upgrading graphics card, £70 budget

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luap1085

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Hi all, kinda new to posting in these forums but people tell me the people on here are very reliable when it comes to pc building its my birthday tomorrow and I have £70 to spend on upgrading my pc, as I have a 9800GT graphics card and starting to have to run every game in low settings this is where Im going to start, so my budget for a graphics card is the full £70.

My specs at present:
ASROCK H61M-VS Socket 1155 S/L M-ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i3 2120 3.3 GHz Processor Dual Core
Corsair Vengeance CML8GX3M2A1600C9B RAM Module - 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) - DDR3
Corsair CX430 430WATT ATX power supply

Now I tried to do a little research myself regarding an upgrade and using the following list seems to represent the best value for money I can get:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

Been looking at the Radeon HD 6970 and they go for around £70 mark on some places, my questions are this:

1. Is this the best I will be able to get with my budget?
2. On one seller they said "Please note this card is long and will not fit into small or HTPC cases, you need a full size ATX case and it requires a high quality 550 watt (or better) power supply to function correctly!"

My motherboard is quite small and also the ram sticks seem to be rather close to the graphics card slot, also my power supply is only 430 watt which is why I have my doubts that I will be able to even use this card.

Regards Paul.

Edit: also another quick question in regards to the power supply, is there a program out there that can tell me how much of my power supply is currently available before it gets overloaded?
 
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You should be able to get a 2gb 650 ti boost or 660 for that price on ebay.
Click to expand...

I think you'd struggle to get a 660 , but a 650ti Boost is a good call. But if there is a 660 on Ebay for £70 or thereabouts, I agree, definitely go for that.

This one doesnt look too bad, 450W recommended:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sapphire-11222-05-20G-SAPPHIR...
around 3.1k passmark score, never gone with ati before, is there any pros or cons over nvidia?
Click to expand...

There's no particular reason to go Nvidia over AMD, or vice versa. The 260X is the model down from the 7850 though so you'd be paying the same price for a noticeably worse card.
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HEXiT

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not gonna happen on that budget mate.
due in part to your psu. if you can get another 50 together than go for a 750ti as its likely the only card with good perfomance that would work without having to buy a new power unit.
if not then your looking at second hand maybe a 5850/gtx450 but even then the power requirements will be very close.
 
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luap1085

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Hmm going by that site a 5850 would actually be a sidegrade

GeForce 9800 GT 726
Mobility Radeon HD 5850 752

Im assuming you meant a gts 450? couldnt find a gtx450?

GeForce GTS 450 1546


Still alot lower than I wanted, are you sure I won't be able to run a decent graphics card on my power supply? I only have 1 hard drive, 1 dvd drive, 2 case fans, mobo and cpu running off it?

Also hd display isnt something I need if that will lower the power consumption down on some better cards?


Edit: another question I have is regarding the eco cards, the one im using right now is eco (doesn't require link to power supply), am I right in saying these cards draw less power but also perform at a lower performance? If so how much of a performance hit do you take using them?

eco:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zotac-GTS-450-ECO-2GB-DDR3-Graphics-card-/131053711610?pt=UK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item1e8368f0fa
non eco:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zotac-GeForce-GT-S-450-1024-MB-ZT4050210L-Graphics-Card-/221562551304?pt=UK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item3396283c08
 
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For around £50-60 including delivery you can get a 5870 or perhaps a 560ti could be a good upgrade for a very similar price !

Recently i was using a 550ti while my 7970 was sent back for RMA and i can honestly say it was pretty nippy at my gaming res of 1360 x 768 .

the 560ti and 5870 are both direct x 11 and use a similar amount of power around 180 watts according to HWcompare , it appears the 5870 has more processing power though .

 
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luap1085

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ok, thank you for your input so far, its alot more confusing than I first thought it would be, just been doing some research on the 560ti and this is what the official site says:
Maximum Graphics Card Power (W) 170 W 210 W
Minimum System Power Requirement (W) 500 W 550 W

As I am only running basics in my system do you think I could draw enough power to run it efficiently?

