Video card upgrade

[slatchley]

I have a three year old system that I built, but I need a better video card. Can anyone tell me if there any limits on what I can use due to my other system components, ie mother board? My system is below:

Antec TruePower 2.0 TP-II 550 550W Power Supply

Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Athlon 64(FX)/Sempron/Athlon 64 X2 Skt939 DDR Motherboard w/Audio, Dual Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA BenQ DW1655 16X

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor Socket

Zalman CNPS7000B-CU LED CPU Cooler

(2) Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO 2GB Kit DDR433 XMS3500 ProSeries Memory

(2) Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB Serial ATA 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer and Serial ATA Signal Cable Bundle

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3400832AS 400GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC PCI Express 256MB DDR3 Video Card w/HDTV-Out, Dual-DVI & VIVO

Sony FD MPF9201121-1/MPF920-Z (Z/121) 6082 1.44MB 3.5in Floppy Disk Drive (Black)

Dual Layer DVD?RW Bare Drive (Black)

U.S. Robotics USR5699B 56K V.92 Internal Faxmodem PCI OEM

Thermaltake A2095 SATA-UV Series Serial ATA 18in Cable (Red) Retail

 

[Denithor]

Welcome to the forums!

What monitor/screen resolution do you use for gaming? What is your budget?

First (blind) recommendation would be Radeon 4850 for ~$150AR (ASUS card with aftermarket cooling), which would be a large upgrade from 7800GT for a fairly low cost. It's about the best performance/value card available today and good for resolutions up to 1920x1200. If you play at lower resolutions or mostly older games the 9800GT (~$100) is still a very viable card.

Give us more detail and we can make better (more specific) recommendations.

 

[happy medium]

Welcome to the forums.
Do you overclock?

If not, grab your self a 8800gt Nvidia based card or a Amd 4830.

What type of monittor do you have and what resolution is it?

 

[slatchley]

$200-$400
Dell 2405 1920x1200
Too dumb to oc

And I actually don't do gaming, but graphics, Photoshop CS4, Lightroom (Lots of photographic editing), and an architecture program(Softplan) that does 3d rendering (but not high end modeling)

Thanks for the input. Do I have to stick with PCI x16 or can I use a 2.0 card (whatever that is)with my present setup?

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: slatchley
$200-$400
Dell 2405 1920x1200
Too dumb to oc

And I actually don't do gaming, but graphics, Photoshop CS4, Lightroom (Lots of photographic editing), and an architecture program(Softplan) that does 3d rendering (but not high end modeling)

Thanks for the input. Do I have to stick with PCI x16 or can I use a 2.0 card (whatever that is)with my present setup?

You might want a faster cpu also.
Some information for you.
http://www.sportsshooter.com/m...display.html?tid=26638

You can use any card in a regular pci-e 1.0 16 slot

 

[MarcVenice]

AFAIK you don't need a new videocard, all those apps don't use the GPU if I'm not mistaken, but rather heavily rely on the CPU.

 

[450R]

CS4 uses GPU acceleration for canvas zooming and rotation, but that's about it. AFAIK Lightroom doesn't make use of the GPU at all. Unless your viewport is sluggish in Softplan, you probably won't see an improvement there either.

What makes you say you need a better video card?

 

[happy medium]

I think upgrading to 4 gigs of ram might help too.

edit,, never mind

 

[adlep]

You have yourself a decent setup but you do need a better video card.
Just don't spend on it too much, because that s939 cpu will be a limiting factor soon.

In addition, some functions of Adobe PS CS4 are GPU accelerated through Nvidia's CUDA.
Hence, you want to stay with Nvida to take an advantage of that acceleration.

I would recommend BFG GeForce 8800GTS 512MB:
Newegg Link
For $139.00 AR

or EVGA 9800GT 512 MB:
Newegg Link
For $99 AR


Both are good cards, very close to the 9800GTX, 3x faster than your current GPU, with CUDA support, and they are going to work fine with your current PSU.
Source of my claim is here:

Look at the charts

Sell your current card for $20~$30.00 to bring your total upgrade cost down some more...
Good luck..

Significant boost vs. your current card + CUDA support + reasonable price that is way below your budget + reasonable power requirements.
:thumbsup:

Edit:

GPU Accelerated features in CS4

Also, here is the alternative path:

Currently, you can not upgrade your s939 to a better cpu in a cost effective way, however at the moment your current PC is still fine! It is not a top of the line rig, but with those 2 Raptors drives and 4GB of RAM you can still work in CS4 in a comfortable way...
So, wait few more months and do a total system upgrade and move to socket 775 or socket AM2

In the interim, get a card that will be 2.5x faster than your current GPU + CUDA support for CS4 + reasonable price that is way below your budget + low power requirements.

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB
Newegg Link

Price is: $104.00 shipped - $25.00 MiR - $25.00 or so you could get for your current card
= $53.75 for an interim solution that provides for much better performance and CS4 hardware acceleration while you save money for a total system upgrade...?
No?

 

[slatchley]

Thanks for the help. As usual this brings up the bigger question: what would you recommend to upgrade the whole system. I am a newbie when it comes to building, this was my first, but done entirely off of recommendations from sites like this. What of this system could I keep and what would I change out, and what if I want to go the intel route (good idea or bad idea)? I assume some parts could remain, ie case, and what else? And, assuming I am going to upgrade the system, why not just buy a really good card now? I know this is a really open ended question, so thanks in advance.
Also, I see that Nvidia has a new card aimed right at CS4, so, other than the fact that I could never afford it, it seems they must think it would be useful to have major video power.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: slatchley
Also, I see that Nvidia has a new card aimed right at CS4, so, other than the fact that I could never afford it, it seems they must think it would be useful to have major video power.

Perhaps they have spotted an lucrative niche in the market that isn't filled by their other cards.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: slatchley
Also, I see that Nvidia has a new card aimed right at CS4, so, other than the fact that I could never afford it, it seems they must think it would be useful to have major video power.

You're talking about the nVidia Quadro CX, right? For the low starting price of $1999? And that's on top of the ~$2000 sticker for Premiere Pro CS4 itself...


EVGA 9600GSO $50AR+FS

That's the card I now recommend for you, based on knowing more about what you're doing with your system. This card fully supports CUDA so if you get CS4 it should provide acceleration as mentioned above and will actually outperform the more expensive 9600GT suggested earlier (more stream processors so in CUDA applications it's a stronger GPU).

If you want to rebuild you can actually reuse most of your parts, just replace your motherboard, processor and RAM.

e8400 (3GHz, 6MB cache) $165
Asus P5Q Pro $105AR
G.Skill 2x2GB DDR2-800 $55

Total cost with 9600GSO: $375

You could save about $80 by going with the e5200 (2.5GHz, 2MB cache) (making your total upgrade less than $300). Set the fsb to 240 and you've got it running at 3GHz where it would be close to the same performance as the e8400.

 

[adlep]

Originally posted by: betasub

Originally posted by: slatchley
Also, I see that Nvidia has a new card aimed right at CS4, so, other than the fact that I could never afford it, it seems they must think it would be useful to have major video power.

Perhaps they have spotted an lucrative niche in the market that isn't filled by their other cards.

I would say it is baloney. The card is worth no more than a standard 260 GTX, $400.00 at most if you consider 1.5GB of RAM.
Basically, they charge the rest for the software/drive package. It is exactly the same story as with Nvidia's Quadro series.
The quadro cards are not faster than the regular line of GPUs, but they do come with specialized drivers that unlock the power of the GPU in some professional 3d rendering programs.

Is it worth it?
Maybe for some small group of pros that are willing to pay any price to have an edge of the competition?

As usual this brings up the bigger question: what would you recommend to upgrade the whole system. I am a newbie when it comes to building, this was my first, but done entirely off of recommendations from sites like this. What of this system could I keep and what would I change out, and what if I want to go the intel route (good idea or bad idea)? I assume some parts could remain, ie case, and what else?

Intel route is a good idea. The C2D is a fantastic CPU. In regards to your present system, I would replace all of the components honestly, including the RAM which I assume is a DDR and not DDR2?
If you can sell your current rig as it is to someone else who is not a gamer for $300.00 (because of the Raptors and a lot of RAM) and add the additional $400.00 that you were willing to spend, it will give you $650.00 to play with and it will buy you a lot of toys on Newegg.com
On the other hand, if you feel like there is not much wrong with your current system except the video card part of it, keep it for few more months but update the video card.

Honestly, I think that your current PC is still fine, with the exception of the GPU that I would upgrade to a 9 series card in order to get the boost in Adobe Photoshop CS4. I would not get a strong video card at this time, just a budget card which is still more than 2x fast as your current graphics.
Wait few more months - maybe until the end of the year and consider assembling another build and selling your previous one to somebody who is not a gamer.

Edit: The 9600GSO suggested above will work as well! and it will also be more than 2x faster than your current card, bringing the cost of the upgrade (COU) to only about $30 AR if you sell your 7800 GT for $20.00
:thumbsup:

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: slatchley
Antec TruePower 2.0 TP-II 550 550W Power Supply

Bad caps alert!

 

[slatchley]

Thanks all.

"Bad caps alert! " Huh?

 

[Denithor]

That model PSU suffered from Bad Capacitors in some cases.

 

[slatchley]

Aha! I thought maybe I was using cap letters somewhere. LOL