Graphics card advice sought

[Mauricette Morane]

About 3 years ago, I was using a HP Pavilion PC, until the graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT) went dead. I’m now looking at getting a new graphics card for it, with at least similar specs, or better if I can afford it.

However, I’m a little bit worried that whatever graphics card I’m going to get is going to fail again – should I be concerned, or was it just bad luck? Would getting a card with two fans be worth it? (I'm assuming the card failed because of overheatingm though I don't know for sure.)

Can anybody recommend a decent mid price (say no more than $75/ £50 - well, that's my idea of mid price!) card? Or is that too dependent on the rest of the system? I’m looking at cards, but I have absolutely no basis on which to evaluate them (beyond looking at the dimensions to make sure it’ll fit inside the case, and the power supply requirements, and a compatible connection to the motherboard)! How do you choose a graphics card???

Is http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/ up to date? what about gpu_table.txt, is that up to date? I could start there if they are.

 

Many many thanks in advance!

[Etheria Parrott]

I don't know where you live but in the UK, EVGA GPUs are guaranteed for 10 years. If it will fit and if you could afford it, I would recommend a nvidia EVGA GTX 780ti. The price is lower now the GTX 970 is out but its performance is supposed to be the same.

In your price range and what will definitely fit being smaller in size, is a Nvidia Geforce GTX 750.

[filipsimo12]

that deppends of rest system you have

 

HP pavilion telling nothing (mostly crappy build cheap office PC´s not made for gaming)

what CPU,motherboard, ram and mostly important Power supply you have

if you dont know, download software called Piriform Speecy, and you will have list of your components

If your cpu is to weak, is no point buying high end graphic card, because will be bottleneck.

 

[Ren Toxx]

While others offer graphics cards suggestions, I’ll tell you that there’s a way to kind of “extend” your card’s life, by essentially “throttling it” when the extra mile isn’t needed. Now, many modern cards have their own protection and tools against overheating, but I’m talking about viewer-side settings; most of them are available as Debug Settings, but some viewers may let you access some of them through their normal preferences or even, as Firestorm, add them to a customizable Quick Settings panel.

First, there’s making sure it won’t ever give you more FPS that your monitor could show anyway due to its refresh rate. This is accomplished by setting DisableVerticalSync to “FALSE”.

Then there’s the throttle for when the viewer is either minimized or at least not the active window (for example, if you’re browsing the Internet externally); at that moment you probably don’t need the viewer to give you anywhere near the full FPS your graphics card is capable of, and something along the lines of 1-2 FPS would be more than enough to make sure everything of importance (IMs, and a leisurely refresh of in-world view) still comes through. You achieve this by setting BackgroundYieldTime to a rather high value... you might want to experiment, I use a value of 600 (milliseconds).

 

There’s also moments when, even if actively using the viewer, you might want to throttle the FPS to a level that, while still usable, doesn’t make the card go into overdrive; this will be especially true for graphically laggy sims where, even if it’s able to give you for example 50 FPS, it starts going noisy and hot, and perhaps you could throttle it down to a more manageable but still perfectly usable 20 FPS. This may differ depending on the viewer, but Firestorm has a debug setting called MaxFPS that, if used along toggling on the “Limit Framerate” checkbox in Preferences > Graphics, works exactly as intended.

 

And then there’s numerous other settings that you can toggle on and off depending on the situation; Linden Lab is actually dabbling with this idea of different profiles of graphics settings to change them “live” (without needing to relog), but until they implement it, it’ll depend on what viewer you use. Again, Firestorm has perhaps the most convenience about this, with its Quick Preferences panel. As for the settings to change, they vary a lot... I have everything from antialiasing & anisotropic filtering, glow, local & attached lights, avatar physics, particles, animated textures, # of non-impostor avatars, objects & avatars LOD, draw distance, and of course the whole ALM (projected shadows) section.

