What would be a good upgrade for my old Radeon HD 4850?

It was pretty good five or six years ago. The CPU is an AMD Phenom 9950 quadcore at 2.61. It's my media center PC so runs Win 7 and that won't be upgraded any time soon since Win10 doesn't support WMC. But I also play games on it and have it hooked up to a 70" Vizio 4k TV. The games are mostly older things, Bioshock, Skyrim, Borderlands, and I suppose it's time to try Destiny or one of the big multiplayer things. I'm pretty sure that it's PCIe but haven't opened it up to look. I'm not being lazy; the Ceton tuner and cable card are touchy and I don't want to open it up if I don't have to.

I was thinking at one time that I could slip in another one for Crossfire or something but never did it. At this point it's probably best to just replace it. I even have another box that the 4850 could possibly go into.

So I think that I should spend 100-200 and get something a bit better. Any suggestions?

Well in that price range you would be looking at something like a gtx950 or gtx960 from the nvidia camp, I'm not we'll versed in amd products so hopefully someone else can chime in there. Either card should outperform what you have now but I would not expect either to perform at 4k. If you run them at 1080 you can get some good frame rates at decent quality settings. I have linked one of each below. These are not necessarily the cards I would recommend from each class they are just the cheapest ones I found on a quick search.

Gtx950
http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?i..., LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566

Gtx960 4gb
http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?i..., LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566

If you could and your Mobo supports it an upgrade to a PII would do wonders for that system. IMO the whole thing will hold you back not just the GFX card.

Oy... yeah, that Opty is a 10 year old CPU... its going to choke the system in some capacity. Be it a glass ceiling on the

Sig needs updating E_D

The CPU is an AMD Phenom 9950 quadcore at 2.61.

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Oops!

Still, upgrade! LOL!

dgk said:

So I think that I should spend 100-200 and get something a bit better. Any suggestions?

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While you should update that old rig, there is an AMD option at the $200 price point, a 4GB R9 380 for $170 after $20 Rebate for example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...21963&cm_re=r9_380_4gb-_-14-121-963-_-Product

Others have given you the info about the cards available in that range, one thing of note, Destiny is console-only (xbox one/ps4) and there's no planned PC release.

The 960 is very quiet and not hard on your electricity bill. With something higher-end from ATI's current generation, there's gonna be a risk of more hassle than you're hoping for. There are heating issues with the Tahiti line of GPUs, not like ATI's good at keeping anything cool and quiet anyway. With nVidia you aren't likely to end up needing to buy a beefy aftermarket cooler. With ATI, you may end up needing to replace even one of those non-reference special coolers designed by card manufacturers.

Get a cheap used GeForce 660 if you want to still get somewhat decent performance without spending hundreds.

Is any GPU really hard on the electric bill unless you are running it 24/7? For example, I pay about .10 per KW/h.

GTX 960 = 120W
GTX 980Ti = 250W

If I game for four hours per day every day, it would cost me $17.52 for the year to run the 960. To run the 980Ti for a year, $36.50. Over double, sure. But $3 per month on a 980Ti. If you are buying a $650 videocard, you best be able to afford the $19 difference for the YEAR over a midrange offering!

I don't really mind spending $200. But I'm willing to drop in a new CPU if anyone remembers what can replace a Phenom and if anything like that is still around. I suppose I could just buy a new gaming PC and have two PCs hooked up to the TV. But I'm confused about how a media center PC should work with a 4k TV. The TV is hooked up to internet directly so streaming UHD by Netflix or Amazon is built in. But something being outputted by the computer (currently HDMI) should be capable of outputting 4k I would think. Lochekey seemed to think that outputting 4k would be an issue with those cards, but I remember reading that a few years ago. I figured by now any decent card should handle that. No?

I got off my butt. It's an Asus M3A79-T Deluxe mb. The 4850 card is sitting in one PCIx 16 slot (blue color), and being a dual height card, blocks a regular PCI slot. I don't care about that. The next slot over is apparently also a PCIx16 slot, this one black. There is another blue/black pair lower down, but the Ceton tuner card is using the blue slot of that pair. But it looks like I could drop in another card in the black slot that pairs with the 4850 slot and run them in CrossfireX since the specs say that it is supported - ah, what is that X on the Crossfire?

Would it make sense to just drop in another vid card and pair them up, or would any card that I bought now be dragged down by pairing it with a 4850?

I posted in the CPU forum for CPU upgrade advice.

Hey dgk

Sorry I was not a little more specific in my earlier post. When I was talking about the 4k limitations of the card I was referring to the cards ability to render games at 4k. As far as streaming 4k videos the card is perfectly capable of handling that.

oh, ok. Do games even run at 4k yet? Those would be some pretty backgrounds.

That board will support X6 Thuban cores at best. No FX.

Yes they do. They just need A LOT more horsepower to do so.

(Re: 4k games)

Not sure if he'd be better off with a Phenom II X4 or a Phenom II X6.

It is a media PC, so I'm not sure if it would benefit from having six cores.

EarthDog said:

Yes they do. They just need A LOT more horsepower to do so.

(Re: 4k games)

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Yeah, I heard some games need Triple-SLI or Triple-Crossfire using top-end (non-dual GPU) cards just to play at 15-25 FPS. So, maybe not that efficient of a use of GPU (and electrical) power.

Tech Tweaker said:

Not sure if he'd be better off with a Phenom II X4 or a Phenom II X6.

It is a media PC, so I'm not sure if it would benefit from having six cores.



Yeah, I heard some games need Triple-SLI or Triple-Crossfire using top-end (non-dual GPU) cards just to play at 15-25 FPS. So, maybe not that efficient of a use of GPU (and electrical) power.

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That's not really true anymore. Most games can be run at a reasonable fps (above 30) with dual high end cards (290x+ or 980+) probably a level or two lower though. Of course if you are maxing out things like AA (for almost no reason as jagged edges become so much smaller at higher resolution) it could dip down further. I can play Witcher3 at 4k with 2x 290x without any real issues.