Video card for Compaq SR1730z

Topangadan

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Jul 16, 2012
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My son has a Compaq SR1730z. His eGeForce 8800GTX video card just went out. His favorite games are Skyrim and Rome. What should I get as a replacement card? Don't need top of the line, price is an issue.
 

Banana_Joe

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Jul 11, 2012
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In the low end the minimal acceptable for gaming is a radeon 6570, then you could go up in the 6000 series if you can spend more. If you go past that the old cpu should cause a bottleneck and then no performance gain.

The 8800 gtx is about equivalent to a HD 6750 or HD 6670 GDDR5( a bit worse ), so you should go at least with a 6750 if you don't want less performance than you already had.

Tip: buy the card with the AMD reference specs, the information is available on their site.
 

Topangadan

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He can go up to $200. I am looking at a Saphire Radeon HD 6870 $159.99. It has 1024mb memory. XFX Radeon HD 6870 has 2048mb, $179.00.

Any thoughts? This is all new to me.

Thx
 
The 6870 is a very good choice and a nice upgrade. I'm assuming you have a pretty good power supply for it already since you were running a 8800GTX before. I'm hoping you did replace the power supply in the computer.

The card is a bit much for the Athlon 3800+ thats in there right now. Think of it like putting Nascar tires on a Corolla or a V8 in a Smart car. Sometimes it doesnt really work right. Its called bottlenecking.

Sometimes its a big deal, sometimes its not.
 

Banana_Joe

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Your CPU is an Athlon 64 right? If so that CPU will "bottleneck"(limit the performance) of that card and so you there is no need to get it, would be better to get an inferior card: 6770 or 6850(this one is better).

Sapphire and asus are usually favoutires for radeons. But any brand is ok, just check if it got the reference specs from AMD. 1GB card should be enough, 2GB will help only with a few games.
 

Topangadan

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OK, the 6850 is a bit cheaper, so if they are pretty much the same, that's what I'll go for. Thank you all for your help. This is a great service you provide for us non-gamers.

Why would I want to replace the power supply? What would you recommend there?
 
^That's probably why the 8800GTX died. I suspected something was wrong with that situation. The graphics card probably stressed the PSU quite a bit or something happened and the card or the power supply is now dead.

The card might actually still work with a replacement power supply. 300W is not enough for either the 6850 or the 8800GTX for sure.

For the 6850 I would recommend this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027

If you are going to buy a power supply first and see then if the 8800GTX works still, because it wouldnt have worked on that 300W, I would go for this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371030
 

Topangadan

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OK...it did work for quite a while with that power supply. He was happy with it, until he started playing Skyrim, which would freeze frequently.

What has just happened is, the screen suddenly got intermittent stripes, Windows would not boot up, and it finally just turned into a pattern of green and pink rectangles.

I was told the memory on the video card went out...could this be power supply instead?
 
That one is actually probably the card dying. I had an 8800GT, and it looked somewhat like that when it went out.

You could replace the card, but I would highly recommend a power supply upgrade as well. You could do something like this with your budget:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371029

With this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908

That'll keep you under the budget. And that card is pretty good price, even if you dont get the rebate.

EDIT: That PSU also has a $20 coupon.
 


Chances are any power supply with 300W is not going to be able to power a system like that. It might, if it was 80 plus and had some of the best efficiency in the world, but that is probably not the case since the OP has not messed with the case other than the upgraded graphics card.

Compaq is made by HP, which generally has power supplies that have 16-18a on the 12V rail.

If it had 16a on the 12V rail, using P=IV, the rail should support 192W. The 3800+ is an 89W processor.

127
+89

216W at full load. And we hadnt even factored in efficiency yet. If the power supply had about a 70% efficiency, which is about what it should have, it would put out about 138W.

I would highly recommend a new power supply.
 

Banana_Joe

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It is actually a bit more than 60w and he got 100w more in the psu.

Those gpu manufacturer recommendations of PSU considers a current mid-high end computer.