Graphics card wanted - in the EU, probably. Haswell CPU too?

[daverobev]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a graphics card that will both fit and work in an old desktop I got a while ago and haven't done anything with.

It's a Lenovo Thinkcentre M83 tower. Apparently the BIOS only likes nVidia cards (...) and the box can only take cards of a certain length. So big chunky cards are out of the question. Plus at the moment it only has the stock PSU in. Depending on how things go I might swap the CPU - apparently it'll take a Xeon E3-1240 V3, which will be a lot faster than the Pentium it has in at the moment (LGA 1150 - so any ix-4xxx desktop CPU will work I think).

Just for fun (I kind of want to play Skyrim and don't have a gaming computer together at the moment, and don't really want to spend huge amounts of cash...).

So if you've got stuff gathering dust in a drawer, let me know.

Apparently the best I'm looking at is a GTX 1650. 750, 960 also ok. Not sure if a 1030 is even worth having!

Thank you!

[neo von retorch]

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-8800-GT/3162vsm7722

Huh, guess the Geforce 8800 GT I have collecting dust won't cut it? Probably too long, too :)

EDIT: Oops, no that was a much older card I had... it's a GTX 780.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-780-4GB-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1650/m11282vs4039

And it's a big card. And I'm not in the EU. But I'm curious if you have any luck on your quest!

[daverobev]

Crazy how powerful those ones you linked are vs a card 5 years newer.

The reason I say EU is because... there is now no de minimis, I don't even know what they do for 'gifts' (or private sales like this where let's be honest, you shouldn't be paying VAT).

I should go and measure, I got another older card a while back that didn't fit which is going into my wife's new computer instead.

[daverobev]

I had a look in the case and remembered - the layout means the back of the GPU can't be thick, because the RAM releasers are only just above. The image below doesn't quite show it because the releasers are open, it isn't quite as bad as it looks:




                           RR  RR
PCIEEEEEEEE

So when the card is in you can't remove the RAM, and the back of the card can't have a big chunky heatsink. There are three PCIE slots, 16x, then 1x, then 4x. The 4x would run into the silver heatsink and then the motherboard connector wires.

[RWD]

<userbenchmark link>

Huh, guess the Geforce 8800 GT I have collecting dust won't cut it? Probably too long, too :)

EDIT: Oops, no that was a much older card I had... it's a GTX 780.
<userbenchmark link>

And it's a big card. And I'm not in the EU. But I'm curious if you have any luck on your quest!

Userbenchmark is well known as completely useless at best, maliciously biased at worst.
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.userbenchmark.com

I usually use PassMark's benchmarks
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

According to those the GTX 780 slightly outperforms the GTX 1650 (though it draws a lot more power and has older DirectX/OpenGL).
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce-GTX-780-vs-GeForce-GTX-1650/2525vs4078

[neo von retorch]

Userbenchmark is well known as completely useless at best, maliciously biased at worst.

I've read the complaints, but... comparing Nvidia to Nvidia... :)

Your link shows about a 4% advantage to the 780. UserBenchmark shows... about a 4% advantage to the 780!

[RWD]

Userbenchmark is well known as completely useless at best, maliciously biased at worst.

I've read the complaints, but... comparing Nvidia to Nvidia... :)

Your link shows about a 4% advantage to the 780. UserBenchmark shows... about a 4% advantage to the 780!

I definitely misread the numbers on the userbenchmark page. So in this case yes they appear very similar. But in general I would warn against making decisions based on their data.

[neo von retorch]

Yup. For comparing 6 year old cards for some very light gaming, it probably doesn't matter too much. And you do seem to have some better sources! For any purchases, I dig into reviews from a handful of sites I like.