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Help with graphics card upgrade?


EndlessOblivion

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Yes, another one of these, sorry.

 

Here are my specs:

 

OS: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

Graphics Card: Microsoft Basic Display Adapter

System RAM: 4 GB

Resolution: 1280 x 1024

 

----

The most important thing is I really want to use mods, and have a good ENB.

What is the cheapest that could get me medium quality, 30fps? What is the cheapest that could get me ultra-high, 60fps? (Both with mods and ENB)

I don't have too much money. $150 is the most I could pay for a graphics card, even that is a stretch.

I know I have to upgrade the graphics card. Do I need to upgrade anything else?

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Yes, another one of these, sorry.

 

Here are my specs:

 

OS: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

 

Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

 

Graphics Card: Microsoft Basic Display Adapter

 

System RAM: 4 GB

 

Resolution: 1280 x 1024

 

----

 

The most important thing is I really want to use mods, and have a good ENB.

 

What is the cheapest that could get me medium quality, 30fps? What is the cheapest that could get me ultra-high, 60fps? (Both with mods and ENB)

 

I don't have too much money. $150 is the most I could pay for a graphics card, even that is a stretch.

 

I know I have to upgrade the graphics card. Do I need to upgrade anything else?

can you tell me the name brand of this PC ?

2nd, if your only running vga graphics, why have you not updated the Operating systems display drivers?

If windows 10 does not have an update for your hard ware.and this is advice, you need to down grade back to another OS that does.

-------------------

so, it follows that the hardware meets bare minimum requirements of a windows 10 install. No room to maneuver.

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At first glance I'd ask why your system is using the Microsoft Basic driver? I would have to presume that whatever you have does actually have a video driver available for Windows 10, it just needs to be installed. Depending on what the graphics device actually is it might already meet your desired requirements. Knowing what brand and model of pc you have might help in figuring out what options are available to you.

 

If you really want to replace the card/add one, then an older Geforce GTX 750ti would be around that budget price. Another alternative (and my personal recommendation) would be a newer Geforce GTX 950 or Radeon R9 370. If you can score one of those on sale they'll be under your $150 budget tag. If you can save up and scrounge out around $200 or so (for a sale price), a GTX 960 that's an awesome card with a tremendous difference in performance compared to the previously mentioned alternatives. There may be other concerns though, such as if your current power supply is powerful enough to drive a newer video card.

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Yes, another one of these, sorry.

 

Here are my specs:

 

OS: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

 

Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

 

Graphics Card: Microsoft Basic Display Adapter

 

System RAM: 4 GB

 

Resolution: 1280 x 1024

 

----

 

The most important thing is I really want to use mods, and have a good ENB.

 

What is the cheapest that could get me medium quality, 30fps? What is the cheapest that could get me ultra-high, 60fps? (Both with mods and ENB)

 

I don't have too much money. $150 is the most I could pay for a graphics card, even that is a stretch.

 

I know I have to upgrade the graphics card. Do I need to upgrade anything else?

can you tell me the name brand of this PC ?

2nd, if your only running vga graphics, why have you not updated the Operating systems display drivers?

If windows 10 does not have an update for your hard ware.and this is advice, you need to down grade back to another OS that does.

-------------------

so, it follows that the hardware meets bare minimum requirements of a windows 10 install. No room to maneuver.

 

HP Pavillion. I updated the drivers, my graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE.

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At first glance I'd ask why your system is using the Microsoft Basic driver? I would have to presume that whatever you have does actually have a video driver available for Windows 10, it just needs to be installed. Depending on what the graphics device actually is it might already meet your desired requirements. Knowing what brand and model of pc you have might help in figuring out what options are available to you.

 

If you really want to replace the card/add one, then an older Geforce GTX 750ti would be around that budget price. Another alternative (and my personal recommendation) would be a newer Geforce GTX 950 or Radeon R9 370. If you can score one of those on sale they'll be under your $150 budget tag. If you can save up and scrounge out around $200 or so (for a sale price), a GTX 960 that's an awesome card with a tremendous difference in performance compared to the previously mentioned alternatives. There may be other concerns though, such as if your current power supply is powerful enough to drive a newer video card.

