MSI A88X G-43 - Grpahics Card Upgrade

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imre

Limp Gawd
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Jan 2, 2012
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Hi,

I currently have a MSI A88X G43 motherboard with an AMD X4 860K , 16 Gb Skill 1866 Ram , and a GTX650 ninja.
I wanted to upgrade my graphics card because strangely enough when i play Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare it seems to struggle sometimes. I cant understand why because the game is pretty old.

Maybe my setup or case and cooling is rubbish or maybe i dont have Windows properly set up , or maybe i need to take it off the overlcock? i dont know.

I have the Coolermater Evo Tx3 fan , i would not say it is amazing like everybody else does.
I HAD a Zalman fan on my AMD Socket 939 now that i can tell u is an amazing fan because of the orientation of the fan and the way it keeps your RAM chips and surrounding parts cooled.

Such a pity though when i use it it seems to spin full speed on my MSI new motherboard i cant understand why.
It doesnt get speed-controlled like it did on my socket 939.

The coolermaster i have is a stupid orientation since it blows hot heat on to the back of my graphics card and the coils and the south bridge and ram chips get warm.

Anyways this newer world is still new to me because i only just maybe 7 months ago got off Socket 939 and DDR1 ram and even just before that a Athlon XP 2500+

Just slightly surprised about the COD4 being slightly struggly.


I was considering to buy ATI now and not Nvidia, what do u think?
I was looking at the RX 460 card.

I was also interested to know if my motherboard can have to graphics cards because i see it has 2 PCIE slots....
so i was thinking to plug the Radeon RX 460 in the one slot and then keep this GTX 650 in the other slot?

Thanks .
 
isn't the GTX 650 that's struggling with COD4, it's your CPU, the game it's basically coded for single threaded CPU and at best for Dual core CPU so you can imagine it depend a lot of IPC which isn't a strong point of your CPU specially if isn't overclocked and gaming below 1080P, that GPU should be easily able to handle that game at 1080P over 70FPS maxed out, you can go with a better card and the game still will perform bad....

about:
imre said:
I was also interested to know if my motherboard can have to graphics cards because i see it has 2 PCIE slots....
so i was thinking to plug the Radeon RX 460 in the one slot and then keep this GTX 650 in the other slot?
.
Click to expand...

you will be just wasting space and adding heat to your case as you won't be gaining any performance, sell your current card to recoup part of the investment, if well, yes the RX 460 would be an upgrade for your card I would put the eye on a RX 470 Deal as it will serve you better now and in the future if you are planing to keep the card for a long time, and it can receive a big performance bump if you upgrade your platform to a stronger CPU.
 
There's no way his 860K is the issue.

I played hundreds of hours of COD4 on an Athlon X2 4400+ and a X1950 Pro. The game ran like greased lightning.

My guess is driver issues/conflicts are the cause of his poor performance.
 
Hi horror and araxie, I will try to un-overclock my CPU from 4.2ghz to 3.8ghz.

I also have this link for graphics cards, please can you help me select the one you would buy.
I am also interested i donating cpu and gpu to projects like Cancer and Artificial Intelligence.
I have tried with what i have now and its crazy slow. i mean its not terrible , but support recommended i visit such site like Hardforum and see what suggestions are offered.
http://www.wootware.co.za/computer-...&gclid=CIHBsobA99ECFcYp0wodtIUJow&order=price
I want to get 4gb because of price but something tells me to be future proof and get 8gb.
I also wonder if AMD graphics is the way for me since i have an AMD board and AMD discrete CPU.
I am not sure if trying to go nVidia is still an option , like the 1050 or 1050 Ti ?
I was thinking i buy a good card and be a little future proof ?
I also had originally considered the AMD AM3 socket so like a 6300+ or the 8530 (high wattage consumption though and heavy on heat they said) i think it was (8 cores).
I also looked at FM2+ APUs which was the CPU and GPU in one... BUt because my friend sold me his GTX650 at a good price i decided not to get the EPU/APU forgot what they are called.
arg i decided to get AMD because i have always been from AMD and also because its much cheaper.
Intel always seems ridiculous with their prices.
Maybe some countries are different.
Anyways, so i got this 4 core cpu and it was at the time the best bang for buck.
I dont think i made a bad upgrade decision, i hope.
So anyways, i was thinking to in the future get another graphics card, like exact same.
Or just buy 2 now and close my eyes , swipe m credit card.
Its nuts and its expensive, and i still have stuff to do like put up a wall and also get a decent second hand car. (maybe not the same to compare as these are more long term finance items)
Anyways, after checking in with some people on the BOINC projects site they reckon the AMD GPU s are better performers than the nVidia ones for the project purposes.
They were talking about other technical stuff like bitcoin mining as an example, but i dont know what they were talking about really so i just didnt pay much attention to that as it seems too technical.

