Upgrading the graphics card in my old PC.

[Balrog]

Hi guys,
 

I would like to upgrade my graphics card with one that can play modern/future games very well.

I was thinking of buying the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB.

My current system is old but I prefer to keep it for a few more years if possible.

 

My questions:

1. Is my system (motherboard, CPU, RAM) going to bottleneck the 'Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB' graphics card that I want to buy?

2. How much will it bottleneck the card?
(A little bit of bottle necking is not a problem for me but it should not be too bad.)

3. Maybe there are better options for cards? Maybe I need to just build a totally new PC with latest hardware soon and forget about the upgrade?

My wishes:

My system is still performing very well for desktop work and Adobe photoshop etc. but it just sucks at gaming.
I would like to play games like The witcher 3, Thomb raider, Red Dead Redemption 2, battlefield 5, GTA 5, TES6 (when it arrives) and last but very important: Skyrim SE (heavily modded and with ENB shader effects).
I like to play at 'Ultra' graphics settings as much as possible. On a 1080p monitor. Minimal FPS: 40. but >60 preferred.

My current PC:

* I bought the motherboard, CPU and Graphics card in 2010.
* My brother gave me a spare motherboard and spare CPU (exact same models I have now), so if a component would fail I have a replacement at hand.

Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-890GPA-UD3H-rev-10#ov
Supports AMD AM3 Phenom™ II/ Athlon™ II processors
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
(PCI Express 2.0 standard.)

CPU:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 (Black edition)
(Edit: 4 cores, 3.4 GHz).
There is a huge overpowered heat sink block + fan on top of this processor. So maybe an overclock is an option, but i dont want the risk of unstabalizing the system.

RAM:
Corsair 16GB DDR3 CML16GX3M2A1600C10, running at 1333 MHz.

Power supply:
CoolerMaster SilentPro 1000 Watt (Bronze)
(I know it's too much watt for my system and therefor consuming somewhat too much power because of it.)

Graphics card:
ATI AMD Radeon HD 5700 - 1024MB GDDR5 - (Edit: Meant the HD 5770).
GPU Clock speed: 850 MHz

OS:
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Storage:
Samsung SSD 850 PRO

PC case:
Cooler Master, HAF 932. Good air cooling.

Monitor:
Iiyama PLE2407HDS
Full HD 1080p, 1920 x 1080 pixels

 

 

Thank you for your help.
 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Yeah, there would be a bottleneck there.

 

Even the 8 core FX processors will hold back a 1060; I would recommend upgrading the rest of your system before your GPU.

[Spotty]

2 hours ago, Balrog said:

Power supply:
CoolerMaster SilentPro 1000 Watt (Bronze)
(I know it's too much watt for my system and therefor consuming somewhat too much power because of it.)

It will only consume however much wattage the PC draws. Having a higher wattage PSU doesn't mean that it will draw more wattage from the wall. Though, as you correctly noted it is unnecessary for your current build as your system will only use about 1/4 of that.

It is a 10 year old PSU so it should be replaced when you upgrade the rest of the system anyway.

 

2 hours ago, Balrog said:

My system is still performing very well for desktop work and Adobe photoshop etc. but it just sucks at gaming.
I would like to play games like The witcher 3, Thomb raider, Red Dead Redemption 2, battlefield 5, GTA 5, TES6 (when it arrives) and last but very important: Skyrim SE (heavily modded and with ENB shader effects).
I like to play at 'Ultra' graphics settings as much as possible. On a 1080p monitor. Minimal FPS: 40. but >60 preferred.

You're going to need to buy a console if you want to play Red Dead Redemption 2...

 

Honestly the entire system is quite dated and is going to struggle a lot in games, especially the ones you have listed which are quite intensive to run. If it's within the budget you should be looking at a full system replacement. New CPU, motherboard, RAM (need DDR4 for newer systems), new graphics card, and new PSU since your current one will be 10 years old... You can reuse the SSD, HDD, and case.

 

Here's a quick build list to give you an idea of what sort of budget you could be looking at for such an upgrade.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor	$159.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$64.99 @ Newegg Business
Memory	G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$114.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB AMP! Edition Video Card	$239.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Corsair - CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply	$44.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$624.95
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-11 01:41 EST-0500

 

If you don't want to spend that sort of money on a full system upgrade, then maybe look at a 2nd hand GTX 1060 6GB and grab that. You will still struggle in games due to the older CPU, but you should still see some performance increase from the new graphics card over your current HD5770(?), and when you do eventually upgrade the rest of the system you can carry over the 1060 to the new system.

[Balrog]

Hmm oke, unfortunate that my system is not going to cope so well with the newer cards.

 

Quote

If you don't want to spend that sort of money on a full system upgrade, then maybe look at a 2nd hand GTX 1060 6GB and grab that. You will still struggle in games due to the older CPU, but you should still see some performance increase from the new graphics card over your current HD 5770, and when you do eventually upgrade the rest of the system you can carry over the GTX 1060 6GB to the new system.

Sound like a good idea. But do you think the bottleneck will now be more than 30% wasting of card performance? Or is this something unknown that should be tested by just inserting a modern card like that?