[Mauricette Morane]

@Etheria

Mmmm, the EVGA GTX 780ti is definitely out of my budget, probably for ever, but I guess it's nice to dream! I'll have a closer look at the Geforce GTX 750, thanks. Nice to know about the guarantee (as it happens, I'm in the UK) - I didn't know graphics cards could come with a guarantee, so that's definitely something I will keep in mind, thanks!


@filipsimo12
Thanks. Yeah, I know it's not a gaming pC, but believe it or not, it's actually much much better than what I'm currently using! (One day, I'll build myself a super duper gaming PC ...but not this year ...or the next...)

OK, here are the system info, if there's anything relevant that I've missed, just let me know.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz    
RAM: 4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 399MHz
Motherboard:
PEGATRON CORPORATION Benicia (CPU 1);
Chipset Vendor: Intel;
Voltage:
VIN0    1.688 V,
MEMORY CONTROLLER    1.664 V,
VIN2    1.608 V
PCI Bus Width    32 bit
The sticker on the power supply say "max combined power  equal to 385W", if there's any more specific info that would tell you more, I can have a look.


@Ren
Thanks, that's very interesting, and I'll definitely play with the settings you mention. Is there are reference page or documents somewhere that lists all the debug settings, and what they do?

[Ren Toxx]

There’s this, but it’s admittedly brief. Other than that, it’s just gathering from many different sources, blogs and help groups over time.

[Mauricette Morane]

Thanks, that's a good starting point!

[Jackson Redstar]

I currently run a GTX 970. I upgraded from a GTX 760. Performance wise, not much diff at all. But cooling, a world of difference. the 970 runs way way cooler, usualy in walking around mode, shaders and deffered off, the fns don't even turn on at all

[filipsimo12]

that core 2 quad q9400 you have is perfectly capable for second life

my advice is to go on ebay and found good p45, p35, x38 chipset motherboard with 4 memory slots. Search for motherboards branded by gigabyte, asus or evga (690,680,780 and 790 chipset). they need to be 1333 FSB ti run your GREAT procesor.

 

also you dont need new expencive graphic card. My advice is to invest in good brand powersupply (antec, corsair, seasonic, fractal design,enermax) and you need to have powersuppy with capable 12V rail with lot of amperage, not watt on sticker!

 

for example, you can have GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 460 for less than 50$ used, and all of them in combo with your processor will run SL maxed with 30 fps minimum.

 

I have system with q9300,corsair TX650w, GTX 260, DFI x38 motherboard and 8 gb ddr2 ram 800 and i run full ultra, 250 draw distance, max antiailasing, antistropic filtering with minimum 30 fps in crowded sim with 15 avatars  on 1080p resolution.  All build cost less than that GTX 750 graphic card.

 

here is thread for you, ill happy to help you.

 

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Second-Life-Tech/Second-Life-PC-building-guide/m-p/2883852#M2246

 

 

[Mauricette Morane]

@Jackson oh, that looks awesome! I want one! It'll have to wait, thought, right now, it will fit neither my budget or my computer, alas... But, oooohhh, three fans, yes please!

 

@filipsimo12 thanks, that's very very useful.

I'd rather not tinker with the power supply at this point (I feel I might as well build a computer from scratch if I was going to do that...), so I guess that does limit my options. An additional challenge is that I think it needs to be single slot - looking at the motherboard, I think the card would not fit otherwise?

This is what my motherboard looks like:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01324212&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3842345#N538

And getting a new motherboard is absolutely not going to happen - as with the PSU, if I'm going down that route I might as well build everything from scratch (I'm starting to think it might be easier).

I've had a look at the GTX 460, 560 and 660, and they are all dual slot. Does that mean they definitely won't fit, or does it depend on the specific motherboard?

So, if I need a single slot graphics card, what would you recommend? I don't need to be able to use the highest settings, just something that doesn't make SL crash 30 times an hour on medium settings would be fine for now...

Thank you :-) Your help is much appreciated.

