New Video Card or Whole New System?

TheFunkySalsa on 16/05/2022 - 16:11

Hi all

I've got a computer that is about 10 years old, it's been used for music production but is no longer necessary now. I am thinking about trying to turn it into a gaming machine by putting a new video card in it, but what I'm not sure of is whether the older hardware will limit it in a significant way. I don't play hugely graphic intensive games, Genshin Impact being probably the most demanding. Specs are as below, if anyone could share their opinion that would be great.

Asus SABERTOOTH X58 Motherboard 6xDDR3-1866 3xPCI-E 1

16 GBL SATA3 USB3.0 RAID 1394

CPU-INT-I7980 Intel Core i7-980X EXTREME CPU, LGA1366 SIX-CORE 3.33
GHz, 6.4 GT/sec QPI, 8MB Cache, Socket

RD31600KHX 12GB Kingston KHX 12GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM X2 total 24 GB

GC57701GSAVX41O Sapphire ATI HD 5770 Vapor-X OC 1GB DDR5, PCI-E, Dual D
VI+ HDMI + DS, support 3x monitors, DX11 ( 11163 -00-41R )

OPT-BH10LS30 LG RET BH10LS30 BLK BluRay Burner,10xBD-R Read/Write,
16xDVD+-R Read/Write,SATA, Lightscribe,Silent Play

H3S1000WD12FAEX Western Digital Caviar Black SATA2/SATA 3 (1TB ) 1000GB/72 4
000RPM/ SATA3 /64MB CACHE/3.5" Hard Disk Drive

H2S120OCZ2VTX OCZ VERTEX 2 SERIES SSD 120GB, SATA II 2.5" 285MB/s
Read, 275MB/s Write, includes Mounting Bracket ,Sustained Wr
ite: up to 250MB/s

CAS-AN1200 Antec TWELVE HUNDRED Full Tower Gaming Case, 12 drive bays, Advanced Cooling System, NO PSU, Top USB2/1394

PSU-CO1000HXAU 1000 W Corsair HX-1000 ATX Power Supply, 140mm fan

PCI-E Graphics Card Connector, 8x SATA Connectors, Univers
al AC input 90~264V

IO-PCI-FW1394A Sunix FireWire 400Mbps PCI Card, 3 External 1 Internal

Computing

Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 16/05/2022 - 16:51

    Genshin Impact being probably the most demanding.

    This will run on any potato. While that system is quite old, it was fairly high end at the time, and will happily run GI with a cheap GPU.

    • TheFunkySalsa on 16/05/2022 - 17:04

      I've tried running GI on it and it does struggle. Any ideas for a cheapish video card to help it along? The one in it has only 1 GB…

      • [Deactivated] on 16/05/2022 - 17:07
        +1

        I have a GT 1030 and it runs it fine. It's about 50% more powerful than the HD 5770. It's also the min spec for GI. My CPU is a little better than yours per core, but is 4/8. You can buy used GT 1030s for under $100, or you can buy a GTX 1060, the recommended GPU, for ~$200.

        • TheFunkySalsa on 16/05/2022 - 17:13

          That's great mate thank you!

  • MoneyPincher on 16/05/2022 - 17:54

    As Skylex has said just a small upgrade in the GPU should get GI running nicely.
    I have the I7-920 6GB ram and a HD 7970 and it runs fine in 1440p with only a little performance loss in some places around Enkanomiya which I think is due to the lighting effects.
    Looking at it running right now GI is using 1638mb video memory which is probably where your video card is struggling as it's not pushing either system ram or the CPU cores on my system as a reference.

  • garetz on 17/05/2022 - 01:33

    Your pc is over 10 years old, saying that it was the top of the top at the time, its about 40% as powerful as a 12700k but the architecture is super old, upgrading the video card would simply be a huge hit on performance anyway, you might get 60-70% of the max performance on a 3060.

    So its not worth upgrading just the video card, however that system should still be plenty for genshin impact.

    The main issue i would see is power usage, your system probably uses a good 700-800 watts. If you upgraded to a 12400f system, it would probably be close to twice as powerful with half the power usage.

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