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Can a New GPU Rejuvenate a 5 Year Old Gaming PC?
MojoKid writes "New video card launches from AMD and NVIDIA are almost always reviewed on hardware less than 12 months old. That's not an arbitrary decision — it helps reviewers make certain that GPU performance isn't held back by older CPUs and can be particularly important when evaluating the impact of new interfaces or bus designs. That said, an equally interesting perspective might be to compare the performance impact of upgrading a graphics card in an older system that doesn't have access to the substantial performance gains of integrated memory controllers, high speed DDR3 memory, deep multithreading or internal serial links. As it turns out, even using a midrange graphics card like a GeForce GTX 660, substantial gains up to 150 percent can be achieved without the need for a complete system overhaul."
this doesn't surprise me one bit.. the GPU does most of the heavy lifting anyway, when it comes to games
still, an i7 will show you substantial performance enhancements
Old news, has been like this for about 10-20 years.
AGP bridges suck.
PCI-E DDR2 rigs aren't even that old or even considered "obsolete" either.
The thing is, most serious gamers willing to plunk down $400 for a video card aren't going to skimp on upgrading the rest of the computer. That's why nobody reviews it: Because you, McThrifty, aren't the target market and nobody's going to send you free hardware to test since your readers are, well... cheap.
Most of those hardware reviews you see online get the newest video cards for free specifically because their reviews are tailored to the guy who has a McDuck-sized vault of cash ready to be spent getting that extra .8 FPS out of Crysis.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is Ric Romero posting stuff to Slashdot? "Upgrading the largest bottleneck for game performance can substantially improve your playing experience!" Whether or not it's worth doing is another matter, but anyone who's built their own computer or even reads websites like tom's hardware or benchmarking sites knows this.
Yes and Now, depends on the old rig's specs, not only the video card! The older CPU _could_ become a major bottle neck, if not multi-core, HT aware. 5 years ago a high end rig could be powered by a decent dore 2 duo CPU circa 2008, or early 2009, which if pretty decent in overlcocked to nice and stable 3.5 - 4.0 GHz. On the other hand an older Single core and not HT aware CPU will be a huge bottleneck even if a modern GPU is put on, for example Barton core Athlon's. (a bit older though) Two older HDDs could also be in a RAID setup, defragmented, so no HDD bottle neck. The FSB and motherboard chipset could be a culprit. The PSU must not be underestimated, especially if the new GPU has a high TDP. Overall my opinion is that it all boils down to what you need and want. If the old rig is not tool old, a newer GPU could be a life saver, but do not expect maxed out eyefinity play on three/six displays.
.... take that money you spend on the GPU, and spend it on a motherboard with i7 and integrated GPU, and you'll likely get a speed up as well. with faster processing for everything else.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
One thing that helped boost my older system was switching the drive to an SSD.
i put a 9800 GSO in a old sony vaio that was new enought to be first gen PCI express.. its single core 3.2 ghz with hypthread P4
its got 1.5 gb ram (i added extra gig, it was hard to find old ram but you can). since the card was going to be a strain on the power supply i pulled everything like floppy tv tuner lots of crap. it runs sims 3 and minecraft smoothly for my 1st grade son. good computer now and the PSU hasnt burned out!
it can be done!!
see if you can upgrade all the parts you can: ram, cpu, and video card (even upgrade the PSU if its not proprietary like the sony)
the prices might be dirt cheap for obsolete parts (if you can find em)
jeez almost all pc games are spec-ed to 2005 xbox360 hardware
my old spare machine which is a amd x2 2.4 ghz, 4 gigs of ddr2 and a geforce 9600GT can run most modern games at mid high to high quality at 1280x1024, and that's coming up on 6 years old ... cost like 300 bucks in parts new
Some games hit the CPU much heavier these days than they used to. Many games really don't perform well if they aren't given multi-core CPUs with reasonable speed.
