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I currently have a Radeon HD6670. Just wanted to know if the GTX640 is a worth while upgrade. They both and GDDR5 memory and 1GB of video.

I would not do it.... the cards are pretty evenly matched with the 640 is faster in some and not in other games.

The gtx650 or a 7770 would give you a much better jump in performance with the 7770 being a bit faster. The HD7750 and gtx650 trade blows and are pretty even.

If you need a low profile card get a hd 7750...i have one and it performs admirably for only using 55 watts or so loaded. Plus the 7750 is a good bit faster then your 6670 plus it takes all its power from the PCI-e16 slot so you do not need a pci-e 6 pin power plug. Though if you can fit a full sized card in your box you could use the molex adapters to get a PCI-e power plug for the 88 or so watt 7770.

If you get a 7770 you will basically have twice the power of your 6670
comparison chart..you can select many cards and compare them... http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/613?vs=536

No, the GTX 640 will be about the same speed as your 6670.

If you want a worthwhile upgrade, you should step up to a GTX 650Ti/Radeon 7770 or better.

First off, what games do you play and at what resolution?

The only GT 640s I've seen with GDDR5 memory are the ones Alienware uses in the X51. Most retail GT 640 cards use DDR3 memory, and that loss in memory bandwidth really inhibits the potential in the GPU. I would recommend a Radeon HD 7750 as the cheapest possible upgrade while yielding a significant boost in performance. For about $20 more you can get a 7770 which will give you a noticeably better experience (assuming you're gaming at 1080).

Agreed. It's not worth the money spent. Just wait and save for a 650 ti if you're on a budget.

I'm not a huge fan of incremental updates like that anyway. You'd really have to go to a gtx 660 to see a large performance gain. It doesn't make sense to spend $150 on even a 650 ti when it's going to bit a small ugprade when you can just wait and get a gtx 660 for $60-$70 more. That would be a pretty huge upgrade.

Thanx for all the input. I feel like i need to be talked off a cliff.

Im looking at buying another Dell and it comes with either a AMD 7570 or GTX 640, the latter being the "upgrade." I really want to build a PC, but the Dell build is not too bad other than the GPU and PSU which will probably be gimped. It comes with an i7(no k), 8gb ram, 2tb HDD, and the GPU's mentioned above. Its 849 or an extra 100 with the GTX.

Any opinions? It will be used for gaming, surfing, encoding/transcoding, as well as my wife's work computer. Oh on a 23" screen.

It's extremely easy to upgrade the graphics card after the PC is purchased. If you get the Dell PC with the integrated Intel HD graphics, you can pick up a Radeon HD7770 from Amazon or Newegg for $125 and drop it into the PCIe X16 slot.

Unfortunately the build that i am looking at comes with a HD7570 with no option to take the card out in the options. i still have a 6670 i can put in there though.

If the GT 640 has GDDR5 it's not a half bad card. The GTX 650 is the same GPU chip as the GT 640 but with higher clocks and GDDR5 only, whereas GT 640 can come with DDR3 or GDDR5 - the DDR3 versions are barely worth having. How much is the upgrade? If it's under $50 and it's a GDDR5 version it's *maybe* worth it, otherwise save your money, buy a better card and sell the 6670 and the 7570.

the upgrade is 75.00 more.

I was talking to a Dell rep and he told me it had an Intel x68 motherboard. There is no x68 is there???

Pairing an i7 with something this low end is a typical sin from Dell. I would find out how much you can sell the 6670 and build a new one.

Take the sweet spot build for example. Sure the CPU is not an i7 but should be good enough. Downgrade to an H77 motherboard, get a 650 Ti or 7770, ditch the SSD, cheaper case and PSU (but still name brand), and you should be close to the 850-ish mark that the Dell gives you (minus the OS).

What kind of games and resolution are we looking at?

Edit: x68? That's 1366 stuff. Don't think you would want that. Pairing with such a low end video is definitely a sin.