[arton Rotaru]

Something that would fit in your budget, your PSU, and your case would be a EVGA GT 730. It's slightly more powerful than the 9800 GT. I would definitely buy a modern card, because they have less power consumption than older cards. Less power consumption = less heat. Less heat = longer lifetime and slower fan speeds, hence, less noisy.

On your board would fit a dual slot card as well, as long as you don't have any other cards plugged in on the slot below the PCI-E 16x slot (the long one). You only have to make sure it fits into your case. A lot of higher end cards are quite long these days. The GT 730's are rather small though.

[filipsimo12]

man...that is a really bad advice sorry.....730 is a crappy low end card, 64bits...and is newer, yes....but way less powerfull than gt9800

 

if you chose newer card, go with nothing less than 760 witch is expencive...

or best bet for you is 560 ti used, what can be found cheap on ebay...

 

dont use low budget 64bit cards!  yes they have cuda cores, yes they have ddr5 memory, but BUS (64bit) and crappy low power maxwell arhitecture in that card is for HTPC and blu ray movies, not for SL

with that card, you can get maby good fps in medium graphics....for me, wasting money

 

why you have to use single slot graphic card with that motherboard? you have below 3 old PCI slots i doubt you have to use one...

 

i will help you, tell me your location (usa or europe) ill  found you components on ebay for cheap if you want

[arton Rotaru]

man...have you read the price tag given in the OP?

Have you checked the PSU requirements for  GTX x60 cards, and the specs given here?

Bad advice is buying broken old hardware on ebay, sorry.

[filipsimo12]

yea i did...50, 75$ budget

 

for example for beggining go with brand name PSU, because that is main part of your build and most important one. you can found good corsair new 50$

 

PSU requierments on web page is for noobs, so if card telling is needed 550w supply that is in 99% cases lie.

you have to focus on 12A rails, and if he had GT 9600 that need 20A on that rails, there is good possibility he can use GTX 660 that need 22A (whole system not only gpu)

Ebay also sell new stuff but older generation, so unpacked brand new non used GTX older models 2xx, 4xx, 5xx, and even 6xx (waste on money for second life btw)

 

so again. Dont spend 50$, 75$...rather spare 50$ more and you will be happy with your investment for littlebit longer time, than buy something new but really low end.

 

That GT 9600 you had is good card, and i advise you if you dont have money, rather buy used but higher end for less money, than new but so badly optimised.

I work with hardware for my living, build PCs 10+ years, also im moderator on local hardware forum so i know what im talking about.

 

if you are on low budget, go with used stuff...but normally dont expect that 50$ hardware will least for years.

[Mauricette Morane]

@arton: oh, yes! Thank you!

@filipsimo  I understand where you're coming from, and I really appreciate the advice you've given in this thread and elsewhere and I will definitely implement your recommendations in my next step. But first, I want to feel confident that I can install a graphics card - if things go wrong, I'd rather it went wrong on a cheap (ish) card. Also, I must admit I'm not 100% confident buying a second hard card on eBay - too many unknowns. So it looks like I'm going to sacrifice some performance...well, so be it for now.

As it happens, I did buy the EVGA GT 730. I can't say it's great for SL, because I can't get anything showing on the monitor, it just stays blank. I tried logging in safe mode, and it hangs on "crcdisk.sys". It's absolutely possible (and probable) that the two issues aren't related, but since I have nothing else to go on (how would I troubleshoot a graphics card, if I don't have another PC to try it in?), I'm trying to solve that. It looks like I need to delete some files. I can't - I get the error message "access denied". So I do a bit of reading on the internet around these issue, and oh, I need to change my access rights and make myself an administrator. Problem is, there's only one user on that PC, and it's already "admin". So that's a dead end. So I tried to install Ubuntu on my other hard drive, because I wanted to try that one day anyway, and (to cut a long story short), I'm unable to do that. So I'm basically feeling pretty frustrated!

But thanks to everybody who chipped in. I'll try installing XP and see if that makes a difference.

 

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Why would you run an OS that is not being updated? try updating the drivers manually from Nvidia.

[filipsimo12]

agree