Lai
Member
+186|6121
Ok, so here's the deal: my mother just got an old leftover PC from her work. It is a 3.0Ghz Pentium 4 (non-HT) with 1Gb of RAM. I will plug in another Gb of RAM, I might not even have to buy it as I always have some spare parts lying about. I know it isn't 'great' but its a nice free extra. We only have one proper PC at home and I figure that if I tweak this freebee a bit my little brother can use it to play BF Heroes and we might play Call of Duty 2 over LAN. Luckily the machine has a decent mobo and comes with a PCI-E 1.0 16X slot, so it's relatively easy to get a videocard for it (it only has an onboard GPU at the moment).

Picking one proves a bit harder than I had thought. Evidently I don't want to spend more than around €50 on it, but below that, if I can get a slightly better card for a few euros more I will go for it. However, I also don't want to spend more than is sensible. A €50 card is most likely better than a €25 one, but if the CPU bottlenecks the system with the €50 card to roughly same performance as the one with the €25 card, I rather get the latter. I could really use some advice on what would be the best card price/quality wise, considering the limitations of the overall system. Below I have made up a little list of cards with rough specs. If you want to suggest something else, please do, but bear in mind that it's in Holland and shipping would be accordingly.

Thanking you in advance,

Lai



'Considered Videocards' wrote:

Gainward - Geforce 210 589Mhz - 512Mb DDR2 - €25
Point of View - Geforce 210 589Mhz - 512Mb DDR3 - €40

MSI - Radeon 4350 600Mhz - 1024Mb DDR2 - €40
Gigabyte - Radeon 4550 600Mhz - 512Mb DDR3 - €45
Gigabyte - Radeon 5450 700Mhz - 512Mb DDR3 - €46
Sapphire - Radeon 5450 650Mhz - 512Mb DDR3 - €46
Sapphire - Radeon 4550 600Mhz - 512Mb DDR3 - €46
XFX - Radeon 4550 625Mhz - 512Mb DDR2 - €38
XFX - Radeon 4650 650Mhz - 512Mb DDR2 - €45
XFX - Radeon 4650 600Mhz - 1024Mb DDR2 - €46
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|6686
5450 might be better.
https://cache.www.gametracker.com/server_info/203.46.105.23:21300/b_350_20_692108_381007_FFFFFF_000000.png
DUnlimited
got any popo lolo intersting?
+1,160|6433|cuntshitlake

Out of those I would pick the cheapest HD4650 and possibly OC it a bit for most value. However if it's possible to stretch out for a 4670, it's quite a bit better than 4650. If only for CoD2, though, 4650 should work juuuust fine.

You can use this as a guideline

You will not need a 1GB model unless you will use 1920x1080+ resolution in the computer.

Cybargs wrote:

5450 might be better.
5450 is about 20-50% worse than 4650

Last edited by DUnlimited (2010-06-21 07:15:36)

main battle tank karthus medikopter 117 megamegapowershot gg
Lai
Member
+186|6121

DUnlimited wrote:

Out of those I would pick the cheapest HD4650 and possibly OC it a bit for most value. However if it's possible to stretch out for a 4670, it's quite a bit better than 4650. If only for CoD2, though, 4650 should work juuuust fine.

You will not need a 1GB model unless you will use 1920x1080+ resolution in the computer.
Nahhh,.. the 4670's start around €70 here, which I think is a bit too much for this PC, especially this CPU, as it probably can't pull 4670 games anyway.

The 1Gb model I saw costs only a single € more than the 512Mb ones though, would you recommend getting the 1Gb one then or the 512Mb one with a slightly faster clock?
DUnlimited
got any popo lolo intersting?
+1,160|6433|cuntshitlake

Lai wrote:

DUnlimited wrote:

Out of those I would pick the cheapest HD4650 and possibly OC it a bit for most value. However if it's possible to stretch out for a 4670, it's quite a bit better than 4650. If only for CoD2, though, 4650 should work juuuust fine.

You will not need a 1GB model unless you will use 1920x1080+ resolution in the computer.
Nahhh,.. the 4670's start around €70 here, which I think is a bit too much for this PC, especially this CPU, as it probably can't pull 4670 games anyway.

The 1Gb model I saw costs only a single € more than the 512Mb ones though, would you recommend getting the 1Gb one then or the 512Mb one with a slightly faster clock?
can you give links to said cards? I would get the one with a better cooler for silence/more OC room probably

Last edited by DUnlimited (2010-06-21 07:35:05)

main battle tank karthus medikopter 117 megamegapowershot gg
Lai
Member
+186|6121
Hahaha,..

Actually they all have identical cooling. One site even offers three seemingly identical cards with minor deviations in price, memory interface and clockspeed. These two are probably the ones I would be consider buying:

http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/Gr … Ie+kaarten

http://www.informatique.nl/501673/xfx-r … 512mb.html

By the way I have another computer at home with 2Gb Dual-Channel RAM, a newer Pentium 4 630 3Ghz HT and an Asus HD2600XT. That machine always gets bottlenecked by the CPU, so there really is no point getting a 4670 as the 4650 is already faster than the 2600. I might even get the 4650 for that PC and put the 2600 in the 3Ghz non-HT.
Lai
Member
+186|6121
Update:

Just got a brand new Sapphire Radeon HD4670 512Mb on an auction for only €44,- + €3,50 comission

I also found some 2Gb of leftover Dual-Channel RAM so I maxed that out.
SonderKommando
Eat, Lift, Grow, Repeat....
+564|6629|The darkside of Denver
ummmm, guys this was a WORKSTATION.  IE it probably has a small psu, hope its juice enough for that card man.
Lai
Member
+186|6121

SonderKommando wrote:

ummmm, guys this was a WORKSTATION.  IE it probably has a small psu, hope its juice enough for that card man.
I know, but I have upgraded the GPU before and checked my CPU back then. It has relatively low wattage (375W or so), but an incredible ammount on two 12V rails.

Board footer

Privacy Policy - © 2024 Jeff Minard