Let me know what you guys think.
 
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I have just reset my bios to defaults.
I need to test COD4 again.
As for the card, please help me from my site, so its my territory i can relate to:
http://www.wootware.co.za/computer-...&gclid=CIHBsobA99ECFcYp0wodtIUJow&order=price
I see the RX470 and i also see the RX480, not much money difference... for me also.. like 23 dollars USD.
To narrow down for us also, i dont want to spend more than R3500 (3 500.00 Rand) ZAR
4GB or 8GB

The cooler i use now is not stock, but also not happy as i think the orientation is dumb, because it pushed the heat from my CPU heatsink on on to the back of my graphics card.
I use the Coolermaster TX3 Evo, not sure what the rave is about.

I do have an ORB type fan by Zalman thats a bloody great fan as it also keeps surrounding parts cool.
Just a pity it runs at full speed all the time so it is pretty loud.
 
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That heatsink should be plenty try flipping it so the fan blows up or flip the fan so it blows the other direction also if possible the heat pipes have a fluid in them that needs to warm up to properly convect heat first see if laying the pc on its side helps and if it does you will need to re orient the heatsink so the heat pipes are situated differently... also making sure the heatsink has good contact would be helpful...

The cpu in your rig is about as powerful as a Phenom 2 955 so that would not be the reason for the failure...

Also if it is blowing hot air on the video card put in a diverter to see if maybe the few degrees are making the card throttle as well...
 
Lunas said:
That heatsink should be plenty try flipping it so the fan blows up or flip the fan so it blows the other direction also if possible the heat pipes have a fluid in them that needs to warm up to properly convect heat first see if laying the pc on its side helps and if it does you will need to re orient the heatsink so the heat pipes are situated differently... also making sure the heatsink has good contact would be helpful...

The cpu in your rig is about as powerful as a Phenom 2 955 so that would not be the reason for the failure...

Also if it is blowing hot air on the video card put in a diverter to see if maybe the few degrees are making the card throttle as well...
Click to expand...

And, the torch has been passed.

Enjoy explaining all that to a non-english speaking character.

The CPU is def throttling or his drivers/software is borked.
 
lol non-english. Well im born in South Africa and have half Hungarian blood. I speak English primarily. My wife is English speaking too but from the Philippines.

I just realized that i can actually rotate the fan so that the heat would exhaust out to the PSU end which in turn would exhaust out of the PSU vent, hooray.
Might help a bit .

I have reset my overclock settings to off.

Yet to test COD4, and turn my CPU fan.

My CPU definitely seems better than the Phenom which is older technology.
Another reason i went FM2, was because the technology is newer.
 
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the cpu overall while newer is not much improved they saved that for the upcoming generation. Think of the difference as there are optimizations the cpu you have has over the older one. I used the 955 as an example of the type of power bracket that should be expected from the quad core you have keep in mind the difference is more of the chip you have uses 45-90W of electricity the 955 used 125W and produced more heat.

As for what card you should use the 650gtx should me more than enough to play cod 4 smooth but I like the Sapphire nitro series the exact one you linked is a great card and should serve anyone well... Unfortunately for gaming though Nvidia is favored this card might offer better performance
https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce...ncoding=UTF8&refRID=0DQXZHZ2E39MRSX6W17B&th=1

if newegg really is required
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150776 for the 470
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125905 for the 1060
But if you must switch to amd this card is not bad either and cheaper than the sapphire one...
https://www.amazon.com/XFX-RX-470P4...ie=UTF8&qid=1486257034&sr=1-4&keywords=rx+470
 
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I was considering the RX470 as the correct price and it does not seem to be much slower than the RX480. It uses less power also.
PowerColor and HIS are the brands i am looking at , the Saphire and stuff looks too good looking and the for the money i dont know.
seems a bit overpriced for me
Unsure now if i want 4gb or 8gb and or the rx470 or the rx480
i would like to try maybe the rx470 x2..not sure how that works but i want to test it.

