Will new Graphics card for this old system help?

[neo.nirav]

I have this old AMD based system. It's working fine as normal home PC. However it hangs/skips frames while playing HD Movies/videos

Will new graphics card help?

System Specifications:

I. Processor/CPU: AMD Opteron 180 (Socket 939)

II. Current Graphics Card: Deltachrome IGP (shared memory, max 128MB), Asus A8V-VM mother board

III. Display Resolution: 1366 X 768


IV. Power Supply Unit Specification: Local brand, 400W

V. Case Specifications: iBall ATX tower, no cooling fan inside case


Purchase Details:

I. Budget?: 2000 INR (36-40 USD)

II. Any particular preferences: No

III. Do you plan to have any Multi-GPU solutions such as Crossfire or SLI? No


IV. Have you previously looked at a product(s) which you feel would fit your needs? Yes.
(1) HIS AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5450 1 GB DDR3
(2) Sapphire AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5450 1 GB DDR3
(3) HIS AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6450 GPU 1 GB DDR3
(4) Sapphire AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6450 1 GB DDR3


V. What are your needs for this GPU? Which games(If any)do you intend to play? If you have this information at hand, what are the desired detail levels? only HD Movies, No Games


VI. Do you plan on overclocking the card you intend to purchase? No


Additional Notes

I have 4 GB DDR1 (DDR400) RAM (4 x 1 GB)

thanks,
Nirav

 

[Jaydip]

Your MB doesn't support PCIE 2.0 so ask your local retailer if you can get something older.

 

[Jimzz]

Of those I would get the 6450, has UVD3 for decoding videos. All 6450's should perform about the same so go by price not name.
But that board is a VIA chipset so I am not sure if it will take a newwer gen card. Do you have another video card you can test the board with? Also make sure it has the newwest Bios.
It should work, but I would be careful as it might not.

 

[NTMBK]

I second Jimzz, if it works with that motherboard then the HD6450 is your best option. Let us know how it goes!

 

[neo.nirav]

Well, I checked with Asus Support about A8V-VM PCIe slot version and got surprise response that it's 1.0 but it'll support all PCIe graphics cards!
So, just purchased HIS AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5450 1 GB DDR3 (PCIe 2.1 card) and it's working perfectly fine! :whiste:

 

[Jimzz]

^

Thats great news and glad it worked. Sure bet the system feels much faster now, esp in videos.

 

[SPBHM]

Your MB doesn't support PCIE 2.0 so ask your local retailer if you can get something older.

that's the beauty of PCIE, it should be perfectly fine, even pcie 3.0 boards should work, most compatibility issues I've seen seemed to be more specific to some MBs and cards, and could probably be fixed on the firmware level I think.


6450 would definitely improve things when you can use the hardware video decoding capabilities

 

[Jaydip]

Indeed it will work but will be severely bottlenecked.

 

[Arkaign]

Indeed it will work but will be severely bottlenecked.

PCI Express 1.0 is actually still quite fast, and won't bottleneck a 6450 whatsoever. It's 250MB/sec per lane, times 16 lanes. 2.0 pumps that up to 500, and 3.0 pumps it up to close to 1000.

IOW, a 16X 1.0 slot will run like a 2.0 slot in 8x mode (as many did with SLI/CF on many recent mainboards).

As a matter of fact, testing showed that even a GTX480 was only bottlenecked by 8% being cut down to 1.0 spec (pcie 2.0 x8 = pcie 1.0 x16 exactly) :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696-9.html

Cards of lower speed, such as GTX460, 6770, etc, are closer to the 1% range as they have dramatically lower throughput. 6450 is so slow it's irrelevant to 1.0 vs. 2.0 vs. 3.0. And speaking of 3.0, look at this :

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012..._gpu_gaming_performance_review/8#.UXVRnMpMdiM

Pretty much nil even with a 680 (most of the very small gains were noted to be due to the slightly higher IPC of Ivy vs. Sandy in that comparion).

PCIe is overrated as something to be really concerned about unless you're running multiple GPUs on high end setups.

 

[blastingcap]

PCI Express 1.0 is actually still quite fast, and won't bottleneck a 6450 whatsoever. It's 250MB/sec per lane, times 16 lanes. 2.0 pumps that up to 500, and 3.0 pumps it up to close to 1000.

IOW, a 16X 1.0 slot will run like a 2.0 slot in 8x mode (as many did with SLI/CF on many recent mainboards).

As a matter of fact, testing showed that even a GTX480 was only bottlenecked by 8% being cut down to 1.0 spec (pcie 2.0 x8 = pcie 1.0 x16 exactly) :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696-9.html

Cards of lower speed, such as GTX460, 6770, etc, are closer to the 1% range as they have dramatically lower throughput. 6450 is so slow it's irrelevant to 1.0 vs. 2.0 vs. 3.0. And speaking of 3.0, look at this :

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012..._gpu_gaming_performance_review/8#.UXVRnMpMdiM

Pretty much nil even with a 680 (most of the very small gains were noted to be due to the slightly higher IPC of Ivy vs. Sandy in that comparion).

PCIe is overrated as something to be really concerned about unless you're running multiple GPUs on high end setups.

This is correct. The high-end gaming cards need more throughput; low-end cards not so much.