Choosing a GPU upgrade

[AaronS6789]

I've had an HP prebuilt as my main pc for 5 years now, little did I know that my father had modified it before I had gotten it. He put in a 430 W PSU and a Radeon HD 5570, but now that it's 2020, I'm starting to really feel the age of the system as I try to run newer games. So now I'm looking for a GPU upgrade, but power consumption seems to vary with every review of every GPU I choose, so I want to know: what can I use in this system: 

CPU: Phenom II X4 955

Mobo: Some proprietary shit

RAM: 4x2 Gb DDR3 1600

HDD: WD Caviar Green 5400 RPM 1.5 Tb

PSU: Thermaltake 430W

Misc: 1x120mm fan

[Snowarch]

well, an ssd may get you a few more frames. increased laptop my laptop by by 5-7. another thing, check your system's current watt usage. posted 2 links. pc part picker shows wattage asyou add parts, 2nd one is a csu calculator. posted 2 for accuracy. incase a graphics card is overclocked by a board or os the wattage can vary so thats why you see such diffrence likely. more watts than needed isnt harmful as long as the psu isn't dying or something, having something like, say 350 watts used by system and a 370 watt psu would either throttle. so knowing if you have the gpu spare watts may help.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/

https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

[TwilightRavens]

Realistically I wouldn’t go above a GTX 1650S as you’ll be bottlenecked by the cpu pretty hard, even then you will still have a bottleneck on that card, if you want AMD then probably a RX 5500XT.

 

If you want to save a bit and don’t mind shopping used you couldn’t go wrong with a GTX 1060 (6GB) or even a 1070 (though you’ll be cpu limited), or maybe an RX 570, RX 580 or 590 if you’d prefer AMD. All should be under $200 USD nowadays. I would suggest a Vega 56 but honestly that PSU scares me so I couldn’t in good conscience recommend a Vega card.

[AaronS6789]

Well I've found a craigslist listing for a 7970, but I'm questioning whether or not my psu could handle it, those were pretty power hungry cards.

I've used outervision and pcpp, but they are both showing different wattages - pcpp shows 427 and outervision shows 576. I'd rather not have to buy a new card unless I'm building a new system 

[AaronS6789]

If I can persuade the owner to just let me take it (its been up for a month with no offers) then could I try to limit the power it consumes?

I've only messed with stuff like afterburner once, and that was to boost the core clock and the memory clock on my 5570 so that gta v would run better at 720p

[Gaires]

10 minutes ago, AaronS6789 said:

Well I've found a craigslist listing for a 7970, but I'm questioning whether or not my psu could handle it, those were pretty power hungry cards.

I've used outervision and pcpp, but they are both showing different wattages - pcpp shows 427 and outervision shows 576. I'd rather not have to buy a new card unless I'm building a new system 

You should be able to get rx 470 or gtx 1060 3gb models cheaply, just make sure your psu has the needed pci cable.

[AaronS6789]

shit, I forgot about that

[AaronS6789]

Well I've got a 6 pin power connector and a listing for a strix 470 at just 80 bucks, gonna go with that, thanks for your recommendations

[GreyestGoat]

On 3/28/2020 at 1:43 PM, TwilightRavens said:

Realistically I wouldn’t go above a GTX 1650S as you’ll be bottlenecked by the cpu pretty hard, even then you will still have a bottleneck on that card, if you want AMD then probably a RX 5500XT.

 

If you want to save a bit and don’t mind shopping used you couldn’t go wrong with a GTX 1060 (6GB) or even a 1070 (though you’ll be cpu limited), or maybe an RX 570, RX 580 or 590 if you’d prefer AMD. All should be under $200 USD nowadays. I would suggest a Vega 56 but honestly that PSU scares me so I couldn’t in good conscience recommend a Vega card.

That CPU would bottleneck even an RX 460.

[yinhongfei626]

Try GTX1650/GTX1660/GTX1660Ti，no higher than RTX2060 or you need to upgrade your PSU,by the way look at the PCI-E cable on your PSU,see if it has a 6Pin or 8Pin connector

[Guest]

Honestly you don't have much headroom for improvement, and even then most of the power you buy in a new GPU especially with the next generation of games is going to seriously handicap your GPU anyway as your CPU tries to crunch through everything it gets backlogged with.

 

I'd throw the whole thing out / repurpose it and buy a new system.

If that's outside of your budget, tell us what your budget is, it may be worth buying second hand components and upgrading it inside of your case as a dirty cheap solution to get you by.

 

For example you could probably grab a 1080ti, older gen i7 and mobo for around 1k

Or you could go 1070 with an older gen i5 for like 700-800 or so perhaps

Might need to upgrade PSU but that wouldn't cost much second hand

 

Just my 2c

[AaronS6789]

This is strictly a gpu upgrade, I know the limitations of my cpu, that's part of the reason I'm limiting the budget to 100. I've found multiple listings for RX 470's online for under 90 with shipping and they use the 6 pin connector that my psu is limited to. All i'm trying to do is get >30 fps in GTA V @ 1080p Ultra OK?

[AaronS6789]

The only question I have is about installation, the back of my pc has those slot covers for the gpu, but I don't know how they would be removed as they dont have screws. The product from HP is the p6740f, if any of you can tell me what to do with the dual slot gpu I'm going to have to install, that would be great.

[i_build_nanosuits]

1 hour ago, AaronS6789 said:

The only question I have is about installation, the back of my pc has those slot covers for the gpu, but I don't know how they would be removed as they dont have screws. The product from HP is the p6740f, if any of you can tell me what to do with the dual slot gpu I'm going to have to install, that would be great.

Most of the times those are just bend and rip off metal things...work on it a bit and it'll come off

[AaronS6789]

I saw that it could bend, but how do I fit the I/O through there while placing the card in the slot?