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Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Pete-MK (Elite Donator) posted this on Monday, 13th April 2020, 16:47

Not looking for anything that's going to blow anyone's socks off, but looking at the specs of my current HD5870 tells me there aren't that many upcoming releases that will be happy trying to operate on 1gb of RAM, even with the tiny amount of overclocking that's possible.

Looking at something like a RX470/570, with 4gb of ram, or equivalent specs, and ebay/Amazon shows me they're around the £60/70 mark. Just wondered if anyone had any experience with this range of card, or recommendations.

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RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Gareth Williams (Elite) posted this on Monday, 13th April 2020, 18:52

I have an RX 570 4GB (Sapphire Pulse). I was holding onto my old GTX 770, hoping to upgrade once the next generation of ray tracing cards are released. Sadly, the poor thing couldn't face another year of torture and finally threw in the towel last year.

So I opted for the 570 as a cheap, temporary replacement, but tbh I think I might just hang onto this for a while. It's a fantastic little 1080p card and runs quiet as a whisper (unlike the GTX 770, which was like having a Rolls Royce jet engine in my case).

Mine was a steal at £120, so £70 would be amazing value. I'm guessing that is the pre-owned price, though? I can't find any new models for that price.




RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Pete-MK (Elite Donator) posted this on Wednesday, 15th April 2020, 01:07

I bit the bullet and opted for the slightly less powerful 470 at £70. It's a refurbished sapphire, and it's just the 4gb memory I'm after more than anything else. The card I have now is more than capable of running GTAV & the recent Tomb Raiders with medium specs at 40-50 fps, but as I mentioned, upcoming titles are going to need something with a lot more oomph just to get off the ground.

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RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Pete-MK (Elite Donator) posted this on Wednesday, 15th April 2020, 15:25

Welp, issues already. Arrived this afternoon, which was impressive, but after cracking the case, uninstalling the old GFX card drivers and installing the new card, nothing. No post screen, and no keyboard or mouse either. There's power to the card as the fans are spinning, but with no active input devices and no monitor output, I'm completely in the dark. 

Putting the old card back in works just fine, so I know my tower's OK. I've tried running a VGA cable to an old VGA monitor from the mobo direct, but still nowt.

EDIT: schoolboy error. My MB only supports PCI-e v2.0 and the card is v3.0. D'oh indeed

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This item was edited on Wednesday, 15th April 2020, 16:41

RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Gareth Williams (Elite) posted this on Wednesday, 15th April 2020, 16:54

A 3.0 card should be backwards compatible with a 2.0 slot.

I think you might have encountered the same issue that I had. At the time, I was running an old 3570K/Z77 system from 2013, and the motherboard had not received any BIOS updates since then. My issue was exactly as you described and the only solution I found was to run the new GPU in the lower 4x slot. Sadly, this blocked some of my SATA ports, so I had to do without some of my hard drives until Christmas, when I upgraded the rest of the system. I thought it was just because I am cursed, but it seems to be a common issue :\

If you have a lower 4X PCI-E slot, try that. It worked fine for me and the performance didn't suffer too much.



RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Pete-MK (Elite Donator) posted this on Wednesday, 15th April 2020, 17:01

Just done a little more research and discovered what you mention about the backwards compatibility. Due to the layout of my rig I've been running my gards in the lower 4x slot since day one, but with some re-jigging I might be able to bump it up to the x16 (it blocks off 2 smaller slots but I've never used them anyway). Might get me somewhere, might not.



The MB's bios hasn't been updated since 2011, I've found one dated 2012 but no way of downloading, and any semblence of support from Foxconn (who installed nets around their factory roof to stop the workers committing suicide - allegedly) is a distant memory, so installing any update would probably be akin to a game of Russian Roulette

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This item was edited on Wednesday, 15th April 2020, 17:02

RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Pete-MK (Elite Donator) posted this on Thursday, 16th April 2020, 14:16

No joy, still nothing. Interestingly, when i hold down the power button to shut down, it turns off instantly, instead of the usual 5 seconds or so. This tells me the OS isn;t booting either. i just wish I had some video output so I could see what was going on

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RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

sj (Elite) posted this on Thursday, 16th April 2020, 14:48

Is the PSU up to it?

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We will pay the price but we will not count the cost..

RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

RJS (undefined) posted this on Thursday, 16th April 2020, 14:57

I had this issue with a Radeon card and motherboard, swapping the motherboard fixed the problem. But I'm not sure that's the answer you want to hear. :(


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RE: Looking to upgrade graphics card on a budget

Pete-MK (Elite Donator) posted this on Thursday, 16th April 2020, 16:31

Quote:
sj says...
"Is the PSU up to it? "

I'd hope so. Had to buy a new one fairly recently as the last one popped.

The GFX card's specs are on the ebay page, but doesn't specifically mention power rquirements

  • Chipset:AMD Radeon RX 470
  • Bus Standard:PCI Express 3.0
  • Video Memory:4GB
  • Memory Type:GDDR5
  • Engine Clock:1143MHz
  • Boost Clock:1260MHz
  • Memory Clock:1750MHz
  • Memory Clock Effective:7000MHz
  • Memory Interface:256-bit
  • Stream Processing Units:2048
  • Max. Resolution:3840x2160
  • DVI-D Port(s) - Dual-link:1
  • HDMI 2.0 Port(s):2
  • DisplayPort 1.4:2
  • DirectX Support:12.0
  • OpenGL Support:4.5
  • Gross Weight:1.10Kg

And this is my PSU




Quote:
Robee J Shepherd says...
"swapping the motherboard fixed the problem."

Not outside the realms of possibility.

EDIT: according to this page, the power consumption is 175W. Looking at the PSU it seems more than capable.

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This item was edited on Thursday, 16th April 2020, 16:47

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