City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Video Card Upgrade

Cade Lawson

By Cade Lawson,
Posted on: 2009-12-19 18:50 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

that would be a good choice if those are your limitations.

honestly though, I'd spend the extra $5 and risk the 4650 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121338

The best one in that bracket though is this Asus : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121340

but it's sold out, and no telling when Newegg will have it.

The keypoint in this price bracket is the memory controller bit-width. You'll see a lot of low end-cards advertised with 1gb or 2gb memory values. If the card only has a 64bit memory bus though, you're basically buying extra memory the card cannot use. Really, there's not much point on a 64bit bus of going over 256mb of memory, much less (or more) 512mb of video memory.

Now, there is a 256bit memory bus Geforce 9600 GT that comes low-profile ready, and I found a 9800 GT as well. These cards actually would probably be capable of driving CoH's upcoming Going Rogue in low resolutions like 1280*800 or lower. I just really doubt them being able to run off of a 300 watt power supply from Dell: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187060 :: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187061

Jaton does offer a 9500 GT for around $70 that will probably fit into the power envelope, and has a 128-bit memory bus. However, you can pick up that Asus 4650 128-bit bus from Buy.com for a little less money.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by je_saist View Post
that would be a good choice if those are your limitations.

honestly though, I'd spend the extra $5 and risk the 4650 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121338

The best one in that bracket though is this Asus : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121340

but it's sold out, and no telling when Newegg will have it.

The keypoint in this price bracket is the memory controller bit-width. You'll see a lot of low end-cards advertised with 1gb or 2gb memory values. If the card only has a 64bit memory bus though, you're basically buying extra memory the card cannot use. Really, there's not much point on a 64bit bus of going over 256mb of memory, much less (or more) 512mb of video memory.

Now, there is a 256bit memory bus Geforce 9600 GT that comes low-profile ready, and I found a 9800 GT as well. These cards actually would probably be capable of driving CoH's upcoming Going Rogue in low resolutions like 1280*800 or lower. I just really doubt them being able to run off of a 300 watt power supply from Dell: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187060 :: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187061

Jaton does offer a 9500 GT for around $70 that will probably fit into the power envelope, and has a 128-bit memory bus. However, you can pick up that Asus 4650 128-bit bus from Buy.com for a little less money.
Great reply, thanks Je saist.

Any way of telling what the actually power demands of the two 9600's are?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcbinder View Post
Great reply, thanks Je saist.

Any way of telling what the actually power demands of the two 9600's are?
One 9600, one 9800.

And... well... yes and no. While Vendors are quick to list the Thermal Design Power Envelope, or how many Watts of heat a particular product puts off, they aren't so quick to talk about actual power draw.

Now, while I don't like to quote Tom's Hardware Guides, they do have a handy chart available here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...t,1780-18.html According to their tests using one of the Stalker games, the 9600 GT pulled in close to 200watts of power.

Legit Reviews also looked at the power consumption, and their tests were similiar. The 9600 GT was close to 190 watts drawn from the power supply, while the 9500 GT was under 160 watts : http://www.legitreviews.com/article/760/13/

When TechPowerUp looked at the RadeonHD 4650, it's maximum power draw was sub 150 watts. They also placed the 9600 GT on a higher basis, at 181 watts. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/S...650_OC/24.html

However, as a grain of salt, when Tom's looked at the 4650, they said it drew close to 180watts: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...gp,2383-9.html


***

For reference
Legit placed the 9800 GTX at 234 watts
TechPowerUp placed the 9800 GTX at 228 watts

***

I'm also aware that Dell likes to be... Well. Dell has a history of listing a power supplies peak performance, not the sustained performance. You can read about this more at places like http://www.80plus.org/ or www.xbitlabs.com

Various power supply vendors sell power supplies based on the peak amount of power they can output, rather than the average amount of power output the power supply can sustain. Generally, when it comes to Dell, you need to knock anywhere from 50 to 70 watts off of the listed rating to get an idea of what the power supply can actually sustain. So, while you have a 300 watt power supply, I'm betting it can actually only sustain 250watts.

With that kind of power limit, I'm not exactly sure if your particular computer can actually drive a 4650 GPU.

