Which type of video card for my MOBO?

[krusha03]

That was in 2008. PC Power & Cooling aren't even registered with plugloadsolutions, as such I'd not recommend any of their PSU's for modern hardware. That review even puts it beside the OCZ PSU's, which are most definitely not cream of the crop.

I agree, but his hardware is far from up to date and the 750 / 750 Ti and 9600 GSO are more or less the same in power consumption so if it's working fine now it should continue to do so

They are all only minorly different in benchmarks. Real world, I don't think you'll really notice, as they are all noticeably faster than HDD. My advice is get a good rated one as cheap as you can on sale, which many frequently are. Crucial, Samsung are two great brands. I would get 256GB, but 120 is probably the minimum. 256's can frequently be had around $100 on sale.

This. The Crucial MX100 is probably the most recommended consumer drive. Excellent IOPS (ignore sequential read/write figures, it's all a bunch of crap), decent warranty, and excellent GB/$.

+1 maybe the only relevant thing is the TBW reliability wise. I have the MX100 and its great

 

[xvi]

I agree, but his hardware is far from up to date and the 750 / 750 Ti and 9600 GSO are more or less the same in power consumption so if it's working fine now it should continue to do so

I was just about to say this myself. Everything in this thread has been great advice so far, but suggestions for a SSD and new PSU would almost triple the cost of upgrading the GPU alone. Again, they're good suggestions, but unnecessary ones when the only concern is DVI ports.

A 750/750 Ti would be a rather good choice, in my opinion. If your only complaint about the 9600 GSO is the lack of DVI ports, then I wouldn't worry about performance. Just about any new card should be a large leap ahead in every regard.

The PC Power & Cooling is supposed to be a rather good name, from what I've heard. A quick googling comes up with a lot of positive reviews for that unit. Good or bad, as RCoon mentioned before, it's held up all this time just dandy with the 9600 GSO and I suspect it'll do perfectly fine with a GTX 750.

Looking at it from a cost to benefit perspective, there are other cards out there that will net you two DVI ports for half the price, for example this EVGA GeForce GT 730. If budget allows, I'd suggest a GT 740 or the GTX 750 you linked before simply to eliminate performance as a possible concern. There are a number of AMD GPUs worth considering, but anything from this list (except the old GPUs near the top) would serve the purpose nicely. If further budget allows and you'd like to treat yourself, a SSD would be nice upgrade too. It really depends on what your main complaints are and what your budget is.

 

[desktop]

I was just about to say this myself. Everything in this thread has been great advice so far, but suggestions for a SSD and new PSU would almost triple the cost of upgrading the GPU alone. Again, they're good suggestions, but unnecessary ones when the only concern is DVI ports.

A 750/750 Ti would be a rather good choice, in my opinion. If your only complaint about the 9600 GSO is the lack of DVI ports, then I wouldn't worry about performance. Just about any new card should be a large leap ahead in every regard.

The PC Power & Cooling is supposed to be a rather good name, from what I've heard. A quick googling comes up with a lot of positive reviews for that unit. Good or bad, as RCoon mentioned before, it's held up all this time just dandy with the 9600 GSO and I suspect it'll do perfectly fine with a GTX 750.

Looking at it from a cost to benefit perspective, there are other cards out there that will net you two DVI ports for half the price, for example this EVGA GeForce GT 730. If budget allows, I'd suggest a GT 740 or the GTX 750 you linked before simply to eliminate performance as a possible concern. There are a number of AMD GPUs worth considering, but anything from this list (except the old GPUs near the top) would serve the purpose nicely. If further budget allows and you'd like to treat yourself, a SSD would be nice upgrade too. It really depends on what your main complaints are and what your budget is.

xvi, thanks for this post. My apologies for not mentioning any budget concerns in my first post. This is my situation....

For the past 3 years I have taken care of my father who slowly developed dementia after my mom had her heart attack and stroke and went into the nursing home. Right before Christmas he fell and crushed one of the vertebrae in his back and had to have surgery. The state and social services came in and they gave me two choices—voluntarily put him in a home or they would force me to do it. I had reached a point where I was mentally and physically exhausted and I realized my father needed more care than I could provide, so I chose to put him in the same nursing home as my mom. He recovered well from the back surgery and the nursing home staff has taken very good care of him so that's a load off my mind. However, now I'm alone in my parent's house and the only form of income I have at the moment is designing responsive web sites for a company in Traverse City. I am hoping (Lord willing, of course) that this develops into more of a full time gig and I can finally provide for myself, but right now it's kind of sporadic, which is why I decided to upgrade my monitors and that led to me exploring the possibility of getting a new card so both monitors could benefit from the DVI connections (as opposed to the one I have now).

It's not a huge hairy deal having one monitor on VGA, but for my work it would be nice to have good crisp display on both. Of course with my present financial situation any money I absolutely don't have to spend would be wiser. I'm at the point now where getting a new graphics card takes a back seat to other things I actually need, like changing the oil in my car

 

[RCoon]

In that case, the EVGA 730 as posted above would be ideal. Cost effective, and has the two DVI ports you need. It also doesn't required any fancy PSU pins, as it runs straight off of PCI-E slot power. As you're a web developer kind of guy, I don't think you're priorities lay with bleeding edge GPU performance in games, so the 730 should do just fine.