So how much upgrading a given component makes a difference depends on what else you have in your computer. If your system has a CPU that was top of the line 5 years ago, but an integrated GPU, then ya a new GPU will probably be the best use of money. However if the CPU is underpowered, then a new GPU will do little if anything.
Also you are right in that integrated GPUs have gotten way better. Time was, integrated Intel GPUs sucked even at desktop operations. Back in the P3 days I recommended a discrete GPU to everyone because the integrated ones were that bad. Now with Sandy/Ivy Bridge they are quite good. You can game on them, even new games. No they don't do as well as a discrete GPU, but they really are more powerful than you might think.
Most newer cards with the desirable features consume lots of electricity and at this point in time actually as much as a refrigerator it would seem. They also generate an excessive amount of heat as well. Before purchasing make sure your power supply is up to the task or you will be in store for some interesting side effects.
When playing games, my i7 + GTX 660 system takes a whole 200W at the wall. My Pentium-4 with Nvidia 7800 used to take more like 350W.
I have a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz and paired it with a cheap 5870. I'm still able to play most games at high settings, even at 2560X1600. IMO it is one of the 'best' CPU's ever made. Will be somewhat sad to upgrade when IvyBridge-E is released. I would have liked to have seen the same benchmarks with the processor overclocked too but nice article. Q6600 FTW!
Games are still using DirectX 9. Even the most budget of GPUs today can handle these graphics demands. (Thanks consoles!)
Thanks consoles, or thanks Windows XP?
SSD only improve startup times. It doesn't improve runtime performance, even on I/O intensive applications.
A newer/better GPU can indeed improve the graphics and gaming performance of an older computer, but it won't make it perform like a newer machine with other superior hardware. Duh.
It seems like perfect common sense, but obviously not everyone gets it so I'll state it like this: If you took a shiny 2012 BMW V8 engine and plopped it into your rusty 1982 BMW 733i, your car would be faster and more fuel efficient (assuming you could even mount the new motor and get everything hooked up), but it wouldn't automatically handle like a 2012 or have bluetooth or a navigation system, and you'd eventually run into unforeseen problems if you really got on it and tried to drive it like it was new. Straight line acceleration would be fantastic (like running certain benchmarks on a new GPU in an old machine) but real world drivability would be more lackluster.
Driving isn't all about raw horsepower, just as PC gaming isn't all about the graphics card. If you have a 5400 RPM hard drive, maybe even an ATA one, with 2 GB of DDR2-667 and a a single core Pentium, you might not want to play the latest games, even if they technically will run on your rig. I DO have a 5 year-old desktop at home (among other machines) and I have vowed not to spend another cent on it. It works fine for basic stuff, but at some point you just need to think about starting over.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Actually, it's you that is poorly written. You are preventing them from multi-threading input, which is the main task of most games.
Here, have a look at this Anandtech E-350 review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4499/fusion-e350-review-asus-e35m1i-deluxe-ecs-hdci-and-zotac-fusion350ae/15
They pair very low-end AMD CPU with best GPU on the market at the time. Results: the CPU does affect the performance. No suprises there..
You need to be more specific with your hardware.
Also, take a look here:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/48
You're virtualy incomprehensible, but I feel comprelled ot respond. People have been pushing stupid high power supply wattage ratings upon folks for years now.
The power listings for video cards are published under the assumption that the buyer has a "free" power supply which came with their case. Those power supplies aren't worth their weight as scrap metal. It's highly likely that the i7 + GTX 660 system pulls about 200W from the wall during gaming. The card only has a TDP of 140W.
Unless you're overclocking an AMD processor hard, I'd wager that a Corsair 430W CX430 would run just about any reasonably constructed single card $700 computer you could build.
Only if you like the games on the consoles. I don't.
I'll avoid the whole graphical differences that PC can bring.
Some like to waste their money on cars, booze, ..... I like to spend 400Eur on the PC every year.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
If you do get a new video card, make sure that it has drivers for XP [or older] as well so that you can play your old games in a virtual machine.
You're kidding right? My brother is always complaining about having to pay various fees, as he says "To even turn my Xbox on!" sometimes. That and $70 games are enough to put a person in the poor house. The article is correct in saying a new GPU will boost performance on an older system. But don't buy a super high end card for it, eventually the CPU will become too much of a bottleneck.
I think I'll stick to my PC with Xubuntu (I actually BUY games I like). Oh noesss I mentioned Linux, will I be Modded as a Troll again? Beaten into oblivion by Slashdots Secret Society of Microsoft Fanboys AKA SSMF? Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion!. And don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.
I've lately upgraded the GPU every other generation (i buy mid range cards like the 660) and the CPU every 4 years or more. It's been fast enough for my purposes.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
If card A has a performance of x (which I'll define as 1) and card B a performance of x+2, wouldn't that mean it's two times better?
The article keeps saying three times better, but wouldn't the correct way to phrase that be "It's three times as good?"
Similar things with percentages. If something has 200% the value of something else, it's twice as valuable and not two times more valuable, right?
I notice similar things in German, which is my main language. Am I just a grammar Nazi (badum-tis) or does that bother you too?
I'm running a new-ish HD5970 card on a five-year-old Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.66GHz. Over those years I've also added an SSD (boot + apps), some extra hard drives, and an extra monitor. The machine is very reliable and quick enough that I really don't need to upgrade. Although I definitely will upgrade this year; five years is really old for a PC.
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If you have an old computer you should use settings in games to match that even though you've bought yourself a shiny new gfx card. Going for HQ and 4x MSAA in BF3 is just plain stupid. There are countless guides out there on which settings to tweak to get the settings that matches your setup. Nvidia has a great guide that explains all settings and their impact on the FPS and suggests what to set depending on your setup. Using MSAA for example is one of the best way to ensure you get low FPS and most guides suggest you turn it of an use FXAA to get better FPS. While in whine mode I'll add a few more things. What resolution was used? A comparison on what FPS to expect when; buying a GTX 660 for your old computer VS buying a new mid range MB/CPU and a GTX 660. An analysis on whether the CPU was the bottleneck for these games and if so, by how much? Is the GTX 660 at $220 the card to get when upgrading a 5-6 year old computer or will a GTX 650 TI for $150 give you the same result? All in all I appreciate that he wrote the guide as I'm sure many people are asking themselves the question whether to do a full upgrade or just upgrade for example the gfx card. But at the same time.. a job worth doing is worth doing well.
This is not a valid statement and has never been. Entirely different games are marketed for PC and consoles, and if you want to play all the games you enjoy, eventually you will be forced to own both a fast gaming PC and a console.
But I can emphatically say: "no". Excuse my grammar. I have a P4 HT clocking around 3.4ghz. I would overclock it if the mobo wasn't an HP OEM and what-have-you. I also have a 1Gb Nvidia card. My point is that my computer meets the minimum specs for prettymuch every modern game sans the CPU. You simply can't run a newer game on a single core machine without serious gameplay consequences. If I had even a core 2 duo, the rest of my setup would beat the shit out of games like crysis. So, once again: a new GPU will only make your textures look really awesome at 3 FPS.
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
Just install a 10 years old OS and games. You'll be blown away by the performance :P
I had an Intel Q6600 system (quad 2.4Ghz cores), and it wasn't able to keep up with some new updates in games my son wanted to pay. Bought a new GPU, and now I can play what he wanted to play (WoW) at maximum settings, no problem. Your mileage may vary, but it worked for me.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I think one of THE biggest bottlenecks for any computer is insufficient amount of RAM in the computer.