I do plan on building as well but for some reason this PC is looking really appealing. The dell rep did say he misspoke. He said it comes with a z68 chipset and a 475w PSU. I was actually suprised about the PSU.

I play on a 23" screen at 1080p. Mostly FPS; Deus EX: HR, Fallout NV, Farcry 3, Batman AA and AC. Plus whatever else comes out and catches my attention.

greenmystik wrote:

I play on a 23" screen at 1080p. Mostly FPS; Deus EX: HR, Fallout NV, Farcry 3, Batman AA and AC. Plus whatever else comes out and catches my attention.

Farcry3 and Batman AC will only give you 30ish fps at 1080p on a GTX640, with some of the heavier frames being particularly slow.
On a GTX 650Ti you'd be expecting an average framerate closer to 60, which is partly why the 650Ti costs so much more.

As others have mentioned already, the 7700-series is probably the best bang for your buck for a low-budget upgrade to your 6670

greenmystik wrote:

I do plan on building as well but for some reason this PC is looking really appealing. The dell rep did say he misspoke. He said it comes with a z68 chipset and a 475w PSU. I was actually suprised about the PSU.

For a balanced build at $850-ish, you probably should not be buying an z68+i7 setup. A H67/H77+i5 setup with a decent GPU is the way to go. Heck, if you are more skewed towards the gaming side, you may even want to drop down to an i3 and bump the GPU further. Please refer to the System Guide: notice how even the econobox has the 7770 as a minimum recommendation for decent gaming? The next step up is the 7850 and 660 already. You seriously think the Dell rep has more experience building balanced gaming systems than the TR staff or the gerbil collective?

Flying Fox wrote:

For a balanced build at $850-ish, you probably should not be buying an z68+i7 setup. You seriously think the Dell rep has more experience building balanced gaming systems than the TR staff or the gerbil collective?

I know those Dell reps don't got nothing on TR writers (or readers). The rep was also mistaken about the chipset. I read the manual on the XPS and it says it has a H77 chipset.

Soooooo...I finally gave in and got the damn Dell. Really isn't too bad of a build, minus the GPU, and is a huge upgrade over my current q6600 Dell.

FLAME ON!!!

Not gonna flame, from the way you were talking it sounds like you had buyers remorse from even before you bought the thing - if thats even possible. You got 'talked into' buying something by a salesman, we've all been there. Do the right thing, cancel or send it back and you will feel instantly better.

Problem is I do need a new PC. Mine isn't horrible right now, but its starting to show some age. I still plan on saving up and building one by the end of the year, then giving the Dell to my wife or son. My problem is that I hate waiting. I was trying to save this past year to custom build, now i just want a new PC. Illogical but this is a stop gap. If i didn't have Dell credit this wouldn't have been a problem, but seeing how much money was on it and seeing that i could get it in two weeks was hard to pass up.

Let me help with your buyers remorse. On the plus side your wife will be happy with the new machine (as long as you let her use it for photoshop). And because the graphics are so bad you will not be playing games as much as you would if the card was faster. You can then use that extra time in the day to get a second job or work overtime and save for a good graphics card.

As someone who has tons of experience doing piecemeal builds, and who was in a jam and did a half-build off a low-end Dell last year in order to make ends meet, I second the suggestion to return/cancel the Dell.

I had a Dell Vostro 470 available, and I put my GTX 460 in it..... Then I took it all apart, completely and totally disassembled the Dell, and put it back together with a real PSU in it. I had a "475W" PSU, much like yours may come with. Two SATA power connectors, one free 4 pin, and zero PCIe 6 pin GPU power. Apparently if I'd purchased it with a better GPU, they have an otherwise identical PSU with a single 6 pin connector. I dropped in some ancient OCZ 650W POS PSU that I got in a trade.

Removing the stock PSU and installing the OCZ was a multiple hour operation. I could have built a machine entirely from scratch in a similar amount of time. EVERYTHING had to be removed and re-installed after the PSU swap.

It did run the GTX 460. It could kinda-sorta-almost game. That's about all the good I can say about it.

