Upgrading from 3650

[oakley242424]

Ok so I just recently bought a really good priced Pc from cyberpower. Here are my specs...
CPU: AMD 64 X2 5200 @ 2.6, or 2.7 GHz im not sure.
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
420 W power supply,
sigma la vie midtower case.
FAN: Raidmax Maxcool AMD CPU Cooling Fan (Extreme Silent at 20dBA & Overclock Proof)
HDD: Single Hard Drive (250GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
MOTHERBOARD: Asus M2A-MVP AMD 480X Crossfire Chipset DDR800 Dual PCIE SATA RAID MB w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&5.1Audio
VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 3650 PCI-E x16 512MB Video Card DDR2

now the 3650 performs I'd say really well for 80 bucks, but I wan't to upgrade my gpu, what would be my best cheapest options, I think im going to have to upgrade powersource, or get a bigger case, which I don't think will even fit on my desk. Any ideas or help would be appreacited. Thanks so much.

By the way Im playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R at about 20-40 frps on almost highest settings.

[DMB2000uk]

A really good starting point would be a budget

And if you have to upgrade the PSU (which is more than likely) how much are you willing to spend on that?
The PSU is an underrated key component in PCs so I recommend that you don't skimp on it (put it this way, if you skimp and as a result it fails, it will more than likely take out something else with it).

Dan

[Apoptosis]

If you wanted to stick with ATI a Radeon HD 3870 would be a nice upgrade over the 3650 and will be able to play games like Call of Duty 4 at 1280x1024 with no problems at all as I showed in this article.




The Radeon HD 3650 should be easy to sell on the forums or on ebay as it makes for a great HTPC video card for those looking to offload the rendering from the CPU to the GPU... A 790G motherboard and the Radeon HD 3650 should be ideal for say a HTPC. Maybe i should look closer at the combination in the near future.

As for power consumption I wouldn't even worry about it to be honest... With a Radeon HD 3870 I wasn't even able to break 175Watts of power draw while gaming on a pretty beefy test system that had a top end quad-core at 3GHz, 4GB of memory, water cooler, 120mm fans to cool the memory and a Raptor hard drive. Even with the Radeon HD 3870 the power consumption is hardly over 200 Watts.

[oakley242424]

If you wanted to stick with ATI a Radeon HD 3870 would be a nice upgrade over the 3650 and will be able to play games like Call of Duty 4 at 1280x1024 with no problems at all as I showed in this article.




The Radeon HD 3650 should be easy to sell on the forums or on ebay as it makes for a great HTPC video card for those looking to offload the rendering from the CPU to the GPU... A 790G motherboard and the Radeon HD 3650 should be ideal for say a HTPC. Maybe i should look closer at the combination in the near future.

As for power consumption I wouldn't even worry about it to be honest... With a Radeon HD 3870 I wasn't even able to break 175Watts of power draw while gaming on a pretty beefy test system that had a top end quad-core at 3GHz, 4GB of memory, water cooler, 120mm fans to cool the memory and a Raptor hard drive. Even with the Radeon HD 3870 the power consumption is hardly over 200 Watts.

Hey, thanks for the advice, why are the ati cards so much more power efficent, so your saying If I upgrade to a 3850, remember I have a midsize case about 8 in wide, and 19 in deep, and the power is 420W It was run fine?
I hope so that would be nice.

[Apoptosis]

Couple questions for you...

What games do you play?
What monitor resolution do you game at?

As for a power supply the 420W power supply should be plenty for the Radeon HD 3850. The Diamond Viper 3850 that we reviewed here is nice because it is 512MB (ideal for games that need a higher frame buffer) and is just $159.99. At the same time Radeon HD 3870's already have 512MB of memory standard (GDDR4 to boot) and start at just $10 more at $169.99. The Radeon HD 3870 is about ~15% faster than a Radeon HD 2850 and for just $10 its worth it if you ask me. I don't see why it wouldn't fit in a mid-size ATX tower... if you have the exact measurement of the inside of the chassis please post it and I'll measure my cards to see if they will work.

[oakley242424]

Couple questions for you...

What games do you play?
What monitor resolution do you game at?

As for a power supply the 420W power supply should be plenty for the Radeon HD 3850. The Diamond Viper 3850 that we reviewed here is nice because it is 512MB (ideal for games that need a higher frame buffer) and is just $159.99. At the same time Radeon HD 3870's already have 512MB of memory standard (GDDR4 to boot) and start at just $10 more at $169.99. The Radeon HD 3870 is about ~15% faster than a Radeon HD 2850 and for just $10 its worth it if you ask me. I don't see why it wouldn't fit in a mid-size ATX tower... if you have the exact measurement of the inside of the chassis please post it and I'll measure my cards to see if they will work.

Well most games I play now are fine, like STALKER Runs pretty smooth Object Dynamic Lighting, Real time strategys run pretty smooth, Im getting around 20+ fps on MEdieval total war 2 full settings no AA, but I really want a card that would run Crysis full settings, no AA(antiallising) don't really mind). I game at 1440x900.
Another question, not to start another topic but, I also game with my 360 on the same monitor , and Microsoft still donsn't support 16:10 resoulitions.

