Old computer New GPU

[JimmyD3]

Is there a site you can go to see what new GPU's will work with your existing Mother Board??

[oboe]

This site lets you design/build your whole system and will identify any incompatibilities, Jimmy.    It'll also calculate the total power draw, so you can see if your current power supply will be big enough...


https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

[Drane]

PCIe video cards are backwards compatible.

You will need to make sure it will physically fit in the case you have.

When you get a video card, try to buy one with a full 16 PCIe lanes.

Some newer PCIe 4.0 low end video cards only have 8 lanes which could make them slower on PCIe 3.0 or 2.0 motherboards.

For a graphic card that you could transfer to a newer cpu/motherboard when you upgrade that, I would recommend these minimum specs:

PCIe 4.0 x16
8GB memory or more
For AMD - Radeon RX 6700 or RX 7700 (or better)
For NVidia - RTX 3060 or RTX 4070 (or better)

A good performance reference is Tom's Hardware GPU Hierarchy chart https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

I usually compare shop on Newegg and Amazon, occasionally Best Buy has good deals.

Oh, one brand I personally avoid is XFX, every XFX card I have ever owned died right after the warranty ran out.

[JimmyD3]

Thank  you for the feedback gentlemen. I thought I had seen a web site that would tell you what video card was compatible with a specified Mother board, but I can not find it now.

[Meatwad]

PC part picker is nice if you dont mind all the referral links on there. If I see something I like, I will copy and paste the item on the site itself to remove the referral codes. I despise when sites try to sneak them in the clickable items.

[The Fugitive]

Thank  you for the feedback gentlemen. I thought I had seen a web site that would tell you what video card was compatible with a specified Mother board, but I can not find it now.

You could post your first third of a DXdiag here and let these gurus look at what you have now and suggest things that would work for you.

[Brooke]

What are you using your system for?

For example, AH nonVR, AH VR, some other games?

AH nonVR doesn't need much graphics horsepower.

[Eagler]

Power supply and case size are concerns along with the motherboard..

Had to get a new case when I got the 3070ti...ended up building a whole new cpu

What card were you looking at?

Eagler

[JimmyD3]

Here are the first few pages of my DxDiag.

Brooke, I use it primarily in AH3 nonVR, but I hope to upgrade enough to allow me to go to VR in the future. Currently I have an Nvidia 980. I would like to move up to a 3080. My power supply is a 850W Corsiar as I recall.

[Drano]

OK a couple of things to think about. Your mobo is on the old side. While it has a PCIe slot the 3080 will plug into, it's not a PCIe-4 slot. Because of that, you'll have to lower your expectations of the 3080 on your rig. It will be an improvement but you won't get all that card can deliver. I have a Strix 3080 12GB and keep in mind it's a 400W+ card and runs pretty hot. So you'll need a decent PSU (I have an 850W) and better than average cooling on your case. Oh and it'll be a lot bigger so make sure it'll fit! I've actually undervolted mine with afterburner to save a bit of power/heat and I'm getting nearly the same performance as stock. Overclocking is great too-- but I think I could heat half the house with it!

[JimmyD3]

Thanks for the quick reply Drano. I was hoping to avoid having to build a new system, guess that is not in the cards. Time to start saving pennies. 

[AKIron]

A few years ago I upgraded a CPU from an I7-6700k to I7-9700k. Had to upgrade the MB also. Kept the same GTX-1070 GPU. Almost doubled my frame rate in a combat flight sim. The CPU was a bottleneck.

[Bizman]

A friend had a 4790K and a GTX1080 combined with a 1440p 144Hz monitor. The frame rates were OK but when he got a newer then current CPU (plus mobo and RAM) he told that he could react faster in CS:GO which is a fast paced game.

That said, if you want to take smaller steps getting a fast GPU for the current system will improve some and allow you to wait for the end of support for Windows 10, January 2025. Black Friday of '24 might be a good stage to upgrade the rest of your system.

[Prayer]

I built in Feb earlier this year. Look for good used cards. I got a 2080 TI Rog Strix 11gb for 300 used and it is mint, might go for much cheaper now. It outperforms 3070 cards and about 5 fps away from 3080 cards. Everything is max detail in AH and i could run at about 165 fps. I have now moved on to the Oculus Quest 2. Couldnt be happier with it. Look around and price wisely. My whole rig was 1000 with a 5800x CPU, x570 hero MOBO, 2tb Hynix ssd, Artic 360 cooler, 850 Corsair psu, 32gb Memory and a PC Case with 6 fans for 93 bucks, highly recommend this case Antec DF700 Flux. I took my time and shopped around, getting alot of the parts used. Remember most parts now sit around in a glass case, and usually last a long time if not overheated. Glad I did. Boards go for pretty cheap used. Power supply was only 40 bucks on ebay. Good luck

[JimmyD3]

Excellent information gentlemen, I appreciate the help. Prayer I'll look into the used equipment sources and see what I can find. Again thanks for all the feed back.