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General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 12:39:33 PM

Title: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 12:39:33 PM
Just like the title says I have a nvidia 240 gt and I want to get more I have a I7 processor and I was told that won't be a weak point I tried to up the settings and had a 10 fps drop from 60 but would have freeze moments for about 2 seconds so dropped my settings back down. So I'm wondering would it be worth it to overclock or just buy a new one I've never overclocked anything but I have read up on it I just wana max or come close to maxing my settings
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Gman on July 14, 2013, 01:01:07 PM
You need to be sure if your system can be upgraded first of all.  This means a couple of things, primarily if your case can fit a new video card.  Next, you need to know what type of power supply unit you have, and what it's rated for, and what connectors it has.  Almost all new cards will need to connect to your PSU, at least anything decent.

Your current card won't see much improvement overclocking, if that's what you were asking, at least IMO.

You can have an i7 cpu, but a crappy motherboard and PSU which will make it nearly impossible to upgrade your video card, so you need to check into that before any purchase.  I have a home theater PC that is an HP, and it's an i7 920, with a 5770 video card, and the only card I could get into it with the current MB and PSU was a 7770, which wasn't really worth the small increase in performance.  I suspect your box will be similar in terms of the situation.  Maybe take a look at your make and model and post it, and others here can help you out a bit more with that info.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 01:07:16 PM
How would I go about finding all that info I assume it's in some file in windows but I don't know im not computer savvy mechanical savvy I am but not so much on this type of deal
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 14, 2013, 01:18:27 PM
DxDiag would help. The first third is usually enough. How-to by Skuzzy can be found here: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,71591.msg3215282.html#msg3215282 (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,71591.msg3215282.html#msg3215282)

240GT is a lower end card, so you won't lose much should you fry it by overclocking. OTOH overclocking bears always a risk of ruining your whole computer, so you'd be better off by upgrading and either saving the 240 for possible testing purposes or selling it cheaply. Be prepared, getting an entirely new computer might turn out to be the best solution in a lengthy run. You know, a better power supply, more RAM... Don't haste, though, before we have seen the specs of your current rig.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Debrody on July 14, 2013, 02:44:26 PM
240 GT ~ 9600 GT - thats an older card, mid-range for its era (2007 - 2008)
Overclocking can give you 10-15-20% performance gain, but does it really helps when its 10 or 12 fps?
The 1st generation i7s are decent CPUs, even today, so getting a newer card from the 150-200$ range would surely help you out.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 03:01:24 PM
Time of this report: 7/14/2013, 13:59:23
       Machine name: DANIELANDRUBI
   Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130318-1533)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: MSI
       System Model: MS-7636
               BIOS: Default System BIOS
          Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         870  @ 2.93GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
             Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 4056MB RAM
          Page File: 1564MB used, 6543MB available
        Windows Dir: C:\Windows
    DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
   User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
 System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
    DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
     DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 03:02:55 PM
no idea what any of this means i use this comp for only aces high and some google and youtube
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: guncrasher on July 14, 2013, 03:17:04 PM
danmac did you build the pc or is it one off the shelf pc?  gateway, hp, etc...


semp
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 04:00:39 PM
It was built but not by me is it bad if something need up grading then by all means let me know
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: The Fugitive on July 14, 2013, 04:19:07 PM
Over clocking a weak card is only going to give you very marginal improvements in frame rate. You would be much better off getting a new video card.  As suggested above, a $200 card would be a very good jump.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 04:37:39 PM
I want to spend a minimum of 300 I want to really crank up the setting
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: guncrasher on July 14, 2013, 04:59:11 PM
how about your ps?


semp
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 14, 2013, 05:57:49 PM
I have no idea I googled how to find it and everything said should be a sticker I have none so I'm guessing it's a small crappy ps
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: The Fugitive on July 14, 2013, 07:26:11 PM
You may have to take the screws out and look at the back side to find the tag.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Gman on July 14, 2013, 07:35:34 PM
You may be in luck by the looks of things.  If it was built and not bought, odds are in your favor you can do some upgrading, as your CPU and RAM aren't bad at all.  If 300 is your budget, there are tons of decent video card and psu upgrades that fall into the 300$ combination range that will give you WAY better performance than a 240 nvidia.  A 7870 or mid level nVidia card and a decent PSU to power it should come in around 300$ ish I believe, or certainly not much more.