If you could measure you cards it would be great, the 3650 I have is about 7 in give or take, and I have about 4 more inches till it runs into the HDD, so around 11 total.
I used asus power calucator and for the 2900 XT pretty much equivalent to the 3850 it says 550. I only have 420W.
I got my whole rig for only 600, so another 170 is fine. I thinking If I sold my 360 I would just PC game, the cyberpower rep , the ppl I bought this from, said the 3650 is better than the 360's card, Is that true?
Thanks in advance.

[martini161]

yeah it might be, but the 360 has virtually no overhead and developers will be making games that are extremly specialized and optimized for the 360, so it might not perform as well

[stopthekilling77]

i agree with martini

keep your 360

[oakley242424]

Does anyone know if the 3870 will fit in a midtower case. from the back to where the HDD is I got about 11+ inches will it fit?

[Apoptosis]

Again on the power supply... If it has a 6-pin PCI Express power cable you should be fine with what you have, if it doesn't you'll need to get an adapter. With an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 2GB of memory and a Radeon HD 3850 you will not come near 420W let alone 550W. I've built thousands of systems and have used every NVIDIA/ATI card that has come out since 2001 and you don't need to upgrade the PSU unless you want a bigger one and have extra money laying around. Your system with a single dual-core CPU, 2GB of memory, a single HDD, air cooling and a card like the 3850 won't touch near 420W. If you look at that power consumption chart I posted in a prior post look at the gaming load results between the 3850 and the 3650... It went up 32W to a peak wattage (peak meaning the highest seen during the game play) and the entire system topped out at 195W... This is on a quad-core processor with water cooling, 4GB memory, and a 10,000RPM Raptor hard drive... You're system won't even peak this high! You're adding roughly 30W under load and none at idle... the PSU shouldn't need to be upgraded!

As for the lengths I just took this picture for you..

PCB Length
Radeon HD 3870 - 9"
Radeon HD 3850 - 9.25"
Radeon HD 3870 X2 - 10.5"

You should be to fit any of the ATI cards, so no worries on the card lengths!

card_lengths.jpg (157.62 KiB) Viewed 9248 times

[oakley242424]

Thanks a lot for the pictures. Also when installing the new card, at about 9 inches or so there are some wire in the way, If I just push thoes out of the way I can't mess anything up can I? If I decide to go with an NVidia card instead could I do that with my motherboard?
Can you play crysis full setting, with the 3870?
Also why is the 3870 .25 inches shorter than the 3850?
Thanks again.

Is there any way to measure the watts im using with software? I checked up at the pic's you posted and it says the difference between a 3650 and 3870 under load is about 50 not 30.

[Apoptosis]

Thanks a lot for the pictures. Also when installing the new card, at about 9 inches or so there are some wire in the way, If I just push thoes out of the way I can't mess anything up can I?

It's always possible to mess stuff up, but pushing wires out of the way should be fine, just make sure you don't snap off the connectors.

If I decide to go with an NVidia card instead could I do that with my motherboard?

You could use an NVIDIA card also, the PCIe slot and board doesn't care what card is installed in it.

Can you play crysis full setting, with the 3870?

At 1440x900 you can play crysis, but not with full settings... You will be CPU, GPU and memory limited on this title too, so it's more than just the video card. I'm sure you'll be able to play it with medium quality settings, but high and very high will be a no go.

Also why is the 3870 .25 inches shorter than the 3850?

The 3850 and 3870 use different PCB's and different memory types... the 3850 uses GDDR3 and the 3870 uses GDDR4... Different components = different lengths

Is there any way to measure the watts im using with software?

No, you have to measure it off the outlet, software just guesses... NVIDIA ESA systems uses a software equation to get an estimate off the power supply loads, but that is just on ESA systems and not as accurate as a meter.

I checked up at the pic's you posted and it says the difference between a 3650 and 3870 under load is about 50 not 30.

I was talking about the 3850 because a couple posts back you said this:

Hey, thanks for the advice, why are the ati cards so much more power efficent, so your saying If I upgrade to a 3850, remember I have a midsize case about 8 in wide, and 19 in deep, and the power is 420W It was run fine?

Since you were asking about the 3850 in that question I thought you were focused on that one. If you have more questions I suggest searching here on the forums or reading some of the video card reviews here on LR. You should see the performance levels on the cards compared to what you have now and can kind of figure out what kind of performance you can get from which cards.

[oakley242424]

Thanks, i assume because you took a pic of thoese card you have, them , how do they perform? Also what psu do you use with them, how many watts. Like I posted earlier I have 420 W psu, and the 3650, so 50 w more won't hit 420 right?
Thanks for the help, I think Gddr4 is worth the extra 10 bucks, since the 3650 has ddr2, even though I thought I told cyberpower I wanted the 3650 with gddr3 they changed the order without telling me and already shipped it.

[Apoptosis]

Well I wrote all the reviews on them, so check out the reviews and you will know my thoughts!

Your PSU is fine and like I said a few posts back a 3870 is worth the extra $10.

[oakley242424]

when the graph shows the cards is that power comsumption of the whole pc or just he card?
thanks.

[DMB2000uk]

The whole PC ^_^

Dan