Best graphics for Intel I3-530

mlapgw

mlapgw

Gawd
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
547
I want to do a little upgrading to my son's computer. I'll add some ram and I wanted to update his graphics card to the best his system could properly use.

He plays on a 24" 1080p monitor. He is using a MSI GTS 450 Cyclone

His system:

PSU: Corsair 650TX
CPU:Intel I3-530
MoboECS Black Edition P55H-A 1156
Ram:4gb Adata ddr3 1333G
 
swap the 4gb 1333 ram to 8gb 1600 class ram would also help Gskill Ripjaw would be a great choice.

650Ti boost is apparently a great card, though I am way more partial to my AMD radeons, 7850/7870 from Asus or Msi being the Direct CU II, OR Twin Frozr III, OR Sapphire dual fan models all have great cooling, decently quiet, and nice overclocks.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/ecs_p55h_a/6.html

the cpu could be swapped to i5-750/i5 650 to 680 or even something like i7-860 if you felt the need and would most certainly be better performing, the motherboard is going to not allow much in the way of boosting performance(overclocking) though from what I have been reading.
 
No, his processor is not O.C., nor is mine for that matter. I have never had the balls to take the risk. I used to be that way about building computers too, need to just take the plunge and realize the water is really not that cold.

Is this the ram you were talking about? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HZG4ZO/?tag=extension-kb-20

If I am looking at the 660 (which is a little less than expected to pay, thank you for the recommend), should I look at 660ti or is that just too much for what he has?
I don't have a preference on red or green team, I have had both. I have a 5870 Toxic 2gb card that has been collecting dust ever since I went with a 680gtx. I thought about throwing that in there, it games really nice. The problem with it, and the reason I replaced it, is that we live in the desert and in the summer time that card used to really crank out some heat into my room. In the summer that card games at around 66-70c
 
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Those temps are fine for a 5870 so if it has all the performance he needs then I'd use that. Otherwise something around a gtx 660 (as has been suggested already) would do great and would perform quite a lot better than the 5870.

Should be able to get a nice little OC out of the i3, I'd recommend aftermarket cooling like a CM hyper 212 plus or evo but you'll still get a small OC on stock cooling (best to leave it on stock voltage if using stock cooler).

The ram you linked should be fine.
 
His cooler is a Xigmatek Dark Knight. I don't know how good they are but perhaps this O.C. thing will be fun for us to learn together, then we can do mine. Thank you for the info about the RAM and the vid card.
 
GBXL in the model name of the ram you linked is the exact same ram I am using but mine is the 1866 variety, exceptional ram in many different ways, underclocks, overclocks, low voltage and tight timings.

GBRL, GBXL, GBSR all are great.

Dark knight is a great cooler, that 5870 you mentioned is a hell of a powerful card, 66-70c is very good temps actually, my 7870 if using just a single one overclocked will be hitting in the 65-74c range at 70% fan or so.

650Ti far as I remember once clocked up matches the 660Ti in a number of things, it truly is a wonderful card, it was meant to be just under 7850 performance and near 660 base performance at stock, the overclocking makes it a beast of a little card though apprently.

That motherboard will allow an overclock, but it will also be limited as the board for being called black edition is fairly limited on what it allows the bus to run at, but should still allow a clock out of it. The magic performance zones for most chips where they see their big improvements before temps/power get out of hand 3.0-3.2-3.4-3.6-4.0-4.5-5.0 depending on the chip of course.

For the 5870 if you chose to do so you could always swap out the thermal paste for something nicer like Artic MX3 or MX4. 5870 is by far a more powerfull card then a 650Ti or a 660 non ti about even with a 660Ti in multiple respects, the new cards do use less power by all means, 5k radeons were and still are powerfull cards if a little power hungry.
 
dragonstongue said:
GBXL in the model name of the ram you linked is the exact same ram I am using but mine is the 1866 variety, exceptional ram in many different ways, underclocks, overclocks, low voltage and tight timings.

GBRL, GBXL, GBSR all are great.

Dark knight is a great cooler, that 5870 you mentioned is a hell of a powerful card, 66-70c is very good temps actually, my 7870 if using just a single one overclocked will be hitting in the 65-74c range at 70% fan or so.

650Ti far as I remember once clocked up matches the 660Ti in a number of things, it truly is a wonderful card, it was meant to be just under 7850 performance and near 660 base performance at stock, the overclocking makes it a beast of a little card though apprently.

That motherboard will allow an overclock, but it will also be limited as the board for being called black edition is fairly limited on what it allows the bus to run at, but should still allow a clock out of it. The magic performance zones for most chips where they see their big improvements before temps/power get out of hand 3.0-3.2-3.4-3.6-4.0-4.5-5.0 depending on the chip of course.

For the 5870 if you chose to do so you could always swap out the thermal paste for something nicer like Artic MX3 or MX4. 5870 is by far a more powerfull card then a 650Ti or a 660 non ti about even with a 660Ti in multiple respects, the new cards do use less power by all means, 5k radeons were and still are powerfull cards if a little power hungry.
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that is not true at all. a 5870 does not even beat a non ti 660 and the ti version walks all over it. I am not sure where got that from as a gtx660 ti is a tiny bit faster than the gtx580 overall which of course was already 35% faster than the 5870...
 
