Replacement Card Advice for limited PSU/Case Environment

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

MutantGith

Member
Aug 3, 2010
53
0
0
Long-time Lurker, First post.

Ipod comments aside, I've been motivated to ask for a little guidance in a slightly complex card selection matter.

I have a semi-portable system that I use to truck around when I'm going to be working away from home for a while, that I put together a while back for moderate duty gaming. I will occasionally do other work on this machine, generally one off projects. The video card recently started artifacting aggressively, even in 2d. Replacement of card seems to be the best bet, due to speed and convenience at the moment.

The system is a P35 Shuttle machine with only a 400W PSU, and though I've heard that their PSU's are 'very good' - that's hard to quantify. I need a recommendation as to a replacement for the 8800 GTS 512 (G92) that's in there now. I know that works with the PSU in residence, so I wanted a power/heat/space equivalent (or slightly more demanding) card

The rest of the system is an E8500, 4GB RAM, onboard sound, etc. I game primarily at 19x12, and have no huge desire to try and push this thing for anything higher. Currently, I'm running XP, but there's a partition and copy of W7 just waiting to be installed when necessary.

Trying to parse TDP, actual power usage, and performance indicates that the best bets are likely one of the 460 variants or a 5850. As best as I can tell, the charts here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3810/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-part-2-the-vendor-cards/6

seem to indicate that, for real world use scenarios (Crysis, not Furmark) there are a few 'best case' replacements. I've been comparing to the 8800GT on that list, which references a TDP 30W lower than my 8800GTS 512. I've been mentally adding the 30W to the 8800 GT numbers for the sake of comparison, though I know that's not 100% accurate.

1GB 460 is coming in around 40-45W higher than an 8800 GT, which is 30W TDP lower rated than my 8800 GTS. The 5850 and the 768 460 variant seem to be virtually identical, cracking in around 30W higher. Judging just by TDP, the 5850 is rated at 150W, and the 460 either 150 or 160W, depending on RAM.

Net - 460 768 ~ equivalent W, 5850 ~equivalent W, 460 1GB +10-15W.

Because this is a portable system, I'm not interested in long term, bang for buck, future proofing scenarios. I'm hoping to build a nice, beefy system that would make this one cry in the next few months. Because I'm replacing a card in a system that I like to have available quickly, I'd like to get something ordered and in before the weekend, so waiting for a one-off deal or slick rebate combo is right out. I also should say that some of the work I occasionally do has CUDA applications, and that active 3D is a potential use for this machine, with a spare high refresh projector I have. These are leaning me towards a 460, but not so much that I'd like to cause long term stability issues.

So, Should I go with the frame buffer equivalent 768MB 460, risk the extra 10-15 W TDP for the 1GB to squeeze out a little more performance, or squeeze out some more performance still, and pay a small premium for the lower heat/power and get a 5850? Or, do you think I'm crazy trying to squeeze any of the above in there, and go for a 240 or 5770 and call it a day?

tl;dr summary -
8800 GTS 512 crapped out in Shuttle SFF machine. With heat/power/price concerns, what is best replacement?

Thanks in advance for the help
 
ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
Humm, now here's a tough question.

Any card requiring dual-PCIe power plugs makes me nervous when it comes to SFF PCs. Something like the 5850/460 is rated to up to 40% of your PSU's budget as-is (and I suspect your PSU can't drive 400W on just the 5v/12v rails). Furthermore since it's a SFF PC, I'd imagine that ventilation is poor. The reference 460 in particular is heavily reliant on the ventilation capabilities of the host computer, as it kicks out hot air in to the computer.

Ultimately I think you could get away with a 768MB 460, however personally I'm not sure I'd take the risk. The 5770 is the safe bet right now - it's the fastest thing you can get at a power level I'm sure would meet your computer's abilities.

If you do decide to roll the dice a bit and get a 460 or a 5850, be sure to get a fully shrouded card that completely exhausts all the hot air.
 
M

MutantGith

Member
Aug 3, 2010
53
0
0
Well, thanks for all the opinions. I knew going in that I was stretching trying to squeeze a bit more card into the case/PSU, but I guess that's just sublimation of the urge to build a large scale new machine. You'd think that with a theoretical 150W TDP, 75W from the PCI and 75W from the x6 plug would be enough, but I guess there's enough loss in the newer boards, coupled with people wanting to overclock enough that they go for the extra connector as required on the 460/5850.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards snagging this in the morning:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150447

Unless anyone has anything to say about that. I've always had great luck with XFX in the past, enough to justify paying 15$ for a warranty. This has the full shroud, and should exhaust quite nicely. I'm leery about switching driver/company bases after having such success with this past 8800 card, and it's shown good speed with computational acceleration. On the other hand, it did just die. More than worth what I paid for it, but luck of the draw.

I guess I'll just try and wait till I get my other machine built to jiggle little molecules about with computation apps.

Thanks for the help. I appreciate the aid.
 
cusideabelincoln

cusideabelincoln

Diamond Member
Aug 3, 2008
3,268
11
81
Last edited:
happy medium

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
14,387
480
126
If you gonna pay 170$ for a XFX 5770 because of the service and warranty, just grab a Evga gtx 460. Evga is just as good if not better.
A 5770 @ 1900x1080 won't last long IMHO, in fact, it barely gets by now at that res.
 
Phynaz

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
126
happy medium said:
If you gonna pay 170$ for a XFX 5770 because of the service and warranty, just grab a Evga gtx 460. Evga is just as good if not better.
A 5770 @ 1900x1080 won't last long IMHO, in fact, it barely gets by now at that res.
Click to expand...

A Thermi in a Shuttle case is not a good idea.
 
M

MutantGith

Member
Aug 3, 2010
53
0
0
Thanks for all the assistance, all around. I did go through another bout of 'Weeeell, I can squeeze that in there...' this morning. The 460 was tempting. But I decided a known working system with a healthy PSU was more tempting than a card with some more horsepower and an unknown lifespan. While the 8800 was a great fit when I slapped the system together, there has been a new TB HD installed, and the PSU has had a few years to age. This made me a little more hesitant to try and string together molex adapters to squeeze another PCI 6 pin out of the system. So, sadly, the 460 went out, along with the 5850.

I finally did settle on the 5770, and went with one of the Sapphire's, instead of the XFX. I was primarily down to those two due to the full enclosure shroud - leading to a much higher percentage of the heat heading out of the case. I had to remind myself that the difference between a two year and lifetime warranty on a relatively cheap, temporary, traveling shoebox didn't make much sense to worry about.

If it weren't for the PSU issue, it wouldn't have been such a borderline choice. Thanks for the initial reality check ViRGE, it set a nice touchstone to orient my thoughts before I started thinking about hotwiring the 12V rail too much. Hopefully the new card will be in soon, and I'll be back to playing modest titles without too much delay.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom