Mission Impossible-Upgrading my Graphics Card

Shivvers

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Hi guys,

So I've had an HP Slimline 5780 for a while now and have started playing games more as of late. The specs can be found here:

HP Pavilion Slimline s5780uk Desktop PC Product Specifications HP Pavilion Slimline s5780uk Desktop PC - HP technical support (United Kingdom - English)

I want to upgrade my graphics card for under £100, but obviously there are two major problems:
1) It has to be low profile to fit
2) The PSU is only 220W

Also a 3rd would be that while I know a fair bit about computers, I am quite a novice at opening one up and have never replaced a part in my life.

Any help would be much appreciated :) There is no rush, I want to do this by the end of the year so have a good few months to consider any options.
 
Graphics cards are trivial to replace. Uninstall drivers, shutdown system, open case, undo screw, pull out card, push in card, replace screw, hit power button, install new drivers.

You've basically got two options, the Radeon 6670 and the Radeon 7750. The Radeon 6670 is available now in low profile form but is a fair bit slower than the Radeon 7750 which is out in full sized form and has been announced in low profile form. The 7750 is around 40% faster.

Power consumption wise, that spec page endorses upgrading to an i7-860 which is a good 45W more power hungry than the i3 it's listed with. The 'Geforce 405' it's listed with is a GT218 chip (Geforce 210) which uses approximately 15W under load so assume your system has a Geforce 405 and i3-550 then you've got at least 60W of spare capacity, the 6670 and 7750 both uses around 45-50W maximum.
 
Thanks Endless Waves, that was very helpful. How much better would you estimate the 6670 than the GeForce 405?
And when would I be able to get the 7750 low profile? How much do you think it would cost? I presume the 6670 will be considerably cheaper because of its age and lower performance.

Sorry for all these questions, I just want to make sure I can get the most for my money. I won't be playing games like Battlefield 3 and Crysis obviously, but I want to make sure I get a card which can manage most games at high settings, while not costing triple figures.
 
Thanks Endless Waves, that was very helpful. How much better would you estimate the 6670 than the GeForce 405?
And when would I be able to get the 7750 low profile? How much do you think it would cost? I presume the 6670 will be considerably cheaper because of its age and lower performance.

Five, Ten times faster? Cards like the Geforce 210/405 are just there to provide you with outputs and basic functionality. Great for adding two more monitors to a system, appalling for gaming.

Price-wise there are a couple of imported low profile 7750s on ebay for £100 so I'd expect that sort of price. The 6670 low profile will probably stay at it's current £75-80 price. The normal two are around £60 for the 6670 and £80 for the 7750 so given the low profile premium (you're a captive audience) it sounds about right from that angle too.

Time-wise I'm not sure, check the announcements on tech sites and the manufacturer's UK websites.

Sorry for all these questions, I just want to make sure I can get the most for my money. I won't be playing games like Battlefield 3 and Crysis obviously, but I want to make sure I get a card which can manage most games at high settings, while not costing triple figures.

I would think a 7750 and i3-550 should happily play Crysis and Battlefield 3, maybe not with everything on high if you're at a highish resolution, but smoothly at good looking settings. There's a review here showing it managing on absolute maximum settings, although admittedly at a low resolution and with a more powerful CPU.
 
I have already seen low profile 7750's about a month ago on ebay , the 7750 can manage any game on half decent settings even at 1920x1080, at say 720p even battlefield 3 and Crysis would play well. I think you should keep the CPU you have, it is fairly good and better than many current CPU's for gaming. I would personally take my chances on the 220W PSU with a 7750 or a 6670, if it is a decent one then you should have no problems.
You are probably looking at about £80+ because they are low profile.
There were plenty of 6570 low profile around so they are easy to get hold of but the performance is no where near the 7750 or even the 6670 GDDR5.

I would seriously think about this 6670 GDDR5 is is notably better than the GDDR3 version which is everywhere http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-11192-18-20G-HD6670-Profile-Graphics/dp/B0062CHLYI
 
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Wow thanks guys you've given me some really useful information here. I will certainly have a look at the 6670 DDR5 as the price looks really good for the performance! It's amazing how cheap these things have become compared to a few years ago.

One final question, when I search for the cards, I get various varieties- for example sapphire, MSI, Asus etc. what is the difference between these? And is there one in particular I should be looking for?
 
Wow thanks guys you've given me some really useful information here. I will certainly have a look at the 6670 DDR5 as the price looks really good for the performance! It's amazing how cheap these things have become compared to a few years ago.

These things fluctuate but I'd have said they've stayed roughly the same price for the last ten years, the Radeon 9600Pro was £140 in 2003 for example so matches fairly well to the nVidia 560Ti today. That is ticket price though, so in real terms you're right in that they've come down in price.

One final question, when I search for the cards, I get various varieties- for example sapphire, MSI, Asus etc. what is the difference between these? And is there one in particular I should be looking for?

They basically design the boards and coolers for the cards, AMD/nVidia give them some latitude to adjust the clock speeds and the like so they can be slightly faster than the reference design provided by AMD/nVidia, or slightly more efficient and they may offer extra warranties and the like.

They're always at least as good as the initial reviews performance-wise, with the exception of when different memory types are allowed, in which case the card is usually released first with the faster memory type and you have to be cautious to avoid any using inferior. I hadn't realised they'd actually done it on the 6670, usually they restrict that stunt to the slower cards where fewer people will notice.

There aren't really any card manufacturers that get it right all of the time so I'd find a review of the specific card if you can and see what that says about noises.
 
Great, thank you so much you've really put my doubts to rest! Hopefully I can find a good card and successfully upgrade my computer.
 

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