GPU upgrade

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by blueangleofdeath, Jun 12, 2013.

  1. blueangleofdeath

    I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card but am having a hard time finding one. I'm finding a lot of them are pcie gen 3 but my mobo has gen 2 slots. Can I still use them?

    Thanks

    Tali
  2. insane2170

    The forums I am looking at say that 3rd generation pci using Nvidia cards such as my 650 ti 2gb will not be slowed down in a 2nd generation slot.

    In other words, current 6th gen video cards have no problem running in your 2nd gen slot.

    A 660ti is my recommendation to you. Its around 230$ US.

    If you can get better, go for it. If not, the 650ti is around 160$.

    Don't go lower than that.
  3. x2cygnus

    Yes, PCIE gen 3 is backward compatible with gen 2, so you should be able to use your new GPU quite well.
    However, if you buy a top-notch GPU, it may be underperforming due to an older motherboard that you are using. Don't spend more money than you need to :)

    P.S. I am not talking just about the PCIE connector, but I imagine your CPU and RAM are probably also a bit older, aren't they? Getting a huge monster GPU into that would be a waste...
  4. VikingVR



    Sorry, I hope I'm not being rude, but yes there is a bottleneck. Due to encoding in a PCI 1 or 2 slots, you lose roughly about 20% of bandwidth to the 8b/10b encoding scheme. Given that, max transfer for slot 1 is 200 MB/s and slot 2 is 400 MB/s (after factoring in overhead loss). Since PCIe 3 slots and PCIe 3 cards can communicate natively in the PCIe 3 encoding protocol, overhead is reduced from 20% down to roughly 1.54%, giving you a max transfer of 984.6 MB/s per lane.

    Roughly a PCIe 1 datarate at x16 lanes is equivalent to a PCIe 2 datarate of x8 is equivalent to a PCIe 3 datarate of x4. However, your max transfer at PCIe 3 x4 will be at ~ 3940 MB/s while PCIe 2 x8 will be capped at 3200 MB/s.
  5. ProDogFighter



    Yes, there is a performance difference, but basically none, if any, of today's gpus push past the data limit of PCIe 2.0.
    Data bandwidth is not currently the common bottleneck in today's times. A 660ti will not even get close to reaching this limit, so in all intended purposes, I agree with Insane, the OP has nothing to worry about.
  6. Sliced

    Yes you can use a Gen 3 card in PCI 2.0/2.1 slot.
    You won't notice any difference between 3.0 and 2.0 unless you run multiple cards on a huge screen (1080+)
    However some cards may see a benefit. It will only be a few frames.

    So, if you can afford it then go with the best you can and hopefully you will upgrade to a gen 3 board in the future.
  7. blueangleofdeath

    Thank you for everyone input!! I should have put this before but if it helps any here are my specs of my system http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...10&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&lc=en&product=4324665. Can ATI/AMD GPUs be backwards compatible to? I'm currently thinking about this card http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-752.shtml

    Here is the specs from CCC on my current card that came with the computer. It's actualy a ATI Radeon HD 5770.

    Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by AMD
    Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
    Device ID 68B8
    Vendor ID 1002
    Subsystem ID 6880
    Subsystem Vendor ID 103C
    Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
    Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16
    BIOS Version 012.019.000.004
    BIOS Part Number 113-C01006-104
    BIOS Date 2010/04/12
    Memory Size 1024 MB
    Memory Type GDDR5
    Core Clock in MHz 850 MHz
    Memory Clock in MHz 1200 MHz
    Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 76.8 GByte/s
    Also my screen is 1080p but nothing higher then that.
  8. FreakySmiley

    Please note that uprgrading ur GPU will certainly not result in an FPS increase in this Game. (I wrote because u are asking in this forum.)
  9. blueangleofdeath

    uh...thanks although it's not very helpful.
  10. ProDogFighter

    The point Freaky is TRYING to convey has some merit, especially if you are aiming for a 7790, and somehow you are running a very old cpu, you may find yourself in a CPU bottleneck. You can test this in-game by pressing alt+F.
    For me, in warp gates, and large battles I am always CPU bottle necked, which seems to be the norm. But If you are CPU bottlenecked in open areas, or small battles, you may want to look into a CPU upgrade too.
  11. TheAppl3


    It will unless his processor is what's holding his back and thus far he hasn't given a model for that so you have no reason to assume what you've stated.

    OP, full system specs please?
  12. blueangleofdeath

  13. TheAppl3


    Sorry, didn't see that. A 7790 is a decent complement to a 1090T. A GTX650Ti Boost is better for a similar price, though. As has been said a few times, Gen3 works fine in a Gen2 slot. With a mid-range card, you won't notice any difference between them.
  14. blueangleofdeath

    Sounds good. I was also looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131490 it's still a 7790 but I think the design will allow the most cooling and easy cleaning. I think this card will be better then what I have as this card clocks in at a gig my current card clocks at 850mhz so things should load a little faster and such right?
  15. TheAppl3


    Direct frequency comparisons are mostly useless unless you're talking about otherwise identical cards. The number of cores and various other specifics are also important. 1344 cores at 850MHz is typically much better than 768 at 1000MHz, for example.

    The HD5770 has 800 stream processors & 40 texture units @ 850MHz versus the 7790's 896 stream processors @ 1.03GHz & 56 texture units. The 7790 has around 25% higher memory bandwidth as well. It's certainly a better card, just don't expect a crazy night and day difference. My estimate (and for a much better estimate, compare benchmarks) is a 15-25% gain.

    The theoretical floating-point compute difference is ~1.8TFLOPS for the 7790 vs 1.36TFLOPS for the 5770.

    PowerColor has a 2GB HD7850 here for $155 after a rebate, that might be worth considering. It's a step up over a 7790 and has double the video memory for higher resolutions. The 7790 is certainly very solid at that $115 price point though.

    Also, what do you mean by "load a little faster?" If you mean actual in-game loading screens, not really. The speed at which those progress is primarily limited by the i/o speed of your data storage, i.e. your disk drive.
  16. blueangleofdeath

    Thanks for the suggestion. I think the 7790 is a good bump up from what I have and is a good replacement for the 5770. By faster I meant by programs loading faster and maybe textures.
  17. TheAppl3

    Programs won't load any faster via GPU clock increases unless your current GPU was slow enough to cause a stall after loading while it tried to first render the scene.
  18. BlackDove

    It's true though. And don't worry about PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0. You won't saturate the bus even if you have a 680 in there. You might if you're running multiple GPU's though.

    You probably won't see a difference with the GPU upgrade, as that CPU is pretty old. It's about the same as an old Intel 4 core from the same time(2010).

    Also, be careful what GPU you add, because that power supply is only 460W and it's in a prebuilt PC so it's probably not very good, and I'm guessing the cooling is probably not great on that chassis.

    Also, why not get a 660? You can actually run PhysX with that GPU.
  19. Serpent808

    "Loading times" are improved by the Storage Drive. SSD being the most practical and ideal solution.
  20. FreakySmiley

    I am sorry that i was so few on words, but other have already pointed out that ur CPU is propably the bottleneck. I have a GTX 560 TI and i can play the game on Ultra without any change in FPS in big battles. CPU always limit them. I have Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.7 Ghz so ur 1090T is NOT THAT MUCH better then mine. In Battles with aproximatly 100 peaple i have only 10 - 15 FPS, u may have 5 FPS more or so.. (Last Update Today was decreasing them even more - subjective.)

    Please note that ur CPU is good enough for every other Game though.

    Yours sincerely.