Hp Pavillion (NY638AA-ABA p6203w) is the brand and model. I upgraded the drivers, I have a Geforce 6150SE, so I definitely need an upgrade. If that changes things.

 

But your suggestions look good, I might go for the GTX 960. Thanks!

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http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01859861

 

That the unit?

and the graphics have issues? 16x slot limits your market too.

Integrated chip set. yeah, go with an external card, you will be better off, but know you will have issues IF the bios refuses to disable base drivers. it's always a fight, some get lucky, some not. Go for a new card.

 

you must upgrade your power supply as that is not going to cut it "250W".

Edited by Purr4me
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Purr4me beat me to it. The power supply will be a required upgrade for any useful add-on upgrade. I'm fairly sure that the 6150se won't even run Fallout 4 at all even if you got non generic drivers to install. I've had problems trying to do it with Intel integrated graphics from newer i5's and i7's and they're quite an upgrade from the 6150se.

 

The 960 is a solid choice and I would suggest a 450watt power supply to go with it.

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Really not trying to be a doomsayer here, but you guys do realize the CPU in this computer is worse than a Core 2 (and older), and throwing a GTX 960 or similar in there is just utter overkill (it will be so horribly bottlenecked), to say nothing of PSU compatibility. The GeForce 6150 is older than Oblivion, if that helps put things in perspective, and it probably only supports PCIe 1.0 (its an nForce 4 derivative and afaik it wasn't until nForce 600 or 700 that 2.0 was supported); that may cause compatibility issues with newer cards (in principle/theory it shouldn't, and I wouldn't believe that it could if I hadn't seen it happen with my own two eyes and then gone and looked into it a bit more, and indeed there are rare cases of older motherboards not playing nice with newer cards). If I'm reading the HP specs right as well, this machine is maxed at 4GB of RAM.

 

Upside, the HP website indicates the motherboard should automatically disable the 6150 if a standalone graphics card is installed, so as long as the PSU thing isn't a problem (e.g. you upgrade) it should be okay. My honest, no-joke advice here? Get something cheap off ebay like GeForce 8600 or similar - it'll be low power, it'll be cheap, and it'll be a nice improvement over the 6150 (as in, it'll at least *run* games like Oblivion, FO3, FONV, Skyrim, etc). Save up your pennies and get a newer/faster computer down the line (doesn't have to be brand new - there's tons of used/refurb/etc machines out there that would be an overall upgrade) - if you're after ENB and tons of graphics mods (I'm assuming in Skyrim or FO4) this machine is probably never going to get you there, because even if you go out and drop a lot of money on a flashy new graphics card and big PSU to run it, the CPU and everything else are pretty dated and (unfortunately) kind of a dead-end for upgrades (and it really isn't worth the money to go track down a Phenom II and "max out" this HP).

 

Now, that said, there's nothing wrong with this HP as a machine I'd assume (e.g. it sounds like it still works), so once you've upgraded, it would make a nice HTPC or backup system or whatever.

 

 

 

Purr4me beat me to it. The power supply will be a required upgrade for any useful add-on upgrade. I'm fairly sure that the 6150se won't even run Fallout 4 at all even if you got non generic drivers to install. I've had problems trying to do it with Intel integrated graphics from newer i5's and i7's and they're quite an upgrade from the 6150se.

 

The 960 is a solid choice and I would suggest a 450watt power supply to go with it.

 

 

No way that 6150 can do FO4 - it requires DX11. The CPU and memory here will never be upgradeable to hit FO4's system requirements though, since they're spec'ing 8GB of RAM and a newer/faster CPU along with a relatively powerful DX11 card. nVidia has the system requirements listed out on their GeForce Experience page here:

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/fallout-4-system-requirements-revealed

 

That Phenom II X4 is like the absolute maxed out top-end floored upgrade option for this HP, but you're still stuck with 4GB of RAM and those Phenom chips are not cost effective (not to mention all the other "stuff" that would likely have to go along with it, before you're even talking about a new graphics card, and you're still stuck on that 4GB of RAM).

Edited by obobski
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