AMD & nVidia compatibility

[frankylynn]

Hi

I am planning to upgrade an Inspiron 531 (I enjoy a challenge) with an Asus M5A88-M AM3+ AMD 880G DDR3 SATA3 Radeon HD 4250 mATX Motherboard, FX-8150 CPU cooled by a Thermaltake CLW0216 Water 2.0 Pro CPU Liquid Cooler, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9 16GB Desktop Memory Kit - DDR3, (4x4GB), PC3-15000, 1866MHz, 240-pin DIMM, 1.5V, CL9, XMP Ready RAM, with a Corsair CMPSU-850AX AX850 Power Supply keeping everything happy.

The grafix card that I would like to install is an EVGA 015-P3-1480-AR NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Video Card (I like the way it looks, performs, and the fact I can get it for $200). My question is: Is this grafix card compatible with the above AMD system, or should I go with a Visiontek 900353 Radeon HD 6970 Video Card for $320?

I want to be able to watch HD & BluRay movies on my 24'' monitor or a large screen TV (via HDMI) without jitters & maxing CPU usage, and I also enjoy making movies and downloading educational videos off the internet & burning them to DVD, which sometimes requires recoding (Nero 11). I am not much of a gamer, but one never knows.

BTW, feel free to critique any of my component selections listed above. I joined this forum because I want to learn.

Thanks in advance,

FrankyLynn

 

[chryodem]

You should not run into any issues IRT to your video card and motherboard having different chip sets. If you are worried about it however then why not pay the extra money? If all you are going to do is use it to watch movies, then you shouldn't be worried about your CPU once the movie is going the CPU doesn't have that much to do except sit there and decode the movie from the file format to the image/sound, not very intensive even for old processors. You shouold be good and assuming that the nvidia card fits the PCIe slot that you are trying to put it in (it should, it really should, if it doesn't something has gone horribly wrong) it will work fine.

 

[Franky Lynn]

Thank you very much, chryodem, for taking the time to answer my question. I really appreciate it very much. I agree with you, if I'm going to spend that amount of money anyway, I am going to opt for an AMD video card. I found the "Diamond Radeon HD 7870 GHZ Edition" on NewEgg for $255. Don't see how I can go wrong with that.

Thanks again, and have a good one!

 

[Franky Lynn]

You should not run into any issues IRT to your video card and motherboard having different chip sets. If you are worried about it however then why not pay the extra money? If all you are going to do is use it to watch movies, then you shouldn't be worried about your CPU once the movie is going the CPU doesn't have that much to do except sit there and decode the movie from the file format to the image/sound, not very intensive even for old processors. You shouold be good and assuming that the nvidia card fits the PCIe slot that you are trying to put it in (it should, it really should, if it doesn't something has gone horribly wrong) it will work fine.

Thank you very much, chryodem, for taking the time to answer my question. I really appreciate it very much. I agree with you, if I'm going to spend that amount of money anyway, I am going to opt for an AMD video card. I found the "Diamond Radeon HD 7870 GHZ Edition" on NewEgg for $255. Don't see how I can go wrong with that.

Thanks again, and have a good one!