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Video Card Upgrade Help

Sundog

Sundog

SOH-CM-2025
I've been thinking of upgrading my video card, but this an old system, so I don't know if I can really do that with what I have. I like the nVidia GeForce series as they've always been reliable for me. However, my Mother Board only has a PCI-E 2.0 Bus and I don't know what I could really use with that; I currently have the GTX 275. My CPU is an i7 2.7 GHz. Would I have to get a new MB to upgrade my vid card and if so, should I just wait until I can upgrade the whole system with the limitations I would have upgrading?
 
Sundog said:
I've been thinking of upgrading my video card, but this an old system, so I don't know if I can really do that with what I have. I like the nVidia GeForce series as they've always been reliable for me. However, my Mother Board only has a PCI-E 2.0 Bus and I don't know what I could really use with that; I currently have the GTX 275. My CPU is an i7 2.7 GHz. Would I have to get a new MB to upgrade my vid card and if so, should I just wait until I can upgrade the whole system with the limitations I would have upgrading?
Click to expand...
I think waiting might be the best bet. . .the CPU and Motherboard are probably at the point of exhaustion, lol and adding a new GPU, especially one with at least 1gig of memory, might really tax it. Also consider your onboard memory (4 gig at least) and your power supply, check the specs on whatever card you consider to be sure your current power supply will be sufficient. . .also if you are considering moving to P3D at some point, that's another thing to take a look at when upgrading.

Lots to look at I know, but it's easy for someone to suggest all these things and quite another to have the funds available to pull it off.
 
I just installed a new Asus GTX980 recently, which replaced a faulting ATI/AMD Radeon HD7970. I would suggest being very careful about the specs as I found my new card only just physically squeezed in my rather large case, which really shocked me. A lot of the newer cards are probably even larger and so would not have fit.

If you are considering upgrading everything else in the future, then my advice would also be to wait a bit. Even if you decide to go ahead with just replacing the card, the extra time researching will help you to find a suitable card at the best possible price.

Just FYI a newer PCI-E 3.0 capable card would still work in a PCI-E 2.0 slot, but it just wouldn't use it's full speed potential. It's similar to plugging a USB 3.0 capable device in to a USB 2.0 slot.

Cheers,
 
Thanks,

I am looking at moving to P3D in the future and I was wondering about a PCI3.0 card in a 2.0 bus. But given that FSX gets most of it's power from the CPU, I think a full upgrade is the way to go. This system is eight years old and feeling it's age. Now I have to start considering what system to get. I just priced one out at velocity micro and it came to $2K which is quite a bit more than I want to spend now. ;)
 
I don't think PCI express 2.0 is a bottleneck for any (single) card yet. It's a whole lot of bandwidth...

If you want a quick and dirty answer, get a GTX 1070.
 
....but it still very likely won't fit in the case and you won't have the necessary power supply cables either.
I agree that a full system upgrade is the best way forward, as and when it's possible.
 
Sundog said:
I've been thinking of upgrading my video card, but this an old system, so I don't know if I can really do that with what I have. I like the nVidia GeForce series as they've always been reliable for me. However, my Mother Board only has a PCI-E 2.0 Bus and I don't know what I could really use with that; I currently have the GTX 275. My CPU is an i7 2.7 GHz. Would I have to get a new MB to upgrade my vid card and if so, should I just wait until I can upgrade the whole system with the limitations I would have upgrading?
Click to expand...

A new video card might help a little and would allow you to run a higher resolution monitor or more image filtering, but I think your current computer is CPU bound. 2.7 GHz is pretty slow for FSX. FSX comes alive when you have 4 cores running at, or even beyond, 4 GHz.
 
Sundog said:
I've been thinking of upgrading my video card, but this an old system, so I don't know if I can really do that with what I have. I like the nVidia GeForce series as they've always been reliable for me. However, my Mother Board only has a PCI-E 2.0 Bus and I don't know what I could really use with that; I currently have the GTX 275. My CPU is an i7 2.7 GHz. Would I have to get a new MB to upgrade my vid card and if so, should I just wait until I can upgrade the whole system with the limitations I would have upgrading?
Click to expand...

At the end of last year I updated my i7-920 system by replacing the GTX 275 card with a GTX 970. There's absolutely no problem running a PCIe 3.0 card in a PCIe 2 slot - see https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,1.html for more info. To quote from the conclusions of the article:

"If you use a single high-end graphics card then really, even the PCIe Gen 1.1 slot would be sufficient. Gen 2.0 is preferred and Gen 3.0 only brings in a marginal improvement. Pretty much everybody anno 2015 is on PCIe Gen 2.0 though, so if you are worried that performance is cut in half due to that faster PCIe Gen 3.0 slot, then think again in a modest 2 to 3% percent on average."

​

If you want to keep your existing CPU/motherboard, overclock your CPU so that it doesn't bottleneck the GPU. I have my i7-920 (normally 2.7GHz) running comfortably at 4GHz and it works well with the 970 graphics card. You probably won't see a great performance boost with the new card but you'll be able to run at higher screen resolutions with better antialiasing settings.
 
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