Video card help please

ewoksrule

ewoksrule

Active Member
So I am looking to upgrade my video card. I think my system is fine but the card is pretty weak. I can play WoW but it barely plays Dawn of War 2 and it didn't play Unreal3 this weekend at all. I want a card that can play most of what is out there now and the next round of MMOs and RTS's.

Here is what I think I need:

1) 1gb of ram (I run dual monitors at 1900x1200)
2) Hdmi and DVI outputs - (1 of my monitors only has dvi and other only hdmi...or will it be fine to use a dvi-to-hdmi adapter on one if the card only has dual dvi outputs??)
3) Cost around $100 (less if possible)
4) Low power usage. (HP's tend to have weak powersupplies)

So far I found this card. It seems to fit the bill, but is it a good card? Is it a significant enough improvement over what I have now?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125277

My system specs:
Vista Home Premium 64bit
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @2.4ghz
4gb ram
ATI Radeon 3600 series.
 
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I would go for a 4830..that's what i am running right now..but anything faster and you won't see much benefit due to the cpu not being able to keep the vid card fed. one caveat the 4830 requies aan extra power connector for the card andat least a 350 watt psu(i run a 500)
 
Personally I would not trust a VC that had 1GB RAM for under $200...just sounds too cheap...really you only need 512MB...I am sure there is nothing out there using anywhere near a gig... I have a 8800GTS 512MB ($179.99 on newegg) and I can ran 99% of games at max with no problem...

I would almost say the slow quad core could be at fault...the more cores you have the more speed you need or it isn't helping anything...It might almost help you to "downgrade" to a dual core...
 
OK I will look at the 4830s but what if they only have dual dvi? Will I experiance any loss by having to use a hdmi to dvi converter? My PS is 350w hopefully that will work.

And in regards to 1g ram I was told that for dual monitors with high res 1900x1200+ I should use 1g cards. Is that not accurate?
 
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ewoksrule said:
Also I don't want to spend any extra money, so a new PS or Processor is out of the question. From what I had read the q6600 was a great prosc when I bought it. It received 5 awards and has 3000 5-star ratings on Newegg? You really think I should downgrade to a dual?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017
Click to expand...

I am not saying it is a bad CPU, it would just be better for you to use a dual core, it would use less power and be a bit faster...by increasing your cores, but sitting at a low speed (2.4ghz) causes nothing but a slower system... I did some research on CPUs because I was wanting a quad core because it was the new "thing", and found out if you are looking at the same speed, like 2.4 as an example, the fastest and performance you will get from a 2.4 is single core, followed by dual core, followed by the quad... All you are doing with more cores is splitting the speed you already have... If you want to increase your performance and are not running 4 to 5 full screen games at a time, a dual core 2.4 will be much faster than a quad core... A friend of mine said dual core is good for anyone better than quad unless you are like him and running 4 instances of WoW at a time... So if you are not using 4 instances of WoW or any other game, the dual core will out perform the quad...in order to have a better quad you would need it to be faster...much faster...at least 3ghz...before it would out perform a 2.4ghz dual for basic gaming (one instance)...

This is how I understand it...if someone knows more and I am misunderstanding something...please help me to understand...
 
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XionTawa said:
This is how I understand it...if someone knows more and I am misunderstanding something...please help me to understand...
Click to expand...

For the most part each core is a separate processor mated to the same die. If your running at 2Ghz then each core will be humming along at that speed. That means that in a properly optimized program you could see 2x the performance in a dual over a single and in a quad over a dual (assuming of course you don't hit another bottleneck besides processing power).
 
The problems with dual/quad core CPUs is that programs have to take advantage of them. Windows does some thread-delegation of its own, but not much. If programs aren't optimized to use multiple cores, you won't see much of a difference, especially going from dual to quad. I do recommend dual cores to people just because windows can make fairly efficient use of a dual core, but a quad is mostly unnecessary right now.
 
OK so back to the post

I like the look of this card, but it says I will need at least 450w PS and mine is 350w. I did notice that PowerSupplies are cheaper then I thought. What are your thoughts on these items?

VideoCard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102822

PowerSupply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817148027
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153028

I am reading a lot of comments that the 4770 is a better card to go with as it uses less power/quieter/and slightly better performance. It has the ddr5 instead of ddr3 but it has 128bus instead of the 256...hmmm
 
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That looks like a nice one but is it worth the $35 extra? Id rather not pay that if I didn't have to.
 
I had issues with connectors on my old one, but this one has all the connectors I needed, and they are well designed...
 
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ewoksrule said:
That looks like a nice one but is it worth the $35 extra? Id rather not pay that if I didn't have to.
Click to expand...

