GTX 670 Has Finally Given In

BhoyRayzor

My gaming PC of 11 years is possibly finally showing it's age but it appears for the moment to just be the GPU that has given up the ghost so I need to replace it.

I'm replacing instead of a rebuild as I have a back catalogue of games from up to 2015 that I'm still going through so don't need a newer rig yet and hopefully the rest of it holds up for another bit. I'd prefer not to have to a rebuild until it's a last resort so I can plan around black Friday to get more for my budget this year or next year. So basically looking for something to tie me over for a year or two.

I take it my options would be a new card, preferably sub €100, or an upgraded second hand one.

Would a GT 1030 for €90 simply be a case of plug and play? Are there any good places for second hand cards?

PC Spec is below

Processor Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155

Case Corsair Carbide Series 500R

Graphics Card Asus GeForce GTX 670 1137MHz 2GB PCI-Express 3.0 HDMI DirectCU II TOP

Motherboard ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX

RAM Corsair 8gb Vengance DDR3 1600MHz Low Profile

SSD Harddrive Samsung SSD 830 128GB SATA

Harddrive Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green SATA-600 64MB 3.5"

Power Supply ADATA - HM-850 - 850 Watt - ATX

DVD Drive Sony Optiarc 24x Internal DVD Multi Writer

Processor Cooler Noctua NH-D14

Spear

€130 will get you a 1060 from CEX for example:

https://ie.webuy.com/product-detail?id=sgranvi1060gtx6gba&categoryName=pci-express-graphics-cards&superCatName=computing&title=&queryID=78fa909b7766140d8effb810e9f38454&position=2

Or for €90 a 1050TI

https://ie.webuy.com/product-detail?id=sgranvi1050tigtx4gba&categoryName=pci-express-graphics-cards&superCatName=computing&title=&queryID=ea5060b5359ff74e8cc38a1d97604f16&position=4

A 1030 will be just plug and play, though a driver update wouldn't hurt as they're still supported. But 1030s are really bare minimum stuff.

minitrue

Yeah a 1030 is an appalling card here, worse than your 670, really just video outputs, don't do it!

I was also going to suggest CEX as they at least give you some sort of warranty. An RX470 8GB for €70 was my first thought after a quick look https://ie.webuy.com/product-detail/?id=sgraradrx4708ga

If your ram is 2*4GB now, another €2 would get you another 2*4GB. If you have 1*8GB now then it's €12 for an 8GB stick which isn't as obvious a no-brainer so I'd probably wait until you have a new video card and know the PC is ok before trying to grab it but I'd still think it's worth it if your planning to get another year or two out of that machine.

BhoyRayzor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121645973#Comment_121645973

Sound thanks. Might head into Cex and see if they have a 1050TI in stock, seems to be a slight improvement on the 670 which is what I need really.

BhoyRayzor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121646045#Comment_121646045

Are the Radeon cards just the same, i.e. plug and play? Been a while since I put it together so can't remember if there were different motherboard types for each of the cards. It seems to show as being better than the 1050TI on the benchmark websites but it's a lower price.

Didn't think of the ram but might do that as well while I'm in there, minimal cost.

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121647877#Comment_121647877

There's no difference between AMD and nVidia cards in motherboard terms now. In the long past days of the 670, Crossfire and SLI were still a thing, and the motherboard support for those was variable, or even absent entirely. But SLI and Crossfire are dead now.

Homelander

The 470 is better than the 1050Ti but a 1050Ti would still be perfectly fine for games of that age. Probably around the same performance as a 670 to be honest using a lot less power.

CEX is good for 2nd hand cards, prices are decent on some cards and they even come with a warranty. You could even get a replacement 670 from them for €35.

BhoyRayzor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121648435#Comment_121648435

I might go for the 470 as it seems to be the cheapest from around that 2016/2017 generation.

As an aside why would they have the 470 cheaper than the 1050Ti, do they grade them based on use or testing?

K.O.Kiki

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121648435#Comment_121648435

Radeon RX 470 is ~50% faster than Geforce GTX 670.

---

they probably have a glut of RX 470s, and Nvidia GPUs command a price premium (which IMHO has only been warranted since the RTX GPUs).

Coyler

Don't forget to run DDU to clean up any drivers if you go to a AMD card. You could be lucky and not need to but it only takes a few minutes and just sets everything to square one on the driver front. No harm.

Homelander

Yes I know, I meant the 1050Ti is probably not much more powerful than the 670.

Cost wise, the 470's cheaper because supply/demand.

1050Ti was/is extremely popular for the likes of OEM machines or old desktops because it doesn't need additional power from the PSU, just the motherboard.

Nvidia have been very successful with these types of cards, GTX750Ti - 1050/1050ti - GTX1650. Decent performance, very low power. AMD never really had decent equivalents.

BhoyRayzor

Cex must not believe in giving the GPUs a bit of a clean before reselling. Not expecting immaculate but this one the fans and internals were caked in dust.

Couldn't get the RX 470 to work initially, same exclamation mark on Device Manager as had with the GTX 670 and fans on it were going 90, sounded like an airplane taking off. Error 'AMD software detected that the display driver has failed to load on your system', driver seemed to install properly but just not recognising. Did DDU, reinstalling latest drivers, etc. but no joy.

After a while searching came across a solution to run something called AMD Pixel Clock Patcher, in that case it was due to the card having been used for mining and something had been changed on it, specifically 'the miner flashed an incorrect VBIOS to the card when he removed his custom mining VBIOS'.

Don't like running things I don't know much about but it fixed it anyway, don't really know what it did. Doesn't sound like an airplane anymore either. Touch wood it stays working and no more issues. I guess this was possibly a mining card as well; covered in dust, fans set to max and possibly the BIOS on the card changed.

Would Cex not test the card themselves before buying it?

rob808

Well guess the only good thing about Cex you get 2 year warranty on it.

If anything happens again bring it back and get a refund.

Homelander

They actually do test cards, pretty much the only component they do test. They run stress tests for a short period of time.