Graphics card upgrade

mr_vampy

Hi,


I currently have an old PC running Windows 7 Pro 32 bit on an ASRock N68C-S UCC motherboard with an AMD Athlon II X2 245 CPU and 4GB DDR2 memory. I am still using the 256MB onboard graphics to watch videos.

I would like to get a new cheap graphics card and found this one on Ebuyer:

https://www.ebuyer.com/737925-msi-geforce-gt-710-2gb-ddr3-low-profile-graphics-card-gt-710-2gd3h-lp

Would this be suitable? Is 2GB too much for just watching HDMI videos? I don't use the computer for gaming.

Any info/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

spenderdave

I had similar issues with the now unsupported AMD graphics and installed one of those GT710 graphic cards. Windows 10 1903 here. Does the job fine (once you have downloaded the latest (large) driver). I only use it for normal computer use and occasional UTube videos, you only need to install the basic parts of the driver, ignore all the gaming orientated options when installing.

Dave

Neil_Jones

You don't need anything fantastic for HDMI output. That'll do.
I had one of those Asrock motherboards, was nice at the time but ultimately turned out to be resurrected technology from 2007. But it worked which was the main thing and when I upgraded I gave it away to somebody I knew and it's still working nine years later

EveryWhere

Why 32 bit? Should be 64 bit unless you have 32 bit for good reason.

£36 is too much to spend if you just want an HDMI output.

I would redistribute that budget. £10 - £15 for the graphics card. £17 - £25 for an SSD boot drive. £5 for 2 x 2GB of DDR3 RAM; https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail?id=smem9qc4a or £12 for 2 x 4GB; https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail?id=smem4qaab

So theoretically you can upgrade everything, for much the same budget as the new graphics card that you have chosen.

A.Penny.Saved

That card will not assist HEVC/H.265 decoding therefore consider that if you intend playing any HEVC video which is very CPU intensive. That CPU will probably be insufficient to play anything but fairly low res HEVC video without some hardware assistance.

BTW when using a 32 bit operating system you will not be able to use all that 4GiB of memory. Your system will use around 3 to 3.5GiB.

I will repost the link originally supplied by EveryWhere to the video test files so that you can test to see how your system performs. I doubt that you will be able to play any of the HEVC files without stuttering unles using hardware assisted decoding using a suitable video card.

EveryWhere

If HEVC/H.265 is what is being considered, I would look at something like; https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Graphics-Card/GV-N1030D5-2GL#kf £68 new.

But if just to output Full HD H.264 via HDMI, I would look at the cheaper upgrades in post #4.

Though before upgrading your RAM to DDR3, you should check which revision your Athlon II X2 245.

To do so, you can run https://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/cpu-z_1.90-en.exe

You are looking for Revision C3, as opposed to C2;

ADX245OCK23GM was one of the first dual-core microprocessors with newer C3 core stepping. This stepping came with a few notable features, such as new C1E low-power state, implemented in hardware, and generally lower power consumption and cooler operation. The C3 stepping also fixed errata in C2 core revision, where the CPU could not reliably access DDR3-memory when each memory channel had more than one memory module populated. C3 core can be identified by "GM" suffix in the part number. Performance-wise the ADX245OCK23GM is similar to "GQ" model.