Upgrade from hd6670 gpu

kyeev

A very casual gamer here.
I want to upgrade my GPU.
Current HD6670 DDR3 (E8400 cpu, PSU 305 watt, 4gb RAM).
And before ye all start, no I'm not upgrading anything else!! Lol.

I need GPU with <80 watts, single slot (low profile) and less than 7 inches in length.
(I had to move the fan slightly on the HD6670 to fit it in the mini tower case).

Had a look at GTX750 Ti which fits that criteria but I'm not sure if it offers enough of an upgrade.
Can't use any of the double slot cards as they won't fit in the case (Minitower has a large heat sink sitting on top of CPU taking up all the room).

Any ideas gladly accepted!
Should I go for the GTX750 Ti?

K.O.Kiki

A 750Ti would technically be much faster, but you'll be hamstrung by the CPU (which is 9 years old at this stage).

Whatever figures you find in reviews will not be achievable by your system (e.g. if a review says the 750Ti can run at 60fps, your CPU will limit it to below 30).
Unfortunately, Core2Quad CPUs for LGA775 aren't cheap anymore so your upgrade path is limited in that regards too; though tbh it would be wasted money.

TerrorFirmer

The HD6670 is actually not the bottleneck, the E8400 is. It's a dual core from 2008. The GTX750Ti is way too fast for that CPU and that entire socket in general - eg, in games like Battlefield 1 online, the GTX750Ti can run at 1080p low-medium @ 60fps.

By comparison, the E8400 would limit it to about 5-10fps. At this stage it's a €3 processor, it was excellent in 2008 but now it's simply way, way too slow for games (apart from old games, obviously, but then the HD6670 wouldn't be an issue either).

Most modern games will remain totally unplayable even with an upgrade to a quad core on that platform (s775) as it's simply too old a socket in general - but other less intensive games would chug along OK with a €30 upgrade to something like a Q9300 processor and €40 2nd hand GTX650 graphics card (RTS games, stuff like CSGO, Overwatch maybe, and similar).

It would actually be far more economical to just sell the PC for €80 and buy another 2nd hand one for around €200 (pick up a 2nd hand i5 for €150 on ebay, add a €50 2nd hand graphics card like GTX650)

But to answer the original question, there is no graphics card you can upgrade to from the HD6670 with the E8400. You wouldn't see any difference.

kyeev

Thanks.
New PC then...

K.O.Kiki

kyeev wrote: »

Thanks.
New PC then...

You can buy a second-hand machine or build a new one for €200-400, and keep your existing HD6670 for now (especially if you're still playing the same games).

kyeev

I'm really only playing Fallout 4 at the moment.
I'm running it at 1280x800 with everything on low.
And in fairness, its flying along.
(I should monitor the FPS, just to see).

So obviously the dual core is managing okay for that game.
But all the benchmarks suggest I could upgrade my GPU for a better experience (it all looks a bit drab)...
...and all the GTX 750 Ti cards on ebay for 50 euros is very tempting!

TerrorFirmer

Are you sure you have an E8400? Not a Q8400?

I only ask because it's almost impossible to run Fallout 4 on an E8400 - I've run it on a Q8300 quad core as an interest project and I just about got by with 30ish fps average out in the open world (some indoor parts are 40-50fps but then other urban areas were like 15-20fps), and even the Q8300 is far below the minimum requirements/far faster than the E8400. (Officials min requirements are an X4 945/Intel i5 1st gen, both of which are about 4x faster than the E8400 in games)

A GTX750Ti with an E8400 will allow you to play the game at better visual settings but it won't improve the framerate at all, because you're running a massive CPU bottleneck.

To be honest, if you're happy playing the game with an E8400, it's not for us to tell you you shouldn't be, but I find it hard to believe your framerate could be anything other than 15-20fps in a lot of the game which would be painful for most people.

Also be careful of the GTX750Ti, Ebay is flooded with fakes. Real branded GTX750Ti's usually sell for almost double that (around 80-90), even second hand, on Ebay. It really would make more sense to just buy a better PC for €200 and play the game that way (2nd hand i3-3220 based machine on Ebay for around €120, add GTX750 non-ti for €60-70, which would run the game at 1080p medium at around 40-50fps).

kyeev

Worse, I thought it was an e8400, its actually an e5400 dual core.

I dunno, its zipping along.
I'll install fraps or something tonight just to see the FPS.

The GTX 750 ti's look to be from legit UK sellers.
One lad on there selling one for 46 euro + 13 euro P&P, 9 bids, 100% feedback since 2003.

TerrorFirmer

Fallout 4 on an E5400, good grief.



The thing about getting a GTX750Ti is that while you can run the game at better visual settings, the framerate will still be bad, and the actual GPU usage will stay low, because the CPU ceiling is just way too low for a card to properly stretch it's legs.

Also the framerate must be absolutely abysmal when a lot of stuff is going on on-screen, or in places like Diamond City? I find in the city area of Boston even on my i7-6700K, it drops pretty badly, sometimes to around 45-50fps - and this is a processor literally about 10x faster than the E5400!

I'd honestly recommend the €200 new PC option because that would actually run the game on-par with the PS4/XB1 versions of the game, sell your old PC for €50-70 and the actual upgrade cost is pretty small (around €120, and you can also upgrade the CPU to an i5 in time, upgrade the card, if/when you want, without having to worry about bottlenecks, etc).

Do you've a link to those GTX750Ti's? I'll know straight away if they're real or fake.

kyeev

This yolk for example looks legit to me.
In fairness it'll probably sell for much more, still 3 or 4 days left.

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-750-Ti-Superclocked-2Gb-PCI-E-Graphics-Card-/122329106680

kyeev

Yeah, FPS will probably drop off like a bomb when I get somewhere busy.

At the moment, I'm only wandering around Concord.
Its only buildings, probably no more demanding than minecraft...

TerrorFirmer

Yep, that's obviously a real card but the real price only becomes obvious with a few hours left! It's already nearly at €50 with 3 days left so I would expect the selling price to be around €80.

K.O.Kiki

http://www.adverts.ie/desktops/zoostorm-pc-intel-i5-quad-core-1tb-hd-6gb-ram/12195862

Would be a massive upgrade to your current machine.
Can probably haggle down to €210ish

kyeev

I can probably get my hands on an i3 6100 optiplex. If I stuck the hd6670 in that, how would it do versus a gtx 750 ti?

Got 30 max FPS on Fallout 4 last night.
Dropped off to 20 if anything interesting was happening on screen...
Yeah, not great, just about playable...

TerrorFirmer

The HD6670 is inherently a weak card and the i3-6100 is a very good processor, so even without changing visual settings it should increase to around 60fps - you can mess around then to find the best balance of GPU settings and framerate.

A GTX750Ti would be a good pairing with an i3-6100 though, in fact, the i3-6100 is good enough that even a €160 GTX1050Ti would be a good match (assuming the optiplex is low profile) and would run the game at 1080p high settings perfectly.

K.O.Kiki

On-topic:

gives you an idea just how much an old CPU (here the Pentium E5200) can hold back a GPU

TerrorFirmer

It's a shame he excluded the BF1 and Witcher 3 benchmarks even if they were essentially unplayable. The gap in those games would be titanic as they're CPU heavy and the GTA V benchmark he did include definitely alluded to that - 90fps vs 25fps avg, almost 400% difference, 69fps vs 16fps in min frames, almost 450% difference! I'd expect BF1 to be closer to 600-700%.

Interesting video though.