That's why I've always suggested that if you can afford it, install the maximum RAM allowed by the motherboard. Most motherboards that support CPU's with x86-64 instructions can support 8 GB of RAM, and with 8 GB of RAM, the performance improvement can be quite high since 1) you no longer need to use the hard disk as virtual memory and 2) programs have more "breathing room" to run.
I used to run a computer with Windows XP Home (SP2) that only had 512 MB of RAM--gawd, did the hard drive grind away like mad. But once I upgraded it to the 2 GB of RAM allowed, the performance improvement was _dramatic_--the hard drive ran a lot less, and programs in memory ran very smoothly, to say the least.
My gaming machine is actually 5 years old - built in 2008, it originally housed a Geforce 9800GTX. The CPU is an intel Quad core Q9300 - pretty low end at the time, plus 4GB of DDR2 RAM - very old, very out of date.
On that machine, I could play the likes of BF3 on low settings reasonably well. I swapped the graphics card for a Geforce 560 Ti and now I can play BF3 on med/high at 1920x1200. Nothing else has changed, same old CPU, same DDR2 RAM.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
This varies on CPU in use. If the machine is not CPU bound, then a new GPU will work. If its already CPU bound in some games then while I don't doubt you'll get some improvement - you're already on the limit.
A new CPU and motherboard is often cheaper than the GPU upgrade, so its something you could factor in later. Call it your personal Tick/Tock in line with your gaming :)
We`re all equal
I dispute that claim. I've worked in middleware, where we put insane amounts of effort into utilising multiple cores (kinda required for the PS3/360), and pretty much all 3rd party middleware is now happy to run across multiple cores. The more middleware a game uses, the more likely it is to make *relatively* good use of the cores (certainly much more so than most software products). If you're targetting a game at iOS, then assuming it isn't some tedious zynga-style-freemium game, you've probably put a fair amount of effort into multi-threading it (because that's the only way to locate the extra performance). The issue really comes when you hit PC gaming. If you've ported your game from console to PC, then it will have been designed to use 6 cores at 100%. Since an i7 will wipe the floor with the 360/PS3, chabces are, this game will only result in 30% CPU usage on that system. As it is, a lot of PC developers target a lower specced system (e.g. 2.0Ghz core 2) to maximise their potential market. Once again, if you run this game on an i7, it's barely going to get over 20% usage. Yes there are poorly coded (and older titles) that utilise one core only, but these days that's becomming far less common. If a game is hammering all CPU cores at 100%, it's either porrly coded, or you have a very low specced CPU (e.g. ATOM).
I just went through this very decision process, but for a desktop machine, not a gaming system. I picked up a Dell Optiplex 755 with a decent Core 2 Duo CPU at a surplus sale. I upped the RAM to 8 Gigs and was quite happy, but then I started thinking about the graphics subsystem. This box had integrated Intel graphics, and that left something to be desired under Windows 7. So one quick trip to local computer store later, and for less than $40 I dropped an HD6450 in it and am quite pleased. The system now supports DirectX 11, everything seems very 'snappy' and I'm quite sure this box could handle Windows 8 for general desktop use., adding a couple more years to it's useful life.
Ken
When you want to toss an upgraded GPU in an older system, keep an eye on the PCI spec level, no sense buying the latest whiz-bang video card if your system only has a first-gen PCI Express slot.
Another concern will be power - many older systems have smaller power supplies or power supplies that provide just enough power for power-hungry older system components.
Ken
That might be true for something like transcoding, but it isn't for gaming. I pull the same FPS with my Phenom II 965 black and 6950 as people with the same card and 500$ I7s.
CPUs are almost never the bottleneck in a system, and because of this, upgrades to it rarely have a significant impact on gaming performance.
The same is not true for the GPU, as that is where almost all the work is done.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
But the fastest ATI contemporary isn't still usable. Compare the Radeon X1950 XT, released just weeks later - roughly the same caliber of performance at launch, but the 8800 still supports almost every game, while the X1950 will flat-out refuse to run stuff that's too new. I know - I have an X1900 XT.
