Upgrade from ATI 4800HD Help?

brell

Honorable
Apr 18, 2013
4
0
10,510
Looking to upgrade from ATI Radeon 4800HD card as this one is making far too much noise, thinking its probably on the way out as ive had it many years. Only games I play are world of warcraft and the occasionally sim game. Would like same or better performance(No Less) but quieter is the main thing.

My Current aging system is
Motherboard: GA-970A-UD3
CPU: AMD PhenomII X4 955 3.2G
RAM: 12GB
SSD:256GB
HDD1:500GB
HDD2:1TB
BDRW
PSU:600W Corsair

Thanks for reading
 
Is the card actually getting noisier than it used to be, or is it just bothering you more? The most common (and easily fixed) cause of a noisy card is simply dust build up. A good clear out might have it running as good as new again.
Otherwise, the 7850 is a pretty good buy at the moment. What resolution are you playing at? Do you have a budget? I think anything over $100 would probably handle those games fine at 1080p. It depends whether you're prepared to pay extra to have some performance up your sleeve in case you get some more demanding games in the future.
 

brell

Honorable
Apr 18, 2013
4
0
10,510
I think it is noisier but its my "darling" other half who's moaning about the noise more. Tried hovering out what I could get at. does seem quite dusty, but wasn't easy to get to. Only play wow at 1024x768 (Wide) with most settings on fair except view which I have up at Ultra. That's all I play as I use the console for games just tried wow no long ago and got hooked!



 
Is your monitor really only 1024x768? If so, in WOW, seriously any card could manage that.
Did you take your card out to clean the dust out if it? I think there's a pretty good chance that if you take your card out, get rid of all that dust and put it back in your card will run as good as new.
Otherwise the 7750 is probably a good choice. I wouldn't pay any extra for the silent version though, as you've got other fans in your machine, that GPU fan won't make any significant difference. It's just that you've no real need for a new card if you can clear out your current one.
 

brell

Honorable
Apr 18, 2013
4
0
10,510
No the monitor can go higher than that, I just kept the resolution down for wow cause I to keep the noise of the fan down. took it out and went to town on it with an air compressor, bloody hell was there a lot of dust! Put it back in and apart from a fairly noisy start up from it, I could barely hear it. Also when playing wow didn't seem to increase the noise which is great. Although booted up this morning and thought my computer was gonna take off with all the noise :( lasted a long time and when it calmed down its still not as low noise as before. According to my motherboard utility the temp of the card is 10-110 degrees C with only IE open, that too much? Desktop is 1680x1050 as that's recommended by windows 7. Also not sure if its related but I recently installed a sata 3 SSD replacing a standard drive with fresh install of windows and my bootup times have gone from 68 secs UP to 2.5 Minutes lol.



 
I thought dust would be the culprit! A friend of mine had his computer regularly freeze on him, he finally found so much dust in the GPU that the fan had jammed, couldn't spin at all. The poor GPU was literally cooking itself until it froze the system.
Is your card really reaching 110C? That's massively high. 110F on the other hand is fine. HW-Monitor is a good free utility. I'd recommend getting that, checking your temps are okay in desktop, then playing your game for a while and noting the max temp. If the dust is clear and your case has reasonable airflow, I wouldn't expect temps to get over 70-75C.
If your temps are okay you can create a custom fan profile with your drivers. Limit the fan to an acceptable noise level. Just keep checking your temps for a while to make sure they're under control. As you're only playing WOW you could do some reading on under-clocking or undervolting your card. You can sacrifice a little performance to drop the heat and thus lower the fan speed.
If you can't be bothered with the hassle, by all means get a new card, it just seems a waste to me spending $100 to get a card of equivalent performance to your current one. I'm pretty sure with some effort and tweaking you can get this one working and keep your darling one happy (which is always a good idea!)
RE the SSD, something badly, badly wrong there. Brand new SSD? Fresh Win7 install? Should boot in 20-25 seconds at absolute max.
What model SSD?
 

brell

Honorable
Apr 18, 2013
4
0
10,510
Yeah defo Celsius, ive downloaded HW monitor and will keep an eye on that for a day or two.

Yes new SSD and fresh install of win 7 64bit. It must be on the motherboard screen for about a min and the "starting windows" logo for another minute. All in all 2min 20-30 secs everytime I try it. It used to be 68 secs with a normal drive and older motherboard. When in windows it defo seems faster and wow even is a wee bit smother with it being on the ssd drive. model was Samsung 840 250GB.