I took the GPU back out and loaded it into a proper system as soon as my finances allowed. Have not regretted that. The Dell gathers dust. I think it'll be my new HTPC.

Keep the Dell if you're just going to put a decent GPU in, and never do any other work on it. Bear in mind that the warranty will require you to uninstall your third-party GPU and install the original if you ever need Dell to do anything. If you sell the OEM GPU, you've pretty much discarded the warranty.

I wouldn't go for this. The GT 640 is a very weak card, yes it's the Kepler architecture but it really sucks and I'd recommend a 7750 or 7770 for this price bracket unless AMD just isn't an option (which is possible--I had to ditch my new 7770 because I found out the hard way the 7xxx series doesn't like one of my games).

The 7750 isn't a huge upgrade over a 6670 either. Really unless you're running into T&L bottlenecks in games like Deus Ex 3 I'd suggest either spending extra for a better card or holding out for a while until a new GPU generation makes cards like the 7850 and 650Ti get a price drop.

greenmystik wrote:

Problem is I do need a new PC. Mine isn't horrible right now, but its starting to show some age. I still plan on saving up and building one by the end of the year, then giving the Dell to my wife or son. My problem is that I hate waiting. I was trying to save this past year to custom build, now i just want a new PC. Illogical but this is a stop gap. If i didn't have Dell credit this wouldn't have been a problem, but seeing how much money was on it and seeing that i could get it in two weeks was hard to pass up.

I hope by 'having Dell credit' you mean that you had a credit from a return or something to apply toward a purchase at Dell, not that you're using a Dell credit line. The *only* thing those credit lines are good for is getting whatever promotional discount Dell offers for using it. The terms of the credit line are pretty bad overall such that it ought to be paid off in it entirety on the first bill.

Damn, we lost another one to the big box OEM. Here I thought we had him off the cliff-edge. Enjoy your worthless GT 640, sub-par PSU, and castrated motherboard.

I would like to offer some references for reading (besides the TR System Guide). Reading tech reviews not only helps you choose the perfect component for your DIY build, it also helps you detect poorly and well balanced pre-built systems. Also, Forge highlighted my #1 gripe with Dell: they don't make upgradeable platforms. Everything is cut down to only the connectors and functionality that's needed for the system they ship. If you aren't comfortable with building your own, go with a boutique like ibuypower or cyberpower that use the same aftermarket components you buy from sites like newegg.

1) A reivew of the GT 640 GPU which would be enough to convince anyone to never touch one of those heaps.
2) A CPU gaming review to help illustrate how an i5 is all you need for gaming. Even an i3 can provide stellar gaming performance even though TR mysteriously decided to omit the i3 in their most recent article.

Even if the system was purchased with a substantial gift card, I would still have much rather purchased a dell laptop or IPS monitor with it.

Purchasing an SSD for your old Q6600 system probably would have curbed your impulses for a new system. Ultimately, you spent all that money for an upgraded CPU that will be held back by the mechanical hdd and no GPU upgrade. I doubt you'll notice much difference in "speed" aside from the fact that the new system will be a fresh OS install.

Wouldn't your old system with the q6600 been soooo much more awesome if instead of ditching it and buying a whole new system just spending $200 on an SSD and $200+ on a GPU? (That's 7850+++ territory)

I mean yeah... the i7 is nice and all... but Haswell comes out soon.... and you'd have been able to transfer the SSD and new GPU across to the haswell system.

Note: I'm still running a Q9450 and it is going perfectly fine for gaming at 1080p with the 560ti I slotted in there and the SSD and Windows 7.

asuming you got a second pciE slot it would be a upgrade when you set the gt640 as dedicated PhysX card
it will also perform other compute or rendering tasks like ambient occlusiobn,antiailiasing
you need to set mixed gpu ecceleration on in nvidia inspector
when you need to replace to old gpu 650ti is kinda to slow because of tjhe minimum framerate
(what is most importand because of the lag issue