3.0 gpu in 2.0 GA-MA790GP-UD4H motherboard.

silent-circuit said:
....what the hell are you talking about.

Any PCIe based graphics card will work in any motherboard with a PCIe slot, no matter if it's 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, has a traditional BIOS or UEFI, etc etc etc. Some boards may have specific, odd, and rare compatibility issues with specific cards, but I don't know of a single example off the top of my head. Yes, performance may be somewhat degraded, but if it's a full 16x slot with all lanes available even PCIe 1.0 is enough for all but the fastest cards, and if it's in a board that old you're probably CPU limited anyway.

Either I misunderstood your claim, or you're flat out making shit up.
Click to expand...


New cards in the last 2 gens need a motherboard that has or can support uefi bios. This is the same problem I had with my workstation motherboard by supermicro which was made in 2009, I could not upgrade past the 7xxx line from AMD or the 6xx line from nV, because from that point on all videos cards started only using UEFI bios, the only card I could find that I was going to use a stop gap was a 750 ti by MSI which had dual bios one for uefi and one for legacy, even when it was set to legacy it didn't work, when I called up MSI they stated the specific motherboard I had need a legacy bios update, of course the last bios update was in 2012 for that motherboard and so that wasn't going to happen.
 
razor1 said:
New cards in the last 2 gens need a motherboard that has or can support uefi bios. This is the same problem I had with my workstation motherboard by supermicro which was made in 2009, I could not upgrade past the 7xxx line from AMD or the 6xx line from nV, because from that point on all videos cards started only using UEFI bios, the only card I could find that I was going to use a stop gap was a 750 ti by MSI which had dual bios one for uefi and one for legacy, even when it was set to legacy it didn't work, when I called up MSI they stated the specfici motherboard I had need a legacy bios update.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Didn't know this as my old board got an update to UEFI years ago and the Z77 I replaced it with when it died was UEFI out of the box.
 
yeah some motherboards were capable of the uefi bios update I think most of those were right around 2013 if I remember correctly. Pretty much what I feel was it was done to force people to buy new computers lol.
 
razor1 said:
yeah some motherboards were capable of the uefi bios update I think most of those were right around 2013 if I remember correctly. Pretty much what I feel was it was done to force people to buy new computers lol.
Click to expand...

I had a Gigabyte Z68XP-UD4, which was a mid 2011 release board that got a UEFI update. Luck of the draw, I guess.
 
razor1 said:
yeah some motherboards were capable of the uefi bios update I think most of those were right around 2013 if I remember correctly. Pretty much what I feel was it was done to force people to buy new computers lol.
Click to expand...

Personally I hate UEFI. Wanna upgrade your shitty wifi card in a laptop? Buy a new laptop. Not happening due to WiFi whitelists. Want a new GPU? Upgrade to a UEFI motherboard!

And I have so far found 0 benefit over a regular BIOS. I've read reports that newer UEFI's have begun blocking older Windows installation CD's, to force people to use Win 8.1 and up. It's outrageous...
 
yeah I hear ya there!

Boot speeds a bit faster but nothing earth shattering, but I have had lots of problems with add in network cards, they should freakin work cause the OS and drivers should take care of them, but nope......
 
aztekk said:
Personally I hate UEFI. Wanna upgrade your shitty wifi card in a laptop? Buy a new laptop. Not happening due to WiFi whitelists. Want a new GPU? Upgrade to a UEFI motherboard!

And I have so far found 0 benefit over a regular BIOS. I've read reports that newer UEFI's have begun blocking older Windows installation CD's, to force people to use Win 8.1 and up. It's outrageous...
Click to expand...
you guys forget that a lot of cards can run legacy or UEFI just fine? My card IS UEFI and works just fine on my ancient x58....as far as AMD brands...get XFX IMO
 
primetime said:
you guys forget that a lot of cards can run legacy or UEFI just fine? My card IS UEFI and works just fine on my ancient x58....as far as AMD brands...get XFX IMO
Click to expand...

I have a card like yours (Sapphire branded), it's a rebadged 7970 and has BIOS and UEFI support. We are referring to cards after this generation, which dropped compatibility with older BIOS (no BIOS mode switch).
 
primetime said:
you guys forget that a lot of cards can run legacy or UEFI just fine? My card IS UEFI and works just fine on my ancient x58....as far as AMD brands...get XFX IMO
Click to expand...


Some motherboards can some can't and silent circut was correct, 2011 was the year many motherboard manufactures supported both UEFI and legacy bios, prior to that some had the capability of EFI but that could be used to work with UEFI cards like high end boards like yours, I would check up and call up the motherboard manufacturer first to be sure.
 
Last edited:
a lot of the amd cards still support legacy(xfx, msi) or dual bios, most NVidia don't.
 
