I'm thinking of adding a Radeon based PCI graphics card to enhance the capability of the Radeon HD 4250 graphics chip embedded on my 6 year old Asus M4A88TD-M/EVO Motherboard (Powered by a 4 core Athlon II,  all 2010 vintage), which serves as a rather poor media server. I'm hoping that this will enable  it to play elementary games as well as general enhancing all purpose graphics capability so as to defer its demise and replacement.

 

The motherboard only supports PCI to version 2.1 . I'm running Windows 8.1 (64) on the media server.

 

At present, Ungine Valley test engine (https://unigine.com/products/benchmarks/valley/) shows that the embedded graphics can only achieve 4 - 5 fps on 800x600, directX 11 and moderate graphics complexity. Clearly, what's needed is at least 40-50fps @ 1280 x 1080 at high complexity.  The existing embedded GPU has a passmark bench mark rating of 129 !

 

II've been looking at Radeon based R7 cards (All USB 3.0)  to meet this requirement. In particular, the cards with the following GPUs (PM Benchmark scores  and power draw following) have caught my attention:-

 

R7 240 (PM BM 963)(PWR 30W)

R7 250 (PM BM 1402)(PWR 75W)

R7 360 (PM BM 3150)(PWR 100W)

 

Taking first things first, are any of these "An enhancement too far" as far as matching the capabilities of the graphics card and motherboard  and line-balancing between the two are concerned ?

 

Will the PCI 3.0 cards fit the PCI 2.1 slots ?

 

WI presume that  the Asus bridge pair down the data transfer rate from PCI 3.0 to PCI 2.1 ?

 

Would only having a 350 watt power supply on this unit put the kibosh on this proposal, given that the Athlon II could draw 180W at full load and there's 4 GB of DDR3 1600Mhz on-board + a 250GB SSD +DVD burner, a network and about 4 active USB devices hanging-off it ?

 

Is DDr3 too slow ?

 

Any other impediments ?

 

Nick

Edited 30 March, 201610 yr by Clunkclick

By the time you've spent on the graphics card, you can probably get decent spec new motherboard with onboard graphics more than sufficient for a media server...

You mean PCI 3.

 

I just retired my EVO board as it was playing up with some SSD drives.

 

PCI is backwards compatible with 2/2.1; I was running an R7 265 - which is a re-labelled R9 series. They just wont run at the full spec speed; just like you can plug a USB3 device into a USB2 port.

 

You will need a better PSU - at least 500W from a reputable brand. - the given power requirements are only the average. I had lots of issues with a cheap 500w psu and finally went for a 750w from Fractal.

 

I would forget using the onboard gfx with it though, the built in card is very poor, and as you have found - basically useless. I have older, supposedly lower spec cards that work better. I ditched the onboard gfx and reused an old 3000 series board after only a few hours of trying to get it to work properly.

 

With the 265 and the fastest 6 core cpu (1090T), the board will support, it scores just below the maximum in Win7 Experience, with the cpu and the 1600MHz DDR3 memory being the bottlenecks.

Edited 31 March, 201610 yr by GentleGiant

Had a look at the 265. Looks like its no longer available and that the next nearest contemporary is the 370, which judging by the spec, is, as you've indicated, probably a re-badged (Lower cycle speed) R9. Again, priced at slightly over the £100.

 

So, if it works, and all indications are that it will,  using a current PCI 3.0 video card in a 2.1 PCI slot on an older motherboard does work, albeit that the chipset on my motherboard limits data transfers to 5.2GBps, whereas the 370, I think, can output 8GBps. And this set-up should give an expansion of capability, one of which will be the ability to run games at a decent frame rate (I think the 370 promises 60 FPS when installed on modern systems).

 

Definitely, for use over the next 5 years, this would be a more cost effective option than replacing the MB, processor, PSU, memory sticks which would work out at just over £250.

 

So, to put my mind at rest, as regards the other impediment to this proposition, i.e. the capacity of the 350watt PSU, I stuck an in-line plug-in digital watt meter on the PSU yesterday and got the following results:-

 

 

Start-up (From cold boot) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  120 watts

Idle (At Windows 8.1 desktop) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ., 85 watts

Running a DVD (Full screen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . 120 watts

Running Prime 95 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   125 watts

Running Ungine Valley GPU test engine (Max detail, 5FPS)   135 watts

Runing UV GPU test (Lowest detail, max FPS(12)) . . . . . . . . 155 watts

Running Furmark GPU stress Test  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 watts

Running UV + Furmark (In separate tiles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 watts

 

On this outing, all looks good and within the capability of the existing PSU. The 370 is rated at 115W Total Power Draw. Adding that to the worst  figure in the above list only gives a total of 250W  i.e. "Clearance" of 100W within the existing PSU.

 

My only other concern would be whether PSU's lose rated capacity over time ? Can this be assessed  by testing ?