The main secret behind the 8800's longevity is that it was the first "modern" graphics card, which ironically enough means it doesn't, at the hardware level, do "graphics". It's all shader cores doing rendering in software. Whereas the X1900s were still trying to take a dedicated rendering pipeline and tack on as much configurability and programming as possible.
The 8600 or 8800 is still commonly listed under "minimum hardware requirements", because it acts much like a modern card, just slower and less efficient.
About a year ago I stuck a GTX 550 Ti in a machine that was at the time pushing five years old.
I generally upgrade video cards at least twice after the initial build of my computers, every 2 years or so. My needs for upgrading other components are generally low, because...really...who needs a top of the line processor? I generally stick to the top of the mid tier and it does anything I might need done for the next 5-6 years. As far as RAM goes, whenever I get a new motherboard I just put as much RAM as it supports in it, and have been known to spend more on RAM than CPU when building a computer.
I just recently rebuilt my computer (new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and a second GPU) for about $550, and that got it to a point where it can play Crysis 2 with max settings. I expect it will be able to play any game the makers throw at it for another two years before performance starts to become a real issue. Maybe longer, because it seems to me that game-makers are getting better at building games that still run (albeit less prettily) on older hardware.
If it hadn't been for some recent hardware failures I'd probably STILL be rocking the last machine, which would be over 6 years old now. I just didn't feel like throwing money down the drain buying a replacement motherboard that used and old-ass socket.
I think the only reason to buy absolute top-of-the-line hardware these days is to stroke your e-peen.
Porquoi?
I'm using an Intel i5-2400/16GB RAM with two GeForce 9800GTs for dual-head. Older tech, but only one year old to me. Why? For a bargain price, it works great for me and was a significant improvement over the AMD Athlon XP-3000/Geforce 6200 I was using.
Latest/Greatest hardware is nice, but expensive. I also tend to play older games like Quake, Unreal, COD, MOH which run great on more modern hardware.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I threw a GTS450 into my socket 939 board with an AMD Toledo Athlon X2 and 3GB of dual channel, low timing DDR1. It was faster than my Geforce 8600 but not by much. I brought my 450 over to my new i5-2400 system and it was like night and day. This thing tore my games a new ass framerate-wise. It would seem the x16 PCI-E slot was holding it back on my old board compared to the new x16 2.0 or 2.1 slot or whatever. Plus, the PCI-E controller is in the i5 itself if I'm not mistaken. So as long as your board has a PCI-E socket with a modern level of bandwidth and a nice controller, you should see very close to the same impact as in a modern system since the cards are basically standalone computers.
My problem is I use my xbox for primarily single player offline games, and probably once every two weeks fire it up for a 30 minute session. Pretty much every time I turn it on, there's an xbox update that HAS to run. And that makes me sad.
I get it, they need updates. But I would love to have a console that checked once a day or once a week for updates and just silently did it in the background. Similarly, I can "purchase" demos or full games on the xbox live site, but I have to turn on my console to start the download. The above "check in" once a day could eliminate that issue as well.
Karnal
My gaming PC (including its video card) is more than five years old and I have very little trouble running modern games. Seems pretty obvious that upgrading the GPU would only help, but "rejuvenate" implies the thing should be near dead and it's not -- my 5 year old PC does just fine. And, by the way, I didn't go nuts building it. It was not the #1 top of the line system when I built it, it was just solid.
Face it, the hardware lifespan is longer now than it was a decade ago. You don't have to buy a new system every year or two to keep up anymore.
ram disk with 256gb ram? it's faster then ssd
Anybody who has tried it knows this is true. I game on Pentium 4 (circa 7 years old) with a newer card (Radeon HD 5450 and GeForce GT8800). GTA IV, Crysis, Crysis 2 all play perfectly well.
you had me at #!