As others said you probably need to remove your case, or least one side of it, to get a look at your PSU, it should have the information right on it someplace easy to see.  Try doing that and report back, heck, you may even not need to upgrade it depending on what it is, as a 7870 or 650 doesn't need as much power as other faster cards like a 670 680 780 or 7950 etc.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 14, 2013, 11:54:11 PM
that 240 is an oem video card, minimum power requirement is 450watts. did you get it built by a local shop or a friend? the only way to get that video card is to pull it from a retail box unit, people sell them on ebay after they upgrade.

the motherboard is a microstar international (msi) micro-atx with the intel h55 northbridge chipset with an integrated graphics chip that supports directx10. i hope the case is a large mid tower atx case, otherwise you're going to have to take some measurements inside the case then make sure whatever video card you purchase will fit.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 15, 2013, 12:50:00 AM
I took the PSU out and looked but couldn't find any info on it their was 3 quality control stickers though and I had a guy build it while I was in Afghanistan I think it was around 600 or so. I didn't pay top dollar so I didn't expect a super gaming pc but I'm not opposed to spending some coin to make it do what I want.I'll take some pics of the whole thing when I get off So you can see what its got. This computer is a few years old. I also want to say it's a coolmaster tower box but not sure
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 15, 2013, 06:40:04 AM
no idea what any of this means i use this comp for only aces high and some google and youtube
It tells that your computer looks like it's not some El-Cheapo brand. It tells the model of your motherboard, which is helpful for determining possible upgrades. It tells your processor specs. A longer version would have told the model of your video card, but that's something we already know.

Very weird that your PSU has no label on it. There should be one on either side, but since you've taken it out and couldn't find any, we believe your saying there isn't one. There are a couple of clues that might help determine whether it should work with a better video card: Look at the cables. If there's a spare 4+4-pin splittable connector, maybe even with a text like "video" or "graphics" on it or on a sticker around the cable, your PSU is designed to work with a more powerful card. Some older PowerSupplies have a single square 4 pin video card connector, or a 6-pin one, the connectors in two rows on both.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 15, 2013, 07:52:16 AM
oy, now i'm wondering if that power supply has a gray housing on it. no mfg and power data labels sounds like it's a used oem component, and if it is an oem part, it would be underpowered for anything resembling a medium or high end video card. it should have a label that shows power ratings in watts, volts and amps.

that system could use more ram too. 4gb on win7 64bit is low, especially for gaming. by the time that system is done booting up, it's using 900mb to 1.5gb of ram, depending on what you have loading on boot.

without spending a ton of money on the system and ensure it will to run ah fairly well...you're going to want to put 8gb of ram in it, either a radeon 7850 2gb or a gtx660ti 2gb video card, and a min 550 watt power supply.

*note* only look at seasonic, thermaltake, corsair (builder, enthusiast, professional series), and some select xfx power supplies...
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 15, 2013, 08:12:33 AM
Sorry for wandering slightly off-topic, but so far I've never seen a PSU without a label, and I've opened numerous OEM's manufactured during the past quarter of a century. Every single one has had a label telling the maximum combined wattage as well as that for each voltage.

+1 on what Gyrene said about RAM. RAM is dirt cheap these days.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 15, 2013, 12:37:07 PM
No extra connectors that I saw I just going to buy a new PSU I saw a corsair that was 800 or 850 and the price wasent that bad http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemNumber=N82E16817139011
And the ram I was looking at is
http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemNumber=N82E16820148540 and get 2 of them for 16 gig of ram on my mother board I gave 4 slots 2 blue and 2 black what's the difference their
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 15, 2013, 12:47:42 PM
the different colored slots designate which are paired for dual channel ram operation...one set would be slot 0 and 1 and the other set would be 2 and 4. as a general rule (there are exceptions) if you run just 2 ram chips, they must be in like colored slots to work properly.

you would only need to go 8gb to get more than adequate performance...and 1333mhz would be max without overclocking. and overclocking (especially with that hardware platform) opens another can of worms you may not want to get into.

your newegg links didn't work...missing some data on the hyperlink.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: guncrasher on July 15, 2013, 12:53:44 PM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011

and ram

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-148-540&Tpk=n82e16820148540

the ram is a one stick 8 gb that may not work.  you may want to get 2x2gb or completely replace what you have with 2x4gb which is what I would do, just to have same brand and avoid problems.


