Scammed or paranoid? a professional opinion needed

gmfukok · Feb 13, 2017

i have a desktop pc with the following specs:

Gigabyte P41T/
4 GB of RAM /
3 GHz Duo core /
450 Watt Gamma power supply /
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4650 1 GB DDR2
operating on a sp1 win 7 ultimate 32-bit,

one day my graphic card went out cold, and i had to replace it, i was afraid that i would have to upgrade the power supply or the processor since its pretty old (have been there for 14 years), but the guy at the hardware store assured me that the only thing that affects the graphic card performance is the power supply and my current power supply will do more than just fine, on his recommendations i decided to go for the GT 730 2 GB DDR5,

i was expecting marked difference after the upgrade, but no sooner i started using my pc after installing the last driver update and my hopes hit rock bottom, when i try to change my desktop resolution, i find only three of them available (1600x900, 1280x720, 800x600) whereas the other resolutions in the drop menu are just blank! this issue only came out on the last days before my old card went dead and still didnt change till now, i called him back and he told me that this aint an indicator for the card performance, he suggested that i play some games for a couple of hours then run any test, later when i did the "unigine heaven test"

i got score of 414 with the 1600x900, an average fps of 16 and max fps 32, whereas on the 1280x720 i got average 20 fps, but still i cant deny the fact regarding that the current performance is way lower than the average of the previous card, On the old card i could open a mozilla, google chrome, 3 pdf files and any media player all together at the same time using 1600x900, and everything was to go very swiftly, but now just after i power my pc, when i try opening any folder simultaneously with mozilla it could take up to 30 sec during which everything freezes on 1280x720!!!

previously i could open up to 20 tabs on the mozilla while taking about a giga and half from my memory on the task manager and then the browser gives me a black screen and crashes, whilst now just it reaches about 600 MB and it crashes immediately, i cant open more than 2 pdf files at a time with nothing else otherwise my desktop will freeze!! while regarding the gaming performance it is nearly the same but on a lower setting..

From a relative point of view i cant tell how good or durable is my current graphic card, but on the other hand i m pretty sure that the old one was much worse, so if i m not supposed to notice any remarkable improvement, then at least no way i can accept a deteriorating performance especially after using lower settings on a better graphic card!!! I m not sure if I was scammed into a crappy graphic card or may be a previously used one while sold to me as genuinely new or else there is another reason behind all this..

Colif · Feb 13, 2017

Did you remove the drivers for the Radeon? You might want to try this: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2767677/clean-graphics-driver-install-windows.html and remove amd & nvidia and reinstall latest nvidia drivers and see if it helps

The performance on a 730 should be way over the old card. You should get at least the same if not better even if CPU bottlenecks the GPU

gmfukok · Feb 13, 2017

Colif :

after i upgraded, i formatted my C drive "the windows drive" , installed a fresh copy of windows and the last update for the new card driver, so definitely no worries about the radeon driver, so as i mentioned before my gaming experience is about the same or even a tiny bit improved in a way that doesnt deserve any credit , but the main issue is with my desktop performance, i need to know if i m supposed to go back and get refund or try another card while i still can, and to do that i need professional evidence based data..

D JAY Cva · Feb 13, 2017

do a proper un-installation of the previous gpu driver and apps ,,, and reinstall the driver for current card ,, or a reformat will help

gmfukok · Feb 13, 2017

D JAY Cva :

again, i m saying that i already reformatted the windows drive (on which the driver of the old card was installed...) , so i m sure i cant uninstall it ....

gmfukok · Feb 13, 2017

i m just looking for some reference standard test or procedure that can assure me once and for all whether if the graphic card was in a properly functioning state when i bought it or not

RobCrezz · Feb 13, 2017

Make sure you actually have the monitor plugged into the new card, not the motherboard.

Then download the latest drivers from nvidia.com, then install them.

gmfukok · Feb 13, 2017

RobCrezz :

well, i never acknowledged that a monitor can be plugged into the motherboard in the first place, but the way i see it when i check it out ,it is clearly obvious that it is plugged into the new card and after reformatting i already installed the latest up to date driver issued by nvidia on 24 jan 2017 and so far there is no further update

RobCrezz · Feb 13, 2017

gmfukok :

Well youre unlikely to see a huge improvement as you have gone from one low end card to another, however there shouldnt have been a drop in performance.

Install CoreTemp, check your CPU isnt overheating or something (test both idle, and when under load like a game). If the thermal paste has never been changed it can get dry and hard, then if the computer is moved or knocked the thermal contact goes bad.

hang-the-9 · Feb 13, 2017

How many tabs you open don't really have anything to do with the video card, and your benchmarks scores you did not list what you benchmarked or on what settings. Taking a long time to open things is a sign of a bad hard drive, virus, something running in the background (maybe Windows or other updates), or not enough RAM.

gmfukok · Feb 14, 2017

RobCrezz :

gmfukok :

Well youre unlikely to see a huge improvement as you have gone from one low end card to another, however there shouldnt have been a drop in performance.

