pentium D's lag miles behind even the slowest Pentium Dual Core (2140, 1mb l2).

The 4550 is a bit faster then an 8600GT and with 512mb of DDR3, a good match for such a CPU I still think. The 4670 will not be fully utilized.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/athlon-gaming-benchmark,review-31395.html

Have a look at this article: they compare various upgrades made to an old Athlon64 system.

In particular here:http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/athlon-gaming-benchmark,review-31395-12.html

Even on the slower systems that the gfx card was being bottle necked by the CPU, the system with the 4850 does perform better than the system with the 8800GS.

I agree with you that the CPU does def bottle neck the system, and yes in supcom the rig would fall over.(you really need a good core2duo at least for the game)

But donmeister wants to give his rig a shot in the arm to play a few titles. There is a bit of a performance difference between the 4550 and the 4760 and tbh every couple of frames help on a low end system especially if they are only for a few quid extra.

I fully agree with you that the 4670 will not be fully used but the system will still run a bit faster using the 4670 over the 4550.

So personally I would go the 4760 and to hell with it for an extra few quid.
(I would agree that the 4670 is wasteful but it will perform better by a few frames and I would be willing to spend €20 to try drag some life out of the rig)

If my budget was very very tight I would go with the 4550 as you suggest as it offers the most bang for buck and is more efficent price/performance wise over the 4760. No contest there.