semp
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 15, 2013, 01:32:59 PM
The 650 Watt version would be more than sufficient for your current and future needs. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012) will save you the cost of the RAM you're going to buy. Your motherboard only can take one GPU, so multi-GPU support is unnecessary. You might also want to know, that too powerful a PSU can cause problems. They work best when they're optimally loaded. Although not the technically valid explanation, you might remember this from your physics lessons from school: Energy doesn't disappear, it just transforms. You wouldn't want your PSU be a heater for those cold winter nights.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 15, 2013, 03:42:15 PM
Ok so over doing it is bad the 650w is a lot cheaper so that's a plus looks like that's the anger for that

And the gtx660ti is my video card answer is their a ram brand thats good and ones to stay away from and I guess I'll get 2 4gig to take care of the problem and thanks for all the help guys its made this way easier than I though it was
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 15, 2013, 03:53:14 PM
Ok so over doing it is bad the 650w is a lot cheaper so that's a plus looks like that's the anger for that

And the gtx660ti is my video card answer is their a ram brand thats good and ones to stay away from and I guess I'll get 2 4gig to take care of the problem and thanks for all the help guys its made this way easier than I though it was
the list would be shorter to just tell you what memory brands to look at...and if you can get it, grab low profile. makes fitting an after market cpu cooler easier.

corsair (vengence), crucial (ballistix), patriot (viper), gskill (ripjaw or sniper)...
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 15, 2013, 04:02:37 PM
This?http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233186
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 15, 2013, 04:03:19 PM
And the link may not work I'm doing all this from my phone
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: guncrasher on July 15, 2013, 04:12:03 PM
get the ram that is 1300.  at 1600 you would have to overclock and you will have to go into bios for that. 

something like this.  and I would probably look up the mobo's website and look for comparable ram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145251

semp
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 15, 2013, 07:08:19 PM
what Semp said  :aok ...but not the corsair xms memory. unless i just happened into a faulty prod run at the time (2 years ago), the last batch i bought had to replace nearly all of them.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 16, 2013, 08:40:25 PM
Got my ram ordered got 2 2gig ripjaw I think is what its called and I'm ordering the PSU right now and as soon as I sell one of my rc cars I'll get my video card
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 17, 2013, 06:52:52 AM
Got my ram ordered got 2 2gig ripjaw I think is what its called and I'm ordering the PSU right now and as soon as I sell one of my rc cars I'll get my video card
oy, oops...uh, guess someone should have warned you about your memory purchase. unless you already have a set of gskill ripjaw memory that is the exact same spec as what you just ordered, you may have problems. at the bare minimum, the memory you ordered should match what you already have. the basic reason is, memory will run at the specs of the lowest speed memory you have in the system. let's say you have 800mhz in the system now, if you pop 1333mhz memory in the system with the existing memory, it will run at 800mhz. it can also cause random performance issues depending on the mobo, the worst of which is random bsod's.

if it's not too late, cancel the order and order an 8gb set at 4gb x2.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 17, 2013, 08:46:40 AM
Ok I'll call new egg
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 17, 2013, 03:21:02 PM
So I'm looking at video cards what's with the different brands of the same card
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 17, 2013, 03:21:53 PM
quality...some are better than others and some are just overpriced fluff.

at one time pny was a good brand, then something happened and now they are crap. his was at one time a bargain basement brand but, if you shop carefully they have some decent hardware. brands like powercolor, zotac, visiontek, galaxy, ecs, sparkle...all low end junk. the brand you can generally count on to have good performance, competitive price and mostly reliable hardware are, evga, xfx, sapphire, msi, his, gigabyte and asus. the differences are going to be individual component quality and performance. evga and xfx tend to have the best warranties.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 17, 2013, 03:29:41 PM
Then what one would you get
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 17, 2013, 03:42:08 PM
oy, i wouldn't dare to make that sort of decision with the hardware you have now. best i could say is something in the $250-$325 range will get you good performance and if you decide to build another system, will save you from having to buy another video card. maybe something along the lines of an nvidia gtx760 2gb from evga or gigabyte.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 17, 2013, 03:56:54 PM
I'm just lost the cards all say their the same but have different one is 980 MHz another is over 1000 Seems like their is no set standards at all
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 17, 2013, 04:43:45 PM
I'm just lost the cards all say their the same but have different one is 980 MHz another is over 1000 Seems like their is no set standards at all
what you want to look for is gpu (the graphics processor) speed without overclock, amount of onboard memory, memory type (ddr2, ddr3, ddr5 etc..), memory speed, memory bandwidth (64bit, 128bit, 192bit, 256bit, 384bit).

for nvidia, start looking here for basic factory standards...
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus (http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus)

for amd, look here...
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/Pages/desktop-graphics.aspx (http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/Pages/desktop-graphics.aspx)
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 18, 2013, 05:26:00 AM
A couple of percents difference in MHz doesn't affect gameplay much. That saying, 980 is roughly the same as 1020. As you've noticed, there are no standards. Minor differences are merely a marketing gimmick, 1000+ is MUCH more than 999...