 

 

Postscript

 

Thinking about it, I could decant an old Radeon HD 6870 from the other desktop and run the UV GPU stress Test on that. That has a TPD of 150w and might come within range of dropping the voltage issued by the PSU, if its capacity is now below its official rating.

 

 

Nick

Edited 1 April, 201610 yr by Clunkclick

You could try a Nvidia GFx as they are much lower wattage. The GTX 750 ti draws about 60w. About £100.

 

( not as fast as your preferred 370)

 

or a GTX 950 (90w) recommended psu 350w at  £130ish. which is faster.

 

Edit:  Being pendantic it's PCIe 3.0  - PCI is a different connector altogether.

Edited 1 April, 201610 yr by io1901

You could try a Nvidia GFx as they are much lower wattage. The GTX 750 ti draws about 60w. About £100.

 

( not as fast as your preferred 370)

 

or a GTX 950 (90w) recommended psu 350w at  £130ish. which is faster.

 

I would agree with this one.

In a group test I read last year, nearly all of the gfx boards used more power under stress than the headline figures given; some used substantially more.

 

A psu getting close to its limit will also suffer from dips and surges in the supply rail voltages, which can cause serious issues. Better to go for a new psu in a higher power band. If you think yours could just cope, go for a new 400W unit, HOWEVER, you cant rely on a standard power meter for currant use, as PC psus dont work the way most other electrical units do; it only gives you the average power consumption - remember there are some BIG capacitors inside that box.

 

It is also the capacitor degradation that is the biggest danger in older psus, the less it holds, the more stress the switching circuits will be under when trying to balance the power outputs under peak load.

 

I have had several cpus blow from poor psu voltage regulation on a shop supplied no-name psu.(Evesham Micros), starting only 18 months from new.

The PSU is now 7 years old and has been fairly intensively used, so I doubt it will take easily to accommodating a new high load.

 

 Also, as GG suggests, if I go down the high-power  graphics upgrade route, its probably worth removing any processor bottlenecks, so that would mean investing in the best processor the MB can support i.e. Phenom II, which even second hand on E-bay would set me back £60. So, all-in-all, including  a new  power supply, assuming an R7 370 and a new processor, I would be in the market for a spend of £220-230.

 

Today, from my researches, I've found that,  for that money,  I could get one of the new FM2+ socketed MB's with a APU processor e.g. Kavieri (Integrated graphics ?), with an overall benchmarked performance that would trounce my proposed combination as well as be significantly less greedy with the power and still have money left over for a new PSU.

 

Even worse, I subsequently learned today that AMD intend to release, by the end of the year, microprocessors with the new Zen architecture (With incorporates a lot of the features of APU's in what they call a System-on-Chip concept), with motherboard manufacturers shipping the new AMD4 socket in early 2017 !! The article I read intimated that it may spell the end of the road for APU's.

 

As usual, far from being certain, its all up in the air.

 

Perhaps, its wise to make do with the cheaper R7 240 (£45) and less power hungry (Only 30 watts) pending a full MB/processor and PSU upgrade in 18months to 2 years - whilst not offering the speed of the 370,  a 2 GB 240 would be at least a factor of 5 faster than my existing graphics and should be capable of delivering at least 25 FPS - that's after allowing for the fact that the chipset on the MB will constrain the transfer speed of both of these R7 boards below their maximum (I reckon I'd only get 65% of their max rated transfer speed). I assuming that at 25FPS, the graphics wouldn't stutter (As it does at the moment) , but the image quality wouldn't be the best.

 

Nick

Edited 2 April, 201610 yr by Clunkclick

Rather than going new have you thought about 2nd hand? Could pick up something like a HD7770 or similar (which is a rebadged R7 260X pretty much!) for around £30-50. But then the power supply might be an issue as it needs 115W.

Rather than going new have you thought about 2nd hand? Could pick up something like a HD7770 or similar (which is a rebadged R7 260X pretty much!) for around £30-50. But then the power supply might be an issue as it needs 115W.

 

DONT DO IT.

 

You dont know if the card has been abused; I wasted £80 on a used R260 that died after a few weeks, and was as unstable as hell from day one (I suspect damaged RAM chips as constant image glitches at all screen resolutions).

 

I got my 1090T from a Chinese dealer who sells large numbers of pulled cpus on AliExpress, it cost me £40. He sources them from ex lease machines from large corporations, so usually they have only been run at stock speeds. Only one of the cpus I have had from him has gone bad, and that was because the cpu fan shut down and the chip fried (stupid BIOS issue)

I appreciate the hazards of buying this type of kit of E-Bay.

 

After doing a bit of testing with the MB memory, it suddenly dawned that the BIOS, although set to "Auto", has only running been running the Corsair XMP 1600 Mhz memory at 1333 Mhz. So, in the expectation that an alteration here might assist in uplifting the graphics FPS I set the BIOS parameter to manual and dialled in 1600 and re-booted. After that the Unigine Valley seemed to run a bit more fluidly and responded better to  key board actions, although the reported. frame rate didn't change. Strangely though, after that, if I reverted to  the "Auto" setting in the BIOS the machine set the memory frequency to 1248 MHz and the FPS wasn't any different.