Also this is where I stand so far on the performances according to passmark sorry was looking at mobility cards when I said one was a sidegrade >>:
Current card:
GeForce 9800 GT 726
----------------------------------------------
GeForce GTS 450>> Compare 1546
Radeon HD 7750>> Compare 1635
Radeon HD 5850 2278
Radeon HD 5870 2608 (too expensive i think)
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 3547
Radeon HD 7850>> Compare 3732

Edit: Also I pulled this off another forum:
Such recommendations are for people who don't know how to read numbers and do simple math or don't want to do it. These recommendations don't matter and the wattage of a PSU doesn't matter.

What matters is +12V amperage because this is the power used by CPUs and graphics cards as well as some other components such as hard drives and most fans. Some 350W PSUs can handle a 7850 with a low power CPU suc has an Ivy Bridge i3 or an AMD Trinity quad-core APU with its IGP disabled, some 600W PSUs can't. You have to check the +12V amperage of a PSU and find the +12V consumption of your computer to find out if a PSU is good enough.

This is my power supply spec on the +12v part on the box:
current: 6a max load 28a
frequency: 47hz-63hz maximum oombined wattage 336W
(This is like speaking french to me ><)

As I have a fairly basic cpu, with a low amount of hardware in my case I should be able to run it I think?

Sorry for all the questions, we are relatively poor with 3 kids so really can't make a mistake on my card selection :)
 
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luap1085

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Yes I am thinking of that or the gtx 560ti, just want to make sure my power supply will manage first before I take the plunge, alot of people say the 500 watt reccomended is just a guideline and it should run in my setup fine as I don't have too much else drawing power from my supply (just a i3 dual core processor, mobo and 1 sata hard drive).

If there is any power supply experts that know for a fact if my system would be able to handle these things together it would be appreciated.
--------------------------------------------

Sorry for all the edits, better than double posting I guess, what are your thoughts on these cards?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Asus-1GB-GeForce-GTX-650-Ti-PCI-Express-3-0-GDDR5-Graphics-Card-HDMI-Dual-Fan-/291247647400?pt=UK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item43cfb66aa8

GeForce GTX 650 Ti>> Compare 2698

Maximum Graphics Card Power 110W
Minimum System Power Requirement 400W

It seems to have a pretty decent/mid range score on passmark, affordable and my power supply is in the actual recomended range, do they run good if anyones had one before?
 
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gopher1369

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You should be able to get a 2gb 650 ti boost or 660 for that price on ebay.
Click to expand...

I think you'd struggle to get a 660 , but a 650ti Boost is a good call. But if there is a 660 on Ebay for £70 or thereabouts, I agree, definitely go for that.

This one doesnt look too bad, 450W recommended:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sapphire-11222-05-20G-SAPPHIR...
around 3.1k passmark score, never gone with ati before, is there any pros or cons over nvidia?
Click to expand...

There's no particular reason to go Nvidia over AMD, or vice versa. The 260X is the model down from the 7850 though so you'd be paying the same price for a noticeably worse card.
 
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luap1085

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Good call on the 7850, did some research into it, manufacturer recommends 500w for it but I pulled up a few threads of people running it on 400W power supplies with no hiccups, one poster even claimed it ran fine on a 300W power supply. :O

Thank you for all the helpful advise, I think I have made my choice, without the input I would of probably got one that I would of had to return. :)

Just one more question if you don't mind before I close the thread, is there any difference between msi, sapphire, gigabyte, vtx, asus etc etc? As some seem to be cheaper than others, also can you get fake/clones when it comes to cards that work really badly?

Regards Paul.
 
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gopher1369

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That might even have been me. My 7850 is in a Silverstone Sugo SG05 case which comes with a 300 Watt power supply. Specifically this power supply is powering my Core i5 processor + Radeon 7850:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/FSP300-60GHS-Power-Supply-Review/757

The 7850 only draws about 100 Watts under normal load ( http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/24.html ) so my entire systems draws less that 200 Watts in total. You're using an i3 so yours will be the same, your PC will use under 200 Watts when gaming / under normal use.


