Question Old HTPC 3D score is 90, need a cheap Pcie for AO

[mikeford]

I surf and play wow just fine, Anarchy Online just opened a fresh start server and I can't see anything its so slow. Passmark score was 90 for my ancient MSI 880GM with Radeon 4250 on board, score is typical so nothing screwed up, just no 3D power. Its a HTPC nominally running a total power of 65 watts, PS will handle more, but low power low noise prefered. Upgrade of the whole system is planned fairly soon, so I want a cheap low power card I can drop in right now and play AO in the mean time. Its got two of the short sockets, PCI e 2.0 16 on one of them.

Suggestions, old, new, or used welcome. Casual look shows a Radeon R9 350 might be a value choice around $50.

Thanks

 

[grimham]

Perhaps a Geforce GT 1030? Small card with very low power requirements. Just make sure you get the GDDR5 version and not the DDR4 version, it's much slower.

 

[mikeford]

Update happened sooner. I tried putting in my son's old 9600 GT card in, forgot the 12V connector for the card and MB is dead, no post even with everything removed.

Now running a Ryzen 5 2400G, and ordered a Radeon RX 460 that may also go in it (Cheap, $60 shipped for new HP on ebay).

 

[grimham]

Never heard of not having the 6 pin connector hooked up hurting anything, the GPU just wouldn't work. I'd guess there was something else wrong with that card that hosed the system.

 

[mikeford]

My guess is that some motherboard fuse blew. I've got a diagnostic "post" card that plugs into a few different buss types and show voltages as well as post state and plan to stick that in and see what I find. If I can fix it somehow, I will take a swing at it.