 

On the basis of that I'm at a bit a loss to understand all the debate on the web about whether its better to run the CPU at stock and uplift the memory frequency through the clock multiplier or Vicky verky. Is it worth fiddling with memory and CPU setting ? - as is well known the M4A88TD-M/EVO is set-up nicely for overclocking just about every component.

 

To get back on track, I decided, (As my luck's been running well recently ???)  to purchase a 2GB R7 360 and an extra 4 GB of  memory. I guess that will give an FPS of 30-50, depending on application, if the You Tube vids are to be believed. I think, its unlikely, under normal gaming conditions to ever draw its max rated TDP of 100w and even if it does, all the various calculations on the web I've used seem to indicate that it will max out on my system at anything between 250 and 290 watts - at worst leaving a 50 watt margin. Obviously, I'll be keeping an eye on it when I first run it and keep the frame rate down (As this seems to make the greatest contribution to power draw) until I can establish at what level the PSU is operating at. Even if the existing PSU doesn't like it, all it means is that I have to buy a new power supply 18 months early.

 

 

Nick

Edited 4 April, 201610 yr by Clunkclick

Mine suddenly decided to run the 1600MHZ RAM at 1333; yet it had been running at 1600 in auto for over a year.

 

The recent switch to a similar spec MSI board shows how good the EVO is, I cant get ANY USB device to work via a hub or switch until the OS is loaded, meaning I couldnt enter the BIOS until plugging my keyboard and mouse directly into the PC - buggering up my dual desktop PC and screens/single mouse and keyboard system.

I think, its unlikely, under normal gaming conditions to ever draw its max rated TDP of 100w and even if it does, all the various calculations on the web I've used seem to indicate that it will max out on my system at anything between 250 and 290 watts - at worst leaving a 50 watt margin. Obviously, I'll be keeping an eye on it when I first run it and keep the frame rate down (As this seems to make the greatest contribution to power draw) until I can establish at what level the PSU is operating at. Even if the existing PSU doesn't like it, all it means is that I have to buy a new power supply 18 months early.

 

Nick

When the PSU isn't good enough - you'll either get a reboot/ shutdown (easy to detect) or loads of random error messages from various components at various times - harder to diagnose. I've had Memory issues, BSOD, HD (reported) failures and Graphics issues that were all down to a dodgy PSU.

In the end I decided it wasn't worth the risk and went for a new power supply @ 750W.

 

Probably over-egging it, given that Direct X 12 under W10, which the Video card  support's  is  supposed to substantially reduce the power requirement (Particularly that of  CPU), but at least it allows a good margin for future expansion.

 

No real problems on the installation. An extra 4 GB of memory went in first of all, taking it to 8GB. That on its own seemed to speed up ordinary web-page references quite a bit. Then I put in the PSU and the card.

 

All went fairly well  Had a little bit of a senior moment when I tried to peel-off the detachable 4-pin block from the motherboard end of the PSU's main power cable and stuff it in the MB's 4-pin 12v connector on the Micro ATX board - then I read the instructions (!!)  and realised that it was one half of the 8 pin connector that was reserved for this.  No fixing problems, booted OK, pressed the mem-refresh button on the MB to re-sync the memory as the red-light came-on during n the boot -stalled part way through. After that all was hot straight and normal.

 

The power consumption (Measured at input) was as follows:-

 

132 watts at boot-up.

 

60-90 watts at settled  Windows desktop.

 

180-200 watts with Unigine Valley running at the Basic setting and outputting 60 FPS.

 

189-210 watts with UV  at the  Extreme setting and 32 FPS

 

170 -189 watts with UV at the Ultra Extreme setting (FPS unknown, but screen shots very fluid and detailed)

 

150-160 watts with Furmark set at 16/9, 1280 x 720, full screen, outputting 35 FPS.

 

145 -150 watts with Furmark set at 16/9, 1920 x 1080, FS, 22 FPS.

 

160-170 watts with Furmark running CPU burner app, 4 threads

 

170-175 watts, Furmark, CPU burner, 8 threads.

 

170-180 watts, with Furmark, CPU burner, 64 threads.

 

So, on the face of it, I could have probably got away with using the old 350 watt PSU and still have had a comfortable margin. Of course, there would always be the concern that the old PSU would have let go with a change in the draw characteristics of + 30 -40%.

 

I imagine that'll be alright to be getting on with and, if I can get my hands on a reliable  S/H Phenom 1090 or 1100 in slower time that that will take the existing MB to its limits without overclocking.

 

Nick

 

 

 

The 1090T is the highest rated cpu the mobo will take, the 1100 draws too much power (125w v 140w)