The main difference between brands is in the cooler, Asus for example tend to have coolers that are a little quieter than average. Some manufacturers overclock their cards, so one manufacturers may be slightly faster than another. The differences aren't usually massive though, it's not something you should be especially worried about.

 
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HEXiT

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300 is way to tight to last more than a few weeks even with a quality psu.
the 7850 takes a max of 144w the cpu 95w, 10w for the motherboard and you expect a couple of fans, hdd's and maybe a rom write.
boom your over 300watts easy. so any time you stress that system the potential for a fail is high in fact almost guaranteed.
 
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gopher1369

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300 is way to tight to last more than a few weeks even with a quality psu....
the potential for a fail is high in fact almost guaranteed.
Click to expand...

Silverstone would absolutely disagree with you:
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=458&area=en
"300W continuous power output at 50℃ operating temperature rated for 24/7 operation"

My Radeon 7850 has been running off my 300 Watt power supply for approximately 2 and a half years now. It's overclocked to 1050Mhz.

the 7850 takes a max of 144w
Click to expand...

No it doesn't. Not even close. The 7850 draws an average of 87 Watts and peak of 96 Watts when gaming. Source: Techpowerup:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/24.html

the cpu 95w
Click to expand...

Mine doesn't, my Core i5 3330S has a TDP of 65 Watts.

your over 300watts easy.
Click to expand...

Again, not even close. 178 Watts under full load according to bit-tech when paired with an overclocked i5 2500K.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2012/11/05/msi-radeon-hd-7850-1gb-review/2 [/quote]


Tomshardware use a monster of a CPU when testing GPUs, the 6 core i7 i7-3960X Processor Extreme Edition with a whopping 130 Watt TDP before overclocking, And then they heavily overclock the CPU as well -> their power mesaurements are not directly comparable to our setups. Even then they still only managed to record just over 250 Watts power draw.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-review-benchmark,3148-19.html
 
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HEXiT

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i dont care how much they disagree with me.
when you run so close to the max the components degrade quickly.
more than 10% a year in some cases. so after a few weeks the op would likely see system instability and then constant crashing and then fail to boot... even with the best 300w psu...
but hey if you want to risk your system every time you turn it on, thats up to you.
but on toms we like to make sure that doesnt happen and if that means over specing the psu by 150w then so be it.

your bit-tech links are a bit irrelevant as they for a bare bones setup running off an 850w psu which wont react the same way as a 300w psu when it gets close to the 300w drain.
just 1 ssd for storage? add a hdd to the system and you just upped requirements by 20 watts. if you have a rom burner your looking at another 40w and so on...

amd say there 7870 takes a max load of 144w thats the info i go off.
intel say there cpu takes 95w at max load. again direct from the manufacturer...

lastly what would i want to know what yours cpu is... i mentioned the ops cpu is a 95w part so knowing what you have is sorta irrelevant aint it mate.
 
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HEXiT

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gopher isnt wrong in what he says he just takes no account of system lifetime. he is entirely correct in saying the system would run. he's not taking into account its likely not a good quality unit in the guys case, nor how old it is already which are 2 important factors when it comes to adding more drain on an already working system.

i watched your vid and he said the same as some of us here.
like not hitting peak load of the psu.
buying enough psu to have a slight overhead. (he recommends 600-650w even though his system runs at 350 giving 250w-300w for expansion)
at no time does he recommend you use a 350w psu and put 350w of drain on it...
 
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luap1085

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Mar 28, 2014
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Yes I fully understand what your saying and you obviously know your stuff, it was just for other peoples future reference incase anyone read this post and oversized there psu accordingly, I think for what I have in my system though i3 dual core + only a few case fans, 1 hd that my 430W corsair psu should run a 7850 perfectly fine.

Ty for all the helpful input again, without the advise I got on here I would of run into serious problems. :)
 
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