My brother has the GTX 1060 6GB card. Maybe I can ask him to lend me his card for testing purposes? Do you think that is a good idea? I can try to replicate some framerate testing and see how it compares with others on the internet? Then i can get an exact percentage of the bottleneck?
 

 

Or I can buy a good GTX 1060 6GB for 225,- euro (254,- USD) second hand in my town this week. That card has been sitting just 6 months in a CustoMac according to the seller. Comes with receipt and 2 years of warranty still left. "Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 G1 Gaming 6Gb (OC r2.0)". A card that is overclocked by default. I think this will be good value for money?

 

 

So a AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz has the same GHz as my old CPU, but 2 more cores. But I expect it's the architecture and boost clock making the new CPU technology faster? So GHz is somewhat misleading for speed? I heared that was true for graphic cards too.

 

Much thanks for your replies.

 

 

PS.:

7 hours ago, Spotty said:

It will only consume however much wattage the PC draws. Having a higher wattage PSU doesn't mean that it will draw more wattage from the wall. Though, as you correctly noted it is unnecessary for your current build as your system will only use about 1/4 of that.

It is a 10 year old PSU so it should be replaced when you upgrade the rest of the system anyway.

Almost true. Some years back I learned that my 1000 Watt PSU was a bad thing for my power consumption. I think remember Linus talking about it too in one of his videos. I searched Google again and this is what i found:
 

Quote

Contrary to what most people have sad, having too much Wattage *is* a bad thing.

Quote

Most people don't care about poor efficiencies because electricity is cheap. But it is a downside. A 1000 W PSU while only using 100 W's worth.... we'll you might be looking at easily 100 or more Watts being wasted in inefficiency.

Quote

Well ofcourse the corsair is better but what he is saying is that PSU's are less efficient if too low a load is put on them which is true. Like the HX520W seems to be most efficient when using at least half of it's rated wattage.

 

However as he said newer high end PSU's try to deal with the problem but cant eliminate it entirely.

Source: https://www.gamespot.com/forums/pc-mac-linux-society-1000004/is-too-much-wattage-a-bad-thing-28776469/

 

 

 

 

 

[Spotty]

28 minutes ago, Balrog said:

So a AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz has the same GHz as my old CPU, but 2 more cores. But I expect it's the architecture and boost clock making the new CPU technology faster? So GHz is somewhat misleading for speed? I heared that was true for graphic cards too.

Yeah, frequency is misleading. There's been a lot of architectural improvements and IPC (Instructions Per Clock) improvements in the 10 years since the AMD Phenom X4 965. Also the Ryzen 2600 supports SMT (Simultaneous Multi Threading) so it's 6 cores / 12 threads. Support for things such as faster DDR4 memory as well. It's also a lot more power efficient and will be easier to cool.

 

The AMD Phenom ii X4 965 will score about 300 points in Cinebench.
The Ryzen 5 2600 will score about 1300 points in Cinebench.

(according to the random youtube videos I just looked at running the tests with each CPU)

 

28 minutes ago, Balrog said:

Almost true. Some years back I learned that my 1000 Watt PSU was a bad thing for my power consumption. I think remember Linus talking about it too in one of his videos. I searched Google again and this is what i found:

 

Quote

Contrary to what most people have sad, having too much Wattage *is* a bad thing.
Most people don't care about poor efficiencies because electricity is cheap. But it is a downside. A 1000 W PSU while only using 100 W's worth.... we'll you might be looking at easily 100 or more Watts being wasted in inefficiency.

Well ofcourse the corsair is better but what he is saying is that PSU's are less efficient if too low a load is put on them which is true. Like the HX520W seems to be most efficient when using at least half of it's rated wattage.

 

However as he said newer high end PSU's try to deal with the problem but cant eliminate it entirely.

 

Blown out of proportion, though there is a grain of truth to it...

PSUs have efficiency curves and they are often least efficient below 20% load, and most efficient somewhere between 30-70%, though it varies depending on the individual unit.

 

Efficiency for your CoolerMaster SilentPro 1000 Watt (Bronze):

http://www.coolermaster.com/powersupply/power-supplies-by-series/silent-pro-m1000/

 

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=166

 

Your PSU has about 84% efficiency at 20% load (200W) according to CoolerMasters website and JonnyGuru reviews. 81.3% efficiency at 10% load (100W).

For 80+ Bronze rating, a PSU only needs 82% efficiency at 20% load (115V). So at 100W it might only a difference of <1% efficiency between your specific 1000W 80+ Bronze unit and another 500W 80+ Bronze unit. Realistically 1% efficiency isn't going to make a difference to your power bill.

 

... Regardless of this you should still replace the PSU when you build the new system anyway, as it's quite old and won't be designed for modern hardware.

[Balrog]

Thank you for all your information. I forgot about that efficiency curve thing. Now i know what to watch for in the next build. Will be buying Gold or Platinum, maybe even titanium PSU.

For now I'm going to buy that second hand GTX 1060 6GB OC. Hope it will perform at at least 60-70% in my current PC. Fingers crossed

In the next 2-3 years i'm going to build a new PC and invest some good money in it. I will just move the GTX 1060 in that new build then. 
Maybe after 4-5 years I will just buy a better card if necessary.