The biggest problem with power supplies is when you have a proprietary case from a vendor like HP (which you mention in your first post). Sometimes their PSUs have a different form factor from a generic PSU. I had that problem upgrading the PSU in my DELL and had to make some case modifications to secure the PSU properly. Depending on your case, the power cord input or voltage rocker could be blocked by the frame or the screw holes could be in different positions. So do some research on the PSU and make sure it is a fit.
 
ahh that's a good point (another reason why I didn't want to have to upgrade the PS) Too bad HP is so cheap on the PS. 350w is weaksauce
 
ewoksrule said:
ahh that's a good point (another reason why I didn't want to have to upgrade the PS) Too bad HP is so cheap on the PS. 350w is weaksauce
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Not necessarily cheap, but efficient. Think about it from their point of view: 350w is plenty for the hardware that they put in, and the majority of people won't change that hardware. So not only is it cheaper for them to put the 350w in, but it is also a lot more efficient and environmentally friendly. Which is a good thing. :p
 
XionTawa said:
Personally I would not trust a VC that had 1GB RAM for under $200...just sounds too cheap...really you only need 512MB...I am sure there is nothing out there using anywhere near a gig... I have a 8800GTS 512MB ($179.99 on newegg) and I can ran 99% of games at max with no problem...

I would almost say the slow quad core could be at fault...the more cores you have the more speed you need or it isn't helping anything...It might almost help you to "downgrade" to a dual core...
Click to expand...

no need to reduce the cores..source is now multithreaded and many other games are following suit. It's shifting form raw clock to how many cores you avhe in the winders world..finally. also the price isn't a big deal anymore. 1 gig of vram is overkill on a midrange gpu..however once you get into crosfire/sli then it's becomes useable. YOur analogy about single cores being more efficient is not true anymore with more and more things becoming multi-threaded in the windows world(linux still rules that roost though(). Take this example on a quad core system(mine):

instlal firefox and then open up..say..10 tabs at the same time(easy to do just open a bookmark group in separate tabs). FF is single threaded so one core will get nailed and it takes nearly two minutes for all of them to load.

install google chorme which is nearly 100% multi-threaded and do the same thing...it takes less than half..nearly 75% less time. All 4 cores get used. a faster dual core would not catch this and a single core has no chance. The opnly way a dual core could have a prayer is to double my clock speed(2.4 ghz per core) and match or exceed the cache configuration and memory configuration. Apples to apples multi-cores is where it's at and where it's going...stick with the quad..you'll be upgrading your cpu much later than those who stayed or went dual core.
 
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Hescominsoon said:
no need to reduce the cores..source is now multithreaded and many other games are following suit. It's shifting form raw clock to how many cores you avhe in the winders world..finally. also the price isn't a big deal anymore. 1 gig of vram is overkill on a midrange gpu..however once you get into crosfire/sli then it's becomes useable. YOur analogy about single cores being more efficient is not true anymore with more and more things becoming multi-threaded in the windows world(linux still rules that roost though(). Take this example on a quad core system(mine):

instlal firefox and then open up..say..10 tabs at the same time(easy to do just open a bookmark group in separate tabs). FF is single threaded so one core will get nailed and it takes nearly two minutes for all of them to load.

install google chorme which is nearly 100% multi-threaded and do the same thing...it takes less than half..nearly 75% less time. All 4 cores get used. a faster dual core would not catch this and a single core has no chance. The opnly way a dual core could have a prayer is to double my clock speed(2.4 ghz per core) and match or exceed the cache configuration and memory configuration. Apples to apples multi-cores is where it's at and where it's going...stick with the quad..you'll be upgrading your cpu much later than those who stayed or went dual core.
Click to expand...

Okay...your example makes since, but I must question it...You say 10 tabs in FF takes a while to load but on Chrome it does not, I load the same 9 tabs every time I sit on my computer and it takes about 3-5 secs before FF is up and loaded every page, same with Chrome...I just want to know if 3.0 changed FF, or is FF running that slow for you...?

Also, so, dual core means: 2.4 | 2.4 - but only both of them are used if the program supports using 2 cores... quad core: 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 - programs will only take advantage of as many cores as it supports... is this correct?
 
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XionTawa said:
Also, so, dual core means: 2.4 | 2.4 - but only both of them are used if the program supports using 2 cores... quad core: 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 - programs will only take advantage of as many cores as it supports... is this correct?
Click to expand...

The OS will have ~300 threads active at any point in time. Most of those will be idle (and wont consume resources). A program that can use multiple cores will either be multithreaded (meaning it has code running in parallel on the same process) or of the forking variety (where you have multiple programs doing the same thing, which is much more common in servers and batch processing). Chrome is an example of forking, while firefox uses many threads (~1 per tab).

- A process will always have at least 1 thread
- A process may have multiple threads

Because the OS swaps out threads and not processes [in multitasking] it is possible to run multiple programs to max out all of the available CPU power. For example you could encode a video on two CPUs and say watch another video without major degradation of your performance on a quad core.
 
This deviates from the intial specific question a bit, but out of curiosity, is the average gamer better off with a:

Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

or

Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

In a nutshell is it better to have more memory and a slower bit speed (1GB and 128 bit) or half the memory and faster bit speed (512MB and 256 bit)?

If my specifics matter, I'm running XP Pro on a dual core 3Ghz machine with 2GB of RAM.

Thanks for your input :)
 
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