 

[desktop]

I'm leaning more toward that GeForce GTX 750 that was mentioned earlier. That card gets pretty good reviews and seems like a decent choice. Plus it's also affordable.

 

[RCoon]

I'm leaning more toward that GeForce GTX 750 that was mentioned earlier. That card gets pretty good reviews and seems like a decent choice. Plus it's also affordable.

Certainly, if you have the budget for it, I'd opt for that.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

If affordability is an issue and it always is for me perhaps you should consider second user stuff.

For example with the advent of the R series there is a surplus of HD 5*** 6*** and 7*** series cards on ebay.

A lot of them go unsold or very cheaply.

Watch a few cards on ebay i reckon you will get yourself a good deal.

 

[desktop]

That's a good idea. I forgot about eBay. Probably should do something before I start drooling over higher priced cards, like this one (lol).

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Look what you can get for £ 125.00 in the UK.

Undoubtebly you will find better in the U S and this example is over your budget BUT i think it will give you an idea.


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GIGABYTE-...raphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item4ae26d17c0

 

[desktop]

Browsing eBay now. There's a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 OC Buy It Now $85—nice deal. I like this PNY GeForce GTX 750 Ti (currently going for $70), because it is smaller and has 2GB which would help when using my graphics programs.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Browsing eBay now. There's a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 OC Buy It Now $85—nice deal. I like this PNY GeForce GTX 750 Ti (currently going for $70), because it is smaller and has 2GB which would help when using my graphics programs.

Keep looking dude, you,ll probly do better than that.



OR........buy 2

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sapphire-HD-7950-/331440384731?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4d2b62eadb



what about this ?

 

[desktop]

LOL....now he's helping me. Thanks, but it only has one DVI port. You're fired.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Lol


Typical bloody Yank.

Helping hands across the pond and all that. Like it used to be before we all got scared of each other.

 

[desktop]

And now he calls me a Yank. All right, ya wanker. Now it's not a 750, but this EVGA 550 Ti looks sweet.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I love ebay and the USA and wahey !!!!

 

[64K]

OP I don't know if this will matter to you or not but the GTX 550 Ti supports SLI and the GTX 750 Ti doesn't support SLI.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

Well, the PSU is made out of the equivalent materials of a garden potatoe and a peanut, but I guess if it's worked with your 9600 and whole machine this long, it's not likely to cause too many issues. I would advise a new PSU in future as a priority. Nothing above 550W is necessary.

guess you forgot that PC Power and Cooling used to be Seasonic's main compitition for quality PSUs, back before PC P&C were bought out and turned into a shit brand.

 

[desktop]

Not really, unless it benefits my work in any way. I think SLI is just for gaming, isn't it?

 

[BarbaricSoul]

SLI is just for gaming, yes. But, if you run programs that do GPGPU computing, you would have 2 GPUs for the computing.

Honestly, especially since you use your computer for work, I suggest you look into building a whole new system. The performance gains you would see over your current system would be worth it IMHO. A $7-800 upgrade would yield +4 times the performance you have now.

 

[desktop]

Well I started another thread asking about RAM and now it seems that my board is limiting me even in that regard. I don't think I could run an SLI on my board, but even if I could with a limit of 8GB of RAM that would suck.

 

[RCoon]

I don't think I could run an SLI on my board

Rev 2.1 of your motherboard supports Crossfire but not SLI. I recall you mentioning you had rev 2.0 (unless you have rev 2.1?), so no dual GPU support.

 

[desktop]

Looks like I'll have to live with 8GB of RAM for now. Oh well, such is the struggle, lol. Back to searching eBay for video cards.....

 

[digibucc]

Well, the PSU is made out of the equivalent materials of a garden potatoe and a peanut, but I guess if it's worked with your 9600 and whole machine this long, it's not likely to cause too many issues. I would advise a new PSU in future as a priority. Nothing above 550W is necessary.

not to derail, but huh? I had always thought of pc p&c as a decent brand. I have two of their psu's in my two rigs for more than 3 years now, running almost 24x7. gaming, work, vms, etc. no issues. obviously that's anecdotal and not objective but again I thought they were a good brand?

 

[RCoon]

not to derail, but huh? I had always thought of pc p&c as a decent brand. I have two of their psu's in my two rigs for more than 3 years now, running almost 24x7. gaming, work, vms, etc. no issues. obviously that's anecdotal and not objective but again I thought they were a good brand?

According to @BarbaricSoul they were back in the day (I see they're last good PSU registration was back in 2007 and 2008, with one random submission in 2011 that was not so great).
As for their modern PSU's, they're not exactly doing as good as they were. Judging by Barb's post, they got bought out and turned into crap.

EDIT: Just noticed in 2011 they made a submission under the OCZ name. I assume since then OCZ liquified them, and they died when OCZ went bust last year.