I just can't see myself doing a full system upgrade this close to Zen being released.
 
pendragon1 said:
a lot of the amd cards still support legacy(xfx, msi) or dual bios, most NVidia don't.
Click to expand...


Legacy support on old motherboards are bad too, as I stated I got a 2009 and tried putting on MSI 750ti with dual bios it wouldn't post because the legacy bios of the old motherboard needed to be updated. Best to check that up before spending money on a graphics card that may or may not work.
 
Last edited:
  1. do any of the xfx 480s have switches for legacy/uefi to support older pc systems? someone who owns a GA-MA790GP-UD4H was thinking of buying one.

  2. Today at 11:53 AM
    XFXSupport
  3. No need, the cards will detect if no UEFI is enabled and automatically switch to legacy. im running a GA 790 board in this rig at work with a UEFI enabled 290 in it. no problem
 
Is there any benefit to splurge and get and 8 gig card as opposed to 4.
 
jcg624 said:
Is there any benefit to splurge and get and 8 gig card as opposed to 4.
Click to expand...
If you dont mind making very minor game setting tweaks then NO....When i do buy ill get the 8GB myself just for the ever so slight future proofing. Exactly when it will help is when games use slightly over 4GB of vram....DX12 games in particular seem to use more vram for what ever reason. It all comes down to affordable budget and price really....in the end the 4GB versions would be a 1000 times more powerful than anything you ever used before. The 8GB versions is more for people like me who want the extra mental boost of what i just bought, cause with very minor tweaks they both play exactly the same.
 
I had a bad experience with XFX cards in the past year. XFX Radeon R9 380 R9-380P-4255 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0. I had to return it for damage and display issues.

The card did post though.

I am hesitant to buy another XFX card. Leaning towards the 4 gig Sapphire although the 8 gig card for 40 dollars more sounds nice.
 
well a 2 fan rx470 4gb is what i recommend for you...there is a few floating around 150-155 price points currently at the egg.....Once you rebuild your system and you want a better card just sell it for just about the same exact price and go from there. As always is the case the more expensive cards wont hold there value quite as well.
 
jcg624 said:
Leaning towards the 4 gig Sapphire although the 8 gig card for 40 dollars more sounds nice.
Click to expand...

The performance increase is 0-2 fps at 1080p and 1440p. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-amd-radeon-rx-480-4gb-vs-8gb-review

So for it's not worth the 20% higher price for the 1% performance increase (or lack of). Future proofing is a moot point also, since by the time games require 8GB of VRAM, this card will be too slow for those games anyway.

I'd still advise you to be wary when buying the Sapphire card, you have confirmation by primetime from the XFX rep that their cards will work in old motherboards. This may or may not be the case for Sapphire, keep that in mind.
 
jcg624 said:
I had a bad experience with XFX cards in the past year. XFX Radeon R9 380 R9-380P-4255 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0. I had to return it for damage and display issues.

The card did post though.

I am hesitant to buy another XFX card. Leaning towards the 4 gig Sapphire although the 8 gig card for 40 dollars more sounds nice.
Click to expand...

So... you had one bad card, and they went through with the return / exchange without a fight. Hold it against them forever.

The fuck is wrong with you?
 
silent-circuit said:
So... you had one bad card, and they went through with the return / exchange without a fight. Hold it against them forever.

The fuck is wrong with you?
Click to expand...

Yeah it's a bit ridiculous to completely give up on a company just because one product you bought was defective. That can happen with all brands, if it were a recurring theme (2-3 bad products) then I would start to consider not buying their products. XFX in my mind is neck and neck with Sapphire on the quality front. However in this case the Sapphire card is cheaper so it makes sense for him to buy that.
 
primetime said:
  1. do any of the xfx 480s have switches for legacy/uefi to support older pc systems? someone who owns a GA-MA790GP-UD4H was thinking of buying one.

  2. Today at 11:53 AM
    XFXSupport
  3. No need, the cards will detect if no UEFI is enabled and automatically switch to legacy. im running a GA 790 board in this rig at work with a UEFI enabled 290 in it. no problem
Click to expand...

Right, the majority of new cards support both BIOS and UEFI automatically.

It's only the occasional buggy video card firmware that causes compatibility issues, or early cards that used a hardware switch.

The issue has unfortunately been covered-up by the OEMs because they ship buggy cards to meet street dates. And that means we have not gotten a very clear picture of how long legacy BIOS will continue to be supported in new cards.
 
jcg624 said:
I just started thinking about this. Years ago I bought a questionable psu. ocz modxstream pro 700w

With buying an RX 480 4 gig card I was thinking maybe a more reliable PSU unti might be a good idea. What do you guys think of this one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151118&ignorebbr=1

64.99 with 15.00 rebate 49.99 final price.
Click to expand...