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dragonstongue said:
For the 5870 if you chose to do so you could always swap out the thermal paste for something nicer like Artic MX3 or MX4.
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I had thought I'd buy him a new card as a gift but I'll think about using the Sapphire Toxic card. It really is a pretty card, physically. Much nicer looking than my 680, but of course under the hood it's a different story.

I'm not too cheap to buy a tube of thermal paste but your comment made me wonder:

I still have half a tube of thermal paste I got from Noctua when I put in my NH-D14. It would be three years old now. They claim their paste is good stuff. Is it? Should I use that or buy some new stuff?
 
lets see
http://www.hwcompare.com/13212/geforce-gtx-660-ti-vs-radeon-hd-5870/
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU12/372

Like said, about even with 660Ti, by far might have been a strong word, but then again so is walk all over. I typo a bit now that I read it, thanks for highlighting it for me lol.
meant to say, by far more powerful then 650Ti or about even with 660 non ti comparable to 660Ti in multiple respects, though this does not matter now.

The OP has is also a factory overclocked one, which does help to pull things that much closer, Toxic 5870 was a great card made.

Point is, why buy a new card when he has a serviceable one that can still game well enough, does it use more power, yes, is it faster then the more powerful modern midrange, not directly just comparable, up to the OP to decide for himself I suppose. 660Ti is not a magic bullet card, there is a fair amount of things it "coughs" on apparently. High reso, some games depending, a snapshot of FPS means jack as so many allude to, realworld matters more.

5870 is a beast just as the 480 in its time, 660Ti/660/650Ti are gaming centric, as for tessellation LOL not a single f* game out there uses it properly so who cares if any card is better at it, its the same BS with saying get Nvidia they do PhysX better.

As long as that thermal paste is still liquid sort of speak, it should be good to go, just remember not to much, just a thin sheen is ample, not thinking you are foolish. I put 1 drop about grain of rice in dead center, heatsink pressure takes care of it spreading :)
 
again a 5870 does NOT beat a gtx660ti or even a plain gtx660 so stop saying that. here you can see that a gtx580 is 35% faster at 1920 than a 5870. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/27.html

well here is a gtx660ti review and you can see the stock gtx660ti is 5% faster than the gtx580. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_660_Ti_Jet_Stream/28.html

and that is before newer drivers so that is simple math to see that the gtx660ti is over 40% faster than a 5870.
 
so, your reviews that you pulled are once again more "legit" then ones I pull, time and time again, whatever, I am done with you clown, not taking the point that this is an overclocked card, the 660Ti and 600 series in general do not always get the benefit you and o so many others claim, their features do not always act the way they are meant to but are defiantly and vehemently defended, yet many of my friends and colleagues as well as many folks on this site and others did and do continue to use (desktop and mobile) 4k-5k-6k-7k Radeon and/or 8800 and up Nvidia cards, so when equal builds that swapped a 5870 even a 6950 for a 660 non ti are getting very close to the same frame rates at similar settings that also means nothing, gaining very little except for a noticeable reduction in power draw and some temps.

Stick with pulling graphs from quite biased sites, stick with tooting Nvidia and Intel if you so choose, that's your problem, I will not let it be mine.
 
dragonstongue said:
so, your reviews that you pulled are once again more "legit" then ones I pull, time and time again, whatever, I am done with you clown, not taking the point that this is an overclocked card, the 660Ti and 600 series in general do not always get the benefit you and o so many others claim, their features do not always act the way they are meant to but are defiantly and vehemently defended, yet many of my friends and colleagues as well as many folks on this site and others did and do continue to use (desktop and mobile) 4k-5k-6k-7k Radeon and/or 8800 and up Nvidia cards, so when equal builds that swapped a 5870 even a 6950 for a 660 non ti are getting very close to the same frame rates at similar settings that also means nothing, gaining very little except for a noticeable reduction in power draw and some temps.

Stick with pulling graphs from quite biased sites, stick with tooting Nvidia and Intel if you so choose, that's your problem, I will not let it be mine.
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techpowerup is biased? you post one bench to try and prove your point and even there the plain 660 is faster than 5870. and you call me the clown? and speaking of biased, you use Warhead which is a game that Kepler does relatively terrible in especially on max settings and 4x AA. that is basically worst case scenario for the gtx660 and gtx660ti and they still beat the 5870. you give some of the worst advice around here and nearly half of what you say is flat out wrong. only an idiot would claim the 5870 is faster than or even with the gtx660ti. :rolleyes:
 
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yep I give worst advice ever, and probably all of what I say is wrong, course I personally do not care for your opinion either, so we are even.
 
You could sell that 5870 really easily, they are going for huge premiums due to their mining abilities (just look at ebay and the for sale forums) you could sell it and pay almost nothing to get your son a nice new 7850.
 
that is a very valid point, the toxic would probably be able to sell for more then average as well due to this. 5870 and 7870 are more or less matching each other for mining ability, hard to say which is faster on average once clocked up for mining ability, I hit 456-460 on my one card and 460-472 on my other card both are MSI 7870 TFIII though the "primary" clocks higher at less volts then the other, I have done 480 on my faster card at over 1310 core clocks but definitely not gaming stable at this amount.

The one thing the new cards are much better at is less power draw and generally far cooler temps most especially on the Vregs which very much limited the overclocking of most of the 5k generation.
 
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