I am fairly sure that the 9600 GT and 9800 GT are out of the question.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by je_saist View Post
One 9600, one 9800.

And... well... yes and no. While Vendors are quick to list the Thermal Design Power Envelope, or how many Watts of heat a particular product puts off, they aren't so quick to talk about actual power draw.

Now, while I don't like to quote Tom's Hardware Guides, they do have a handy chart available here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...t,1780-18.html According to their tests using one of the Stalker games, the 9600 GT pulled in close to 200watts of power.

Legit Reviews also looked at the power consumption, and their tests were similiar. The 9600 GT was close to 190 watts drawn from the power supply, while the 9500 GT was under 160 watts : http://www.legitreviews.com/article/760/13/

When TechPowerUp looked at the RadeonHD 4650, it's maximum power draw was sub 150 watts. They also placed the 9600 GT on a higher basis, at 181 watts. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/S...650_OC/24.html

However, as a grain of salt, when Tom's looked at the 4650, they said it drew close to 180watts: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...gp,2383-9.html


***

For reference
Legit placed the 9800 GTX at 234 watts
TechPowerUp placed the 9800 GTX at 228 watts

***

I'm also aware that Dell likes to be... Well. Dell has a history of listing a power supplies peak performance, not the sustained performance. You can read about this more at places like http://www.80plus.org/ or www.xbitlabs.com

Various power supply vendors sell power supplies based on the peak amount of power they can output, rather than the average amount of power output the power supply can sustain. Generally, when it comes to Dell, you need to knock anywhere from 50 to 70 watts off of the listed rating to get an idea of what the power supply can actually sustain. So, while you have a 300 watt power supply, I'm betting it can actually only sustain 250watts.

With that kind of power limit, I'm not exactly sure if your particular computer can actually drive a 4650 GPU.

I am fairly sure that the 9600 GT and 9800 GT are out of the question.
Great. Thanks for the quick help. You're aces.

 

Posted

If you do have the time to wait, ATI will be releasing their new "Cedar" and "Redwood" class cards for this performance/power-envelope category sometime in January.

If you don't have time to wait, yeah what je_saist said: 4650.

 

Posted

There's also the HD 4550. Really it's just an HD 4350 with faster (much faster with GDDR3) memory. This does make a noticeable difference in performance.

On the nVidia side there is the GT 220 which nVidia says only needs a 300 watt PSU to run. However it does pull a lot more watts than the HD 4550 so knowing 300 watt PSUs in prebuilt PCs, I would say that it's an iffy proposition. However it does have around twice the performance of the HD 4550.

While I love NewEgg, characteristics like low profile isn't always marked making filtering the extremely large list of under $75 video cards a visual search. Also make sure that the card you choose does come with the low profile bracket(s), not all do.

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Posted

Quote:
On the nVidia side there is the GT 220 which nVidia says only needs a 300 watt PSU to run. However it does pull a lot more watts than the HD 4550 so knowing 300 watt PSUs in prebuilt PCs, I would say that it's an iffy proposition. However it does have around twice the performance of the HD 4550.
I wouldn't... pick a GT 220 for a couple of reasons... An associate of mine picked up a GT 220 to replace a Geforce 7300. The 7300 was running on a Dell 300 watt power supply. The GT 220 wouldn't. Same card on the same motherboard ran fine with a 400watt power supply. While I'm not saying Nvidia's, you know, lying about the GT 220 running on 300 watt power supplies, there are other factors to keep in mind, such as the processor, northbridge / memory controller, hard-drive, system fans, and so on. Also, in fairness, the associate had picked up the Low Profile ECS GT 220 rather than an Asus, so there might be a brand quality factor involved as well.

The second reason I wouldn't pick up a GT 220 is that it was hot. Really. Really hot. The associate was putting it in one of Dell's... smaller cases... and... well. Okay, I define obnoxious as a GeforceFX 5800. The ECS GT 220 wasn't exactly obnoxious... but as soon as the chassis cover went on you could tell the GPU fan had kicked into high gear. Again, this might be another brand quality issue, but as far as I'm aware from pictures, the Asus and ECS cards use the same heatsink designs.