Is 20 yr old gpu better than modern igpu?

[Fat Cat11997]

Long story short, im wondering if taking a super old gpu and putting it in my pc would be better than the igpu. Im rocking a 7700x, and as for the gpu, its coming from a 20 yr old prebuild which was around mid end for the time according to my dad.

[Eigenvektor]

The biggest issue with such an old card is drivers. The drivers will be old, without support for newer titles/APIs, and most like not support Windows 10/11.

 

Which card is it? We can't exactly compare if you don't provide any information about the card, other than its age. The iGPU in the 7700x is extremely weak, so maybe. If you want a CPU with a usable iGPU, you need to a get a variant with a G at the e.g. R7 8700G.

[RONOTHAN##]

It'll depend in the exact old GPU, but since it's likely to be missing a ton of driver support, it's unlikely to be faster than an iGPU. Neither will be good though, the only desktop iGPUs powerful enough to game are the Ryzen 5000G and 8000G series. 

[Fat Cat11997]

9 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

The biggest issue with such an old card is drivers. The drivers will be old, without support for newer titles/APIs, and most like not support Windows 10/11.

 

Which card is it? We can't exactly compare if you don't provide any information about the card, other than its age. The iGPU in the 7700x is extremely weak, so maybe. If you want a CPU with a usable iGPU, you need to a get a variant with a G at the e.g. R7 8700G.

Idk cuz i havent opened it yet. For some reason, these old pcs are really hard to open; i took off all the screws that visibly held the panel back, and the panel was still stuck. Im not even sure if the gpu would display what model it is, and any physcial spec sheets that came with the pc are long gone. Idk even know the name of the pc I just know that it's made by hp.

[Spotty]

The iGPU will be better.

Better driver support - Will have drivers for modern operating systems and support for DirectX/Vulkan/etc

Better encoding support - Will support video encoding and decoding allowing the iGPU to handle video decode like when streaming video from Youtube, Twitch, etc. Older GPUs won't support the GPU decode for modern codecs.

Better VRAM - The iGPU will be able to use assigned system memory for VRAM and you could assign more memory to VRAM. The old GPU will likely only have 64-128MB memory which would probably be DDR2 based and much slower than the iGPUs DDR5 memory even when it has to go through the PCIe interconnect to access it.

 

Also, is the old card PCIe? 20+ year old cards could possibly still be AGP, though that would be around the time PCIe was introduced so it's possible it's PCIe.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

Idk cuz i havent opened it yet. For some reason, these old pcs are really hard to open; i took off all the screws that visibly held the panel back, and the panel was still stuck.

Give the side panel a glancing slap towards the way it would slide off.

[Fat Cat11997]

4 minutes ago, Spotty said:

The iGPU will be better.

Better driver support - Will have drivers for modern operating systems and support for DirectX/Vulkan/etc

Better encoding support - Will support video encoding and decoding allowing the iGPU to handle video decode like when streaming video from Youtube, Twitch, etc. Older GPUs won't support the GPU decode for modern codecs.

Better VRAM - The iGPU will be able to use assigned system memory for VRAM and you could assign more memory to VRAM. The old GPU will likely only have 64-128MB memory which would probably be DDR2 based and much slower than the iGPUs DDR5 memory even when it has to go through the PCIe interconnect to access it.

 

Also, is the old card PCIe? 20+ year old cards could possibly still be AGP, though that would be around the time PCIe was introduced so it's possible it's PCIe.

 

 

Give the side panel a glancing slap towards the way it would slide off.

Wow, that actually helped opened the pc! Do you know how to remove a gpu without damaging it?

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

22 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

Long story short, im wondering if taking a super old gpu and putting it in my pc would be better than the igpu. Im rocking a 7700x, and as for the gpu, its coming from a 20 yr old prebuild which was around mid end for the time according to my dad.

I mean a 20-year-old card, we're talking mid-late 2000s. You'd be lucky if the damn thing even outputted to 1080P to be honest. And even then, it'll probably struggle just doing that. 

[Spotty]

4 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

Wow, that actually helped opened the pc! Do you know how to remove a gpu without damaging it?

Unscrew the GPU from the rear bracket and then push/lift the retention clip on the motherboard slot to release the card.

