What card to buy for X2 3800+ rig
 

So i finally got around to getting my old X2 3800+ up and running. Now that it is working I want better gfx than a Geforce 6150LE. I plan to buy a PSU but atm its a generic 350w. I'm looking to spend not too much cash ( yea i know budget cards :p ) and am wondering what Nvidia has to offer performance wise compared to a HD 6450. I would also like something that doesnt need a aux power connector as the craptacular PSU prolly couldn't handle it.

Advice and comments appreciated :D

I think i will prolly get the PSU first, but still need advice on a card suitable for a system of this age.

maybe a green edition geforce 9800GT, I doubt anything higher won't be limited by CPU.

im sure theres a Fermi based card better than that. i was thinking of maybe a GT 430.

oh, you meant a recent card, sorry, but it would fit your extra system's age :D

I wouldn't buy anything higher than a GT 440 for the machine. I own a couple 939 machines and they are not that fast, except for my Opteron 170 @ 3GHz to a lesser extent. You should really consider 2GB of RAM as well.

EDIT: REALLY IMPORTANT! Any NVIDIA card with built-in HDMI audio will conflict with the onboard sound on nForce4 based chipsets! This includes GTX 200/400 cards. I don't know about AMD cards and this chipset, but they may work fine.

Ya more ram is a must, just seeing if any of my friends have any laying around before i waste money on some :eek:

Here is the model specs for the system: http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/de...eE380sp2.shtml

I'd go with a modern gpu that doesn't require additional power tbh.

Which OS are you going to use, and what motherboard chipset is it? Do you have memory?

the specs are in my system specs. Im typing from the X2 as we speak in my bedroom.

owned both X2 4000+ and X2 5200+ (oc'd to 3.2Ghz). The 8600GT range will do well, upped to 9600GT and it becomes CPU limited in some games.

7750?

I own a X2 3800+ and at the moment it is on lend with a friend for the last 6months and its running a 3850 in it and she seems very pleased with it so far.

i just looked at the HDD and XP is on a 9GB partition followed by a 120 partition and the rest unallocted space :eek: just finished making a bootable XP usb as the DVD drive is stuck and i dont have any other atm. At least i still have the pc's drivers on another usb :D

I may go newegg.ca for a 6650/70 thats about as high as i want to spend cash on the GFX.

Going with a modern card i'd look at upgrading the OS as well. :toast: Id install windows 7 x86 version. I usually run Win 7 x64 on everything, but not to long a go I upgraded an older system on par with your x2 3800 with 2gb ram from XP pro to Win7 x86 and it felt a lot faster. :toast: Now any old systems with 4gb and below I always suggest Windows 7 x86 over x64.

Unfortunately the 939 skt CPUs are just not capable of running the latest games.
I tried running Skyrim and regardless of settings it had low FPS.

I ran an HD 4850 for a long time with it though and it was doing well even in DiRT 3 at 1440 x 900.
So something around that range without breaking the budget will be fine.

It doesnt have Win 7 drivers available, only XP and Vista. I did reformat tho and now am going to wait til i have money and get some DDR ram (unless anyone wants to donate some craptacular DDR 1GB sticks).

Im looking at http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...CE&Pagesize=20 (GT 430) and http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...CE&Pagesize=20 (GT 440) for Nvidia cards and http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...size=20&Page=1 for AMD cards.

How about the ECS 440 w/DDR 5?

Regarding Vista, would those drivers work in Win 7?

not overly looking to play games on this rig, maybe some Steam/Valve games. This PC is going to be mostly for music/movies and after upgraded WGC (i've been away too long, damn hot Canadian summers).

http://support.acer.com/product/defa...px?modelId=308

Vista and 7 Driver model are not considerably different. Also You can always go to the chips maker websites for drivers if you get the model numbers from the board itself.

Examples:

Chipset- Nvidia

Audio- Realtek

lan

SATA- Nvidia

USB

I've had Win 7 x86 running on an nForce4 ASUS A8N SLi Deluxe motherboard with an 8600GT and it ran quite well as in no performance issues.
Couldn't run XP 32 bit SP3 due to some motherboard incompatibility.
I didn't install any drivers and win 7 device manager didn't ask for any besides the GPU drivers.

EDIT:-
The system was also running an Athlon 3000+ stock speed with 2X1GB ADATA RAM.
Since you are going to be running a X2 3800+ 939, you should not need the AMD DCO if running Win 7 as it was made obsolete with Vista as you probably already know.

HD 7750 is the best new card you could run on that power supply.

^ this. And that card beats a 430 hands down... and only needs 55w of power for the card.

Radeon HD 7750 is the answer.

SP3 broke alot of systems for XP. It was a ploy to force users to upgrade to Vista...

socket 940/AM2 actually.

Also XP SP 3 runs just fine on this system. I dont really want a 7750 as the cpu will be a bottleneck and as I mentioned above I dont intend to game on this much, if at all. Not really interested in spending $100+ on a gfx card for a 6+ year old system.

From my experience from 939 x2 rigs, the last card I ran was a 4770 and it was bottlenecked, card before that was a 8800gt. It played some games alright but not on max anything. If you are looking just for 2d and desktop graphics and want to go nvidia with your power supply, I would say a GT 610/620, due to your power limits. But I prefer the HD 6670 for your situation.

Then just buy whatever is cheapest LOL. There are lots of 30 to $40 cards that will fit the bill choose one.

i cant find any CPU support for this board, as in specific cpus that can be used. wondering if a 1st gen Phenom would work in it.