Install CoreTemp, check your CPU isnt overheating or something (test both idle, and when under load like a game). If the thermal paste has never been changed it can get dry and hard, then if the computer is moved or knocked the thermal contact goes bad.

i changed the paste 4 years ago , also i remember being told that the temp shouldnt exceed 75, but i will appreciate it if you elaborate more, mentioning after which temperature i should be concerned and what action to be taken is such case

gmfukok · Feb 14, 2017

hang-the-9 :

well, due to lack of total experience about benchmarking i didnt have much of background about the program of choice neither interpreting the results, but all i can tell that i ran two programs, furmark during which i noticed the GPU graph reached a plateau (and may be this indicate hitting the benchmark) at 2940 frames, the GPU load was fluctuating between 99% & 100%, than fan was 75% and max temp was 71*c using the 1600x900, i chose the following options (burn in, extreme burn in, post fx, dynamic background) and preset 2160, then i ran the unigine heaven test, in which the only setting i changed was the resolution and everything else was by default, i got a score of 414, average 16 fps and max 34 fps on the 1600x900, then i used the 1280x720 in which i got average of 22 fps but i didnt complete it to the end to obtain a score

Moreover, even with a virus, there is no way that things get worse with a new card after 8 years using a crappy one... (especially if i got the virus before and after the upgrade, so basically it cant get worse) and i cant deploy more RAM since i m using 32-bit system, also i disabled all the windows updates, the only software that do updates is Bitdefender ( and it does it occasionally every 5 days for 20 min ...) but if you can elaborate more about other processes that run in the background of which i m not aware and i can disable them to improve my performance, i will appreciate it

RobCrezz · Feb 14, 2017

gmfukok :

RobCrezz :

i changed the paste 4 years ago , also i remember being told that the temp shouldnt exceed 75, but i will appreciate it if you elaborate more, mentioning after which temperature i should be concerned and what action to be taken is such case

Yeah 4 years is quite a while.

Download core temp here:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Windows-Widgets/Widget-Miscellaneous/Core-Temp.shtml

Should be kept comfortably below 70'c

hang-the-9 · Feb 14, 2017

gmfukok :

hang-the-9 :

well, due to lack of total experience about benchmarking i didnt have much of background about the program of choice neither interpreting the results, but all i can tell that i ran two programs, furmark during which i noticed the GPU graph reached a plateau (and may be this indicate hitting the benchmark) at 2940 frames, the GPU load was fluctuating between 99% & 100%, than fan was 75% and max temp was 71*c using the 1600x900, i chose the following options (burn in, extreme burn in, post fx, dynamic background) and preset 2160, then i ran the unigine heaven test, in which the only setting i changed was the resolution and everything else was by default, i got a score of 414, average 16 fps and max 34 fps on the 1600x900, then i used the 1280x720 in which i got average of 22 fps but i didnt complete it to the end to obtain a score

Moreover, even with a virus, there is no way that things get worse with a new card after 8 years using a crappy one... (especially if i got the virus before and after the upgrade, so basically it cant get worse) and i cant deploy more RAM since i m using 32-bit system, also i disabled all the windows updates, the only software that do updates is Bitdefender ( and it does it occasionally every 5 days for 20 min ...) but if you can elaborate more about other processes that run in the background of which i m not aware and i can disable them to improve my performance, i will appreciate it

Did you compare the results you got with the old card to the new one? With the same settings? Your old Radeon and the GT 730 are almost exactly the same speed if you got the DDR3 version.

Your Heaven benchmarks scores look to be right in line with a GT 730 DDR3 card, so the results look normal there. Here is a post about the GT 730, it may be the GDDR5 version which would be faster http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2272276/730-overclock.html#17452490

gmfukok · Feb 17, 2017

hang-the-9 :

gmfukok :

Did you compare the results you got with the old card to the new one? With the same settings? Your old Radeon and the GT 730 are almost exactly the same speed if you got the DDR3 version.

Your Heaven benchmarks scores look to be right in line with a GT 730 DDR3 card, so the results look normal there. Here is a post about the GT 730, it may be the GDDR5 version which would be faster http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2272276/730-overclock.html#17452490

as a matter of fact something new came up recently, yesterday my whole screen went black then i got notification "your display driver has stopped" so any clue?

hang-the-9 · Feb 20, 2017

gmfukok :

Could be a bad Windows or driver setup, could be a bad card, or power supply.

gmfukok · Feb 25, 2017

hang-the-9 :

according to the test results, can you rule out the card being faulty ?

hang-the-9 · Feb 27, 2017

gmfukok :

hang-the-9 :

according to the test results, can you rule out the card being faulty ?

The benchmarks look fine for the card, but you said it crashed also correct? Just once?

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