If you feel you need a new power supply that is a very solid choice. SeaSonic makes one of the best power supplies on the market and I'm personally using the SeaSonic S12II 620w Bronze in my main machine for a long time. For that price, it's a no-brainer, I paid over $100 for my PSU back in the day.
 
my ocz mxs 600w blew earlier this year and I replaced it with a Silverstone. happy with it except for fan noise. but it could just need cleaning...
 
It would certainly put my mind at ease having a psu that is proven to be reliable as opposed to one that is proven to be unreliable.
 
Look at [H] reviews for more reviews on PSUs. Sea sonic is very good. My wife and I have the Rosewill 650W unit reviewed here.
 
Just to chime in on the UEFI discussion here...

For what it's worth, I bought an R9 390 last November, replacing my dual HD5770s so I could play Fallout 4. As you may have guessed, my system is not new by any means. Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4h, an AM1 board. As far as I'm aware it runs an Award BIOS, and the last update it received was the same year it was released. (It's a Beta BIOS one of the Gigabyte engineers sent me to rectify a large derp with the Uncore speeds)
I'm quite certain due to both its age and particularly it being an Award one of that age, that it does not have any semblance of UEFI support.

That being said, I plugged that 390 in and windows booted right up, no problem. I didn't change which BIOS it was running on, or anything. GPUz shows the UEFI box checked, which I don't know if that indicates anything, but I originally thought it indicated if it was operating in UEFI-Mode (hovering it seems to indicate the card is only supporting of it though).

My main point being that while the 790G is indeed an old chipset, I can't imagine the A75X is all that much more advanced, and everything works fine for me (as mentioned, PCIe 3.0 will work just fine in a 2.0 slot, as that's all my system is)! heh That being said, I could go try my R9 390 in my own 790G board, as I have the exact same one as you do, jcg624. Would have to be a bit later, but I'd be willing to bear the annoyance of removing it from my main system in order to offer someone else a peace of mind. (Granted, I know it's not a Polaris-based card, but I imagine it's the same UEFI/Legacy system employed as my R9 390).


EDIT: aha.... Derp me! I just realized that my motherboard is an 890GX; Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H.
 
Last edited:
I got the Sapphire RX480 a couple days ago. Had some time last night to install it into computer. It works great. Played Diablo 3 and Guild wars 2 for a little while. Had just a minor issue with getting the drivers installed.
You know how that goes never works the first time. The card is very quiet. Now I need to get a few new games. I do have the witcher 3 but have not played it in a while maybe will install it and see. Last time I had to turn everything all the way down and still the performance sucked. hope the rx 480 performs better lol
 
Last edited:
jcg624 said:
I got the Sapphire RX480 a couple days ago. Had some time last night to install it into computer. It works great. Played Diablo 3 and Guild wars 2 for a little while. Had just a minor issue with getting the drivers installed.
You know how that goes never works the first time. The card is very quiet. Now I need to get a few new games. I do have the witcher 3 but have not played it in a while maybe will install it and see. Last time I had to turn everything all the way down and still the performance sucked. hope the rx 480 performs better lol
Click to expand...
good stuff! and no bios issues?! have you/can you OC your cpu? even a bit will help alleviate some of the potential bottlenecking.
 
I can. I think I have the cpu clocked at 3.2. I have pushed it to 3.34 before but it became very unstable so I scaled it back.
 
god good. even if you end up getting only 80% of its potential performance it must still be a massive improvement!
 
For sure is. I am going to install the Witcher 3 and set the graphics to high. see how it performs. will let you know.
 
jcg624 said:
I can. I think I have the cpu clocked at 3.2. I have pushed it to 3.34 before but it became very unstable so I scaled it back.
Click to expand...

At that frequency it is equivalent to a Phenom II X4 955 which in turn has roughly the same performance as an Intel Core i3-2130, or a little faster than an i5-760. I don't think you will have any significant bottlenecks except maybe some older games that can't utilize all 4 threads but have high CPU usage.
 
I was able to push my CPU to 3.57 stable. I tried to get it to an even 3.60 but it was too unstable so I dialed it back a bit. no problems at 3.57 on air. Is there a free program out there I can bench mark my system.
something that is easy to use.


Thank you and Merry Christmas
 
better than nothing! there are tons of benchmarks! you can jump on and the blender train with everyone else and compare to ryzen. you could get realbench, cinebench, 3dmark, lots of games have benchmarks there are tons...
 
Honestly dude PCI-E 2.0 X 16's bandwidth is so big that modern graphics cards barely fill it, so as long as your cpu, ran and ssd is not bottlenecking you'll be fine!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top