Is it possible to run my GTX 650 and the 9800 GT on my MSI A88X G43?
if so how? I have tried but maybe i dont undestand how to set it up
 
imre said:
I was considering the RX470 as the correct price and it does not seem to be much slower than the RX480. It uses less power also.
PowerColor and HIS are the brands i am looking at , the Saphire and stuff looks too good looking and the for the money i dont know.
seems a bit overpriced for me
Unsure now if i want 4gb or 8gb and or the rx470 or the rx480
i would like to try maybe the rx470 x2..not sure how that works but i want to test it.

Is it possible to run my GTX 650 and the 9800 GT on my MSI A88X G43?
if so how? I have tried but maybe i dont undestand how to set it up
Click to expand...
I'm not sure you can run both for graphics, possible one as dedicated physics card,but the benefits of that are negligible these days.

I'd recommend watching the rx 480 4gb or 8gb price so on pchound.com for a few weeks. I've seen 4gb versions going for around 150 recently and 8g around 200

Edit, this doesn't take power limitations into account, not sure how it compares to the GTX650
 
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imre said:
I was considering the RX470 as the correct price and it does not seem to be much slower than the RX480. It uses less power also.
PowerColor and HIS are the brands i am looking at , the Saphire and stuff looks too good looking and the for the money i dont know.
seems a bit overpriced for me
Unsure now if i want 4gb or 8gb and or the rx470 or the rx480
i would like to try maybe the rx470 x2..not sure how that works but i want to test it.

Is it possible to run my GTX 650 and the 9800 GT on my MSI A88X G43?
if so how? I have tried but maybe i dont undestand how to set it up
Click to expand...

Your processor is fine, but those graphic cards are pretty weak. a 9800gt is probably slower then integrated graphics at this point, i just sold a geforce 8800GTX that barely was able to play CS:GO for $10. RX470 would be a huge upgrade. With all that said, i think cod4 should run fine on a geforce 650 -- you could be dealing with a thermal throttling issue or maybe a power saving issue. I was troubleshooting an issue for someone on Overwatch -- under certain circumstances overwatch would limit the fps which reduces the load on the CPU/GPU then in turn the computer can reduce clock speed / voltage causing a visible stutter. Check for a bios update, or disable the power saving features in the bios so the CPU stays locked at its rated speed 3.8ghz and see if that does the trick.
 
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Napoleon said:
I'm not sure you can run both for graphics, possible one as dedicated physics card,but the benefits of that are negligible these days.

I'd recommend watching the rx 480 4gb or 8gb price so on pchound.com for a few weeks. I've seen 4gb versions going for around 150 recently and 8g around 200

Edit, this doesn't take power limitations into account, not sure how it compares to the GTX650
Click to expand...

Buttons
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Unfortunately we dont exist to the rest of the world so we are not even listed on the world map. We dont have such a pchound.com site.
Shipping would be a pain maybe price-wise and delay-wise and maybe collection fee-wise.
Anyways i have ebayed before it was pretty good success and maybe 95% rating for me out of say 15 things or 20 things i bought expensive and non expensive.
I dont ebay anymore though because there is never spend money, married and having a child changes it a bit.

So we have www.pricecheck.co.za and some similar BUT not sure how good they are at scraping the sites for prices.
I find that www.wootware.co.za have the best prices and its these guys i want to buy the RX470 4GB or the RX480 4GB..... i am just deciding still with the help of you young and intelligent guys and whether it is better to get 8GB .... for hashing for projects like BOINC ; framing games ;and encoding x264/x265.
...and plus do i be brave and go ahead and buy 2x RX470 or RX480.... budget would be overspend if i did RX480.... *sigh*
www.take2.co.za or takealot as they are now known , are not the best in price.
www.rebeltech.co.za seem to be decent also with variety candy to buy .
...

Napoleon
-------------
I currently have no integrated as i said, i have a discrete CPU because the GTX650 was given to me, unless you mean in general.
The CPU i have doesnt have GFX on it , yeh.

I did buy new paste when i installed this new fan called Cooler Master hyper TX3 Evo, not sure what the hype was i personally think it is a piece of junk in terms of installing it, i have tiny hands and fingers and a what a pain to install it as the clip kept on unseating when i was trying to place the heatsink down.

Its on now though and i did use decent paste and i put a small blotch in the middle, i think i actually put some like smeared it on the whole area also.
would be really disappointing if the overclocking was an issue.....and that was the reason for COD playing so crap.
Maybe i can try to open up the GTX650 and then put paste on it? not sure how easy it is ?
 
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