I used to have a 4-year upgrade cycle on my gaming desktop. Last time I've upgraded it was in 2008, with a Core 2 Duo E8400 and mid range GPU (6600GTS).
However, things have changed a bit, and I'm not planing on upgrading my whole system for the near future. I've bought a 128GB SSD a year or so ago, and this was amazing for the overall performance of the system, but as my games are not installed on the SSD itself, it didn't do much for them.
So I'm considering a new GPU, in the 200 € range, to improve my gaming experience, but without breaking the bank... Any ideas? :)
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
This is how I built my gaming PCs when I was poor. Junk parts other people were throwing away, decent speed smallish hard drive, mid-range video card upgraded biannually, pirated software.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can play almost everything from last year with quality visuals with an old CPU teamed with a new GPU. But here are the tricks:
* You need at least 2GB of memory. If you don't have this, don't even try.
* The CPU must be dual-code, at least. Single core CPU don't work anymore (tried both on the same machine, difference is night and day, it just happened that I could access a compatible dual-core CPU for free, otherwise it would have been impractical). If the CPU is not dual core, it does prevent decent performance, even with a top notch GPU.
* Upgrade the HDD to SSD. The older HD that comes with your 10 y/o rig will slow everything down. This is the second most beneficial upgrade beside the video card.
I suspect the approach of this article may be more relevant than at many times in the past because we've gone a fairly long time without having compatibility issues from AGP/PCI-E ports, power supplies...
Additionally I suspect the increase in CPU performance over the period has been relatively low in a gaming context as a lot of the added performance has been multi-core which games do not utilise especially well. Added to that is a long period where many PC games are multi-platform - presumably this involves taking a game that runs on the lowest-common denominator (XBox360) and then upscaling it which - again presumably - mostly involves tarting up the GPU-powered graphics rather than the CPU-powered engine itself.
Pity though that they didn't give us much about how they could increase the graphics quality without falling below a playable level.
PlanetSide 2 is one of the few games where you never have enough CPU.
But for 99% of games you can get a graphics card a couple generations ahead of your CPU and still not be bottlenecked by your CPU. It has always been like this.
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That's right, we're all out to get you, because you are the light that's fighting the good fight, and we can't have that.
Would you like a tin foil hat? How about a soap box? Nah, you seem to be fine without one (you do realise your Xubuntu monologue was irrelevant to everything right?).
I really doubt. It needs complex improvements, total hardware replacement.. 5 years is a long period..
I've done just this in the past and certainly have accelerated some games, however others simply suffer from processor or architecture limitations regardless of the card. For example, AI and texture load-ins, particle systems tend to jam up regardless of the card, as well as anything asking for a lot of random seeding.
I personally like to throw a new $250 card at each system about 2 years into its life, then upgrade the system on the other two years, repeating (providing there isn't a requirement to upgrade the socket). That way I tend to be able to run everything at maximum. Its certainly a lot cheaper than the good ol' days of yearly upgrades.
About 10 years ago I tried an experiment. I had bought a new CPU and GPU. The CPU could fit in my current motherboard. (Nothing was *old* just a few years out of date.)
My theory was that if I upgraded the GPU first, I would get most of my performance improvement and the CPU wouldn't matter. So I upgraded them one at a time to be a proper scientist. I had FutureMark ready to go.
The GPU, first, gave me the 2x improvement I figured it could, based on the improvement in the specs. I had expected a little less because of the old CPU, but seemed to get the full performance boost.
Then I upgraded the CPU and, surprisingly, I got another 2x just like the the CPU specs promised. I expected maybe 20% or so since the GPU should have been most of the bottleneck.
I was so intrigued that I found a memory upgrade that also fit the board. Again the 40% or so I expected, based on specs, happened.
I'm surprised to this day.
While it has been a long time, the best I can guess/remember was that it was an AMD 3000+ CPU (1.9Ghz). And an NVidia GPU, I think GT6600 or something? The memory went from whatever to DDR, if I recall.