GPU memory type is a more important factor. There are cheap cards with multiple Gb's of RAM, but it might be of DDR2 or GDDR3, which are much slower than GDDR5. For AH and your rig 1GB of fast GDDR5 memory will be more than sufficient for years.

Rather than looking at the Nvidia and AMD marketing orientating specs, I'd compare different card models in Wikipedia. For GeForce there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce) where under the title "Generations" is a link to all of the series. There you can find a comparison table covering all models and their specs. For AMD the link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units) with links to Main articles for each generation. The current models are Radeon HD 6/7/8xxx series.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 18, 2013, 06:34:42 AM
Biz, i dunno about those wiki articles. ya sure things are changing at wikipedia but, there is still a lot of poor information on it, including some of what's in the nvidia and amd articles.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Debrody on July 18, 2013, 06:39:46 AM
There is only GDDR5 RAM on the lower-mid range cards, from the HD 7790 and GTX 650ti, this is only an issue on the lower end models. Theese cards can run AH well, with nearly all the eye candy turned on.
Still, i would buy a HD 7850/7870 or a GTX660/660ti, those paired with your CPU will run AH maxed out for many years.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 18, 2013, 10:45:29 AM
Biz, i dunno about those wiki articles. ya sure things are changing at wikipedia but, there is still a lot of poor information on it, including some of what's in the nvidia and amd articles.
Well, anything that's in the Internet should be taken with a grain of salt. Why I prefer Wikipedia over Nvidia is that the former doesn't claim that the weakest card they have on the list, the GeForce 205 (OEM),
Quote
brings impressive graphics processing power to your PC.
That doesn't sound like it were too far from
Quote
a revolution in PC gaming performance
which is from the description about the GTX Titan.

"Revolution" doesn't sound like 50 fold better than "impressive", although their prices differ by that. I know by experience that hoping and wishing can make a budget restricted buyer read between the lines things that apply only for the more expensive alternatives.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 18, 2013, 11:15:45 AM
Thanks for all the help guys got the 660ti ordered and got the corsair PSU I can't wait to see the work with better eyes
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 18, 2013, 12:01:53 PM
Well, anything that's in the Internet should be taken with a grain of salt. Why I prefer Wikipedia over Nvidia is that the former doesn't claim that the weakest card they have on the list, the GeForce 205 (OEM), That doesn't sound like it were too far from  which is from the description about the GTX Titan.

"Revolution" doesn't sound like 50 fold better than "impressive", although their prices differ by that. I know by experience that hoping and wishing can make a budget restricted buyer read between the lines things that apply only for the more expensive alternatives.
and that is exactly why i specified the information i did...basic factory standards. forget the marketing b.s., just look at the factory specs and go from there. even the wiki articles have information that  :noid over most people's heads and they don't really care about.
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: Bizman on July 18, 2013, 01:24:56 PM
and that is exactly why i specified the information i did...basic factory standards. forget the marketing b.s., just look at the factory specs and go from there. even the wiki articles have information that  :noid over most people's heads and they don't really care about.
Both have their weaknesses and strengths. What I liked in the wikis was the tables first in chronological order by generations, then ordered by power. Easy to figure out how the numbering goes in current generations. I tried to figure out whether the Nvidia list was about all currently available versions ordered  from the most powerful to the weakest, but to me it seemed like it was similarly ordered to the wiki tables which IMO are easier to read in one glimpse. Anyhow, media reading skills are important and we both know that.

Let's see how satisfied a customer we have in danmac after all this almost academic level discussion.  :aok
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: gyrene81 on July 18, 2013, 02:02:44 PM
Let's see how satisfied a customer we have in danmac after all this almost academic level discussion.  :aok
:lol  with all the info he has, should be a cake walk.

i almost feel like we should talk about him too...while he's standing there looking at us.  :rofl  :D
Title: Re: video card over clock or get a new one
Post by: danmac on July 19, 2013, 06:34:30 PM
while he's standing there looking at us.  :rofl  :D
how do you know I'm not in your closet watching you type eating a grilled cheese btw your out of cheese lol