 

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I mean a 20-year-old card, we're talking mid-late 2000s. You'd be lucky if the damn thing even outputted to 1080P to be honest. And even then, it'll probably struggle just doing that. 

Also a good point that I missed. Lack of HDMI/DisplayPort connectors. A 20 year old graphics card will most likely only have VGA and DVI output.

[8tg]

If you’re actually talking 2004, no. Anything that old simply doesn’t have driver support, or even api support for anything modern these days.

For the others in this discussion, GeForce 6 series cards from 2004 have DVI-I so they can use hdmi or DisplayPort adapters. 
I think there are some GeForce 6 drivers new enough where the cards will function partially on at least windows 8.1, though windows 10 support is hit and miss.

But just overall performance wise, even HD 620 from 2016 performs like an 8800 GTX. Modern igpus are substantially faster than older high end dedicated cards. It isn’t until you get to around the GTX 285 that the card would outperform something like iris xe, let alone amd's modern APUs. And still that’s hard limited by driver support.

[Fat Cat11997]

1 hour ago, Eigenvektor said:

The biggest issue with such an old card is drivers. The drivers will be old, without support for newer titles/APIs, and most like not support Windows 10/11.

 

Which card is it? We can't exactly compare if you don't provide any information about the card, other than its age. The iGPU in the 7700x is extremely weak, so maybe. If you want a CPU with a usable iGPU, you need to a get a variant with a G at the e.g. R7 8700G.

It is the almighty, amazing, powerful, efficient, 8k destroyer, 3DForce mx-4000Twins!!

[Alex Atkin UK]

55 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

It is the almighty, amazing, powerful, efficient, 8k destroyer, 3DForce mx-4000Twins!!

An S3 card in AGP form?  How exotic.

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

An S3 card in AGP form?  How exotic.

Which means it won't even fit into a modern motherboard, that will most likely only have PCIe slots

[Winterlight]

Short answer no. Even 10 year old GPU is worse due they basically can't run anything due lack of support DX11, DX12 and this days basically no one create games on DX9 is dead. Now even DX11 almost dead this days DX12 support is must. Basically anything below GTX 1xxx series is dead GPU in this days and even GTX 1xxx series is almost dead few more year and it will become usless.

[venomtail]

iGPU's are getting so competitive they're beating some GPU's from a few years ago let alone ones that's 20+ years old.

[Salted Spinach]

Sell it as a rare antique or something

 

Idk how much it will/can go for, or if anyone will even be interested

[WiscoMetro]

An S3 card whoa, I have a Pentium 3 Toshiba laptop with 2MB S3 Savage graphics adapter!

 

As to the question at hand I tested for you with what I have. I have a 20 year old AGP NVidia 7600 GS which can struggle through Fallout 3/New Vegas on XGA low settings. For the iGPU contestant was a dell thin and light with no GPU and a i7-7600U that I'm trying to sell on craigslist.

 

Just given 20 years of R&D I was expecting the iGPU to win but WOAH. Fallout New Vegas autoselected 1080 High settings on it and seemed quite good just quickly exploring the Goodsprings region.

 

Turning the battle fully mobile and 5 years newer, my daily driver laptop I've had for many years has a Quadro 770M and can play FNV at 1080p medium. The 5 year old iGPU honestly trounces even that. Like it might be only like GT 730 level performance or something, but I was very much coming from a mindset of "no dedicated GPU = limited to playing minesweeper". Not the case at all it seems anymore. Anything that a 20 year old GPU can do, a 5 year old iGPU will blow it out of the water in comparison!

 

 

5 hours ago, Winterlight said:

Now even DX11 almost dead this days DX12 support is must. Basically anything below GTX 1xxx series is dead GPU in this days and even GTX 1xxx series is almost dead few more year and it will become usless.

Unless you need DX12 I disagree, my Quadro K4200 (GTX 670 equivalent) remains quite a capable card, but I am enjoying my new RTX 3060 regardless .

[Fat Cat11997]

7 hours ago, Salted Spinach said:

Sell it as a rare antique or something

 

Idk how much it will/can go for, or if anyone will even be interested

You can still buy this gpu new for some reason, and the card goes for $30 USD on ebay