Graphics Card Upgrade.

[furious.99]

I have a desktop with the following configuration:
Intel core i3 @ 2.93 ghz
Intel DH55TC motherboard.
2 X 2 GB DDR3 RAM
500 GB hard disk.
And I think the max output of my SMPS is 400W.

I'm not happy with the integrated grpahics so I decided to go in for an external card.
Will a 128-bit 2 GB DDR3 card work with my computer? If yes, which brand do you suggest? I'm open to any chipset.

[GOLDENGPU]

I suggest an 6XXX ATI card! If you'll check my post you will see that I am looking for an 6XXX ATI too! ATI 6570 takes around 60w (I'm not very sure)!

[ShyguyXPC]

Whats the Brand of Power Supply, also try and post the +12V Amp Rating of the PSU as well.

Whats your budget for spending on the card (keep in mind the PSU may need to be upgraded as well)

[furious.99]

That is a picture of my PSU.

[furious.99]

How good are sparkle graphics cards? I was considering this one.

GeForce GT 430-1G | Sparkle Computer :: Innovative Graphics Card

Will it work on my system? If not, should I upgrade anything else?

The card given in the link is 1GB and I'm considerign a 2 GB.

[ShyguyXPC]

Man, that power supply needs replacing as well. 17A on the +12V is atrociously low, especially considering the specs of your PC.

You'll need to replace it with something much better before popping in a new Video card.



What are you doing with your PC? Gaming? Video editing? Etc?

What games are you trying to play if thats what your doing?




as to Sparkle Brand, their not bad, just not very popular.

Sparkle also Makes Power Supplies, and is actually owned By FSP also known as Fortron or Fortron Source, so they're a decent brand name.

as to 1GB vs 2GB... 2GB is wasted on a low end card like the GT 430, and should only be considered for higher end $250-300+ video cards.

2GB memory is really only good, currently, for Resolutions/displays over 1920x1200 or higher. or if your Spanning a game across 2 or more monitors.


as to the Power supply, depending on your uses for the PC, and Video card of choice, a Good 400-500W PSU from companies like Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, Enermax, OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, Coolermaster, Thermaltake, and several others, should suffice.

[furious.99]

I'll just need the card for playing games and watching movies. Nothing more than that.
Fifa, nba, car racing like nfs, call of duty, counter strike and some other first person shooter games.
Will a 128-bit 1GB DDR3 suffice?

Many of these graphics cards require PCI Express 2.1 but my motherboard supports only 2.0. Will that be an issue?

I was considering a 2GB sparkle because where I live, the difference is just 10 USD. Lol. What about a 2GB on the GT440 sparkle? Is it worth the buy and will it run on my system? Assuming I change the PSU also.

Do you have any specific chipset in mind? How are powercolor amd radeon cards? Was looking at them as my option for 1GB.

[ShyguyXPC]

There's no such thing as PCI Express 2.1 really, there is a 2.1 standard, but it was never really implemented, ATI/AMD started pushing PCIe 2.1 compliant spec Video cards, but it never really caught on.

PCIe 2.1, is 2.0 with some minor insignificant specs of PCIe 3.0, which is still not used. 3.0 won't be available until Intel's "Ivy Bridge" Core series CPU's debut soon, as some boards are capable of using 3.0 once those CPU's come out. AMD still has yet to implement 3.0 on their CPU's and Boards.

Any Nvidia Based Current gen GPU's will be 2.0 spec, and AMD are 2.1 Spec.

But for the most part, 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 are all backwards compatible.

The only issues is Bandwidth saturation for top end cards used on older spec slots.

For example a Top end current gen card used on an older PCIe 1.0 x16 slot, might be choked a bit by the older slots max bandwidth, but for the most part will work in it.

On the 2GB memory capacity, as I said its wasted memory, you'll never use that much Video memory on a low end card. These lower end cards just don't have the power to even process that much data for higher resolutions where the 2GB will come in to play.

I'd save the $10 on the card and just get a 1GB and be fine with that.

The GT 440 is the same card as the GT 430, but with faster clock speeds.

For basic uses like you described its not worth it, But for gaming, you might get a few extra frames per second out of it over the 430, but not much really.

This comparison shows the GT 430 DDR3 vs GT 440 DDR3 models:

Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com

As you can see the clock speeds are faster on the 440, not that much really.

The only thing the 440 has thats better is Texture Fill Rates, since it has more Texturing Units on it over the 430.

But aside from that, its not much different.


Do you have a link to where your looking at cards from.


In the US here, the GT 440 is usually priced similar to the Radeon HD 6570 and 6670, and if it were me, I'd be looking at one of those 2 cards instead.

In general in gaming, the 6570 and 6670 easily beat the GT 430, and I suspect it should easily beat the GT 440 as well, since the 6670 comes close to the GTS 450 in performance.

[furious.99]

Thanks a lot

Btw, my OS is windows 7 32-bit.

I'm from India and this is where I was seeing graphics cards.

Graphic Cards Price List India: Computer Components: Flipkart.com

The list is filtered according to 1 GB and my budget.

I've narrowed down my choices to GT440 and AMD radeon 6570.

Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com

Is there any difference between these 2 cards regarding the technologies? If yes, which card supports more tehcnologies? And what does Shader Version mean? What is the equivalent of that in the GT440?

[ShyguyXPC]

For the most part their featuring similar tech, for gaming and basic use, its a moot point.

for things like CUDA Apps (Nvidia's GPU Programming Language) or FireStream, which is what AMD's cards use, Then the various features would be important.

If you had a program that required OpenGL 3.2 support, then you would need to make sure the card supports OpenGL 3.2 or newer

If you needed OpenGL 4.1 or better, then the Radeon would be the one to get, since the Nvidia one only supports 3.2.


But based on your Gaming list, these are a moot point, as to Shader version, it refers to this...

High Level Shader Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Too much to explain on here, better to read that and get an idea on. But mainly has to do with what games and software support for Graphics.

Both cards support Pixel Shader 5.0 and Vertex Shader 5.0.


so its not an issue right now, since few games even use that high of version of Shader Model. I think most still use 3.0 and 4.0 spec.

Between the 2 cards, I would go for the 6570, as its a bit more powerful in games than the GT 440.

if you can swing for the 6670 instead, I'd get that, as its almost and in some time equal to a Radeon 5750/6750 card.

In that list, the Radeon 5670 would be acceptable too, but its comparable in performance to the cheaper priced 6570.

Any one of those 3 though, 6570, 5670, or 6670 would be better than the GT 440/GT 430 cards IMO, for gaming uses.


Also looking at the PSU's on that site, I listed them pricing from low to high, this is the lowest priced quality 400W range PSU that I would get: Flipkart: Corsair CMPSU-430CXV2UK 430 Watts PSU: Psu

it has 28A on the +12V Rail, and is one of the top brands out there.

and will be more than enough to run your system with your specs, plus a new video card.

I'm not sure what your total budget is for these upgrades, but I wouldn't do any GPU upgrade until you had the PSU installed, rather than chance overloading the one that is in there now, and frying the entire PC.