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Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:15 pm
by swampfox
I'm thinking about upgrading my rig (see signature), but I'm not sure if there is anything I can do with the old parts. Can I turn these into a low power home server, or am I going to be better off selling these and getting a Synology or something like that?

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:32 pm
by Concupiscence
I don't see anything really /wrong/ with the setup if you want to turn it into a server - 45nm Core 2's still have pretty good power usage numbers, especially when they're not under load. But I'd definitely take out the Radeon and put in something less power-hungry. Grab the cheapest low-power PCIe graphics card you can - an 8400GS, a Radeon 5450, maybe even an old used Geforce 6200 or some other eBay rummage bin special, ideally with money you get from selling the 4850 - and put it to work!

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:20 pm
by DPete27
Put a GT620 gpu in there (if you can get one for around $30 after MIR) and use it as an HTPC. Buy a wireless XBox 360 controller with the PC adapter and you can use it to play PC games on the big screen too (1600 x 900 and low settings of course with a GT620). I actually just set up a very similar system for a friend this past weekend. An AMD 7770 for about $80 on sale would be better.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:00 pm
by Airmantharp
What's wrong with an HD4850 for HTPC use if it's not too loud? I recall using an HD4870 1GB a few years back while waiting for an HD6950 (halfway into that cycle) and finding it surprisingly useful even at 2560x1600. Played Bad Company 2 just fine with the settings leaning to the left.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:00 am
by DPete27
Noise was my primary concern. Of course, if its not too loud then there's no need to change anything. A 4850 is overkill for HTPC use but if big screen gaming is an intended use, then a 4850 is obviously more capable than a GT620 (7770 is still better than the 4850 though).

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:06 am
by bthylafh
Airmantharp wrote:
What's wrong with an HD4850 for HTPC use if it's not too loud?


Noise and heat. The old 4xxx Radeons, while great cards in their day and still pretty decent, were brute-force designs that didn't care about saving electricity when idle. If the cooling fan goes out you'll be in trouble.

For an HTPC I think I'd go with a newer bottom-end Nvidia card because their video decoders are superior to AMD's and newer cards will use less electricity.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 3:11 pm
by mike_jonez
bthylafh wrote:
The old 4xxx Radeons, while great cards in their day and still pretty decent, were brute-force designs that didn't care about saving electricity when idle.


not totally true, you can edit the vbios to a lower voltage and lower clock speed. but under load i do agree they got pretty greedy with the power. 110w for the 4850 and 150w for the 4870. i'd also agree that the 620 is a decent card considering t he application

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 4:03 pm
by vargis14
HD 7750s without the pci-e power connectors are about the best power to performance ratio you can get. Fully loaded they use maybe 55watts. But will play crisis 3 on medium settings with no AA lens flare and no blur at 1080p with 40+ fps.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:32 pm
by mike_jonez
vargis14 wrote:
HD 7750s without the pci-e power connectors are about the best power to performance ratio you can get. Fully loaded they use maybe 55watts. But will play crisis 3 on medium settings with no AA lens flare and no blur at 1080p with 40+ fps.

7750 is 2x the price of a 620..

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 9:20 pm
by swampfox
Thanks for the advice. Yes, the 4850 was a great, inexpensive card for gaming at the time, but it gets hot and fairly noisy (particularly if the fan is working overtime because you haven't dusted the thing lately!).

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 9:40 pm
by JustAnEngineer
mike_jonez wrote:
Radeon HD7750 is 2x the price of a GeForce GT620.
... and Radeon HD7750 provides more than double the performance, too. GeForce GT620 is a waste of money, since it's not better than integrated graphics in modern CPUs.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 10:28 pm
by bthylafh
OP doesn't have a modern CPU with IGP supporting QuickSync, so a GT620 would not be a bad proposition if he wants a new (as opposed to gently used) card.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 10:43 pm
by vargis14
I cannot say it enough get a HIS icooler HD 7750 with 1GB gddr5. They cost around 80-90$, but it comes equipped with a Arctic Cooling heatsink and fan so it is very very quiet, even with with the fan at 6000rpm it is surprisingly quiet! Under normal operation it it silent. I Highly doubt it but it also comes in a low profile Format, but both take up 1 slot but the heatsink and fans take up slightly over 1 slot. Nvidia a 620gt is built on 40nm compared to the 7750's 28nm using 44 watts vs 55 watts for the 7750, the 620 gt only comes with 64bit wide ddr3 memory giving it 8.6GBs vs the 7750s 70+GBs thanks to its 128 bit gddr5 memory. As for pixel pushing power the 620gt can push 11.2Gigatexel's a sec vs the hd7750's 28.8Gigatexel's a sec. The 620 is a junk card if you plan on doing any gaming whatsoever. As for running the HD7750 without thePCI-e power connector at the same speeds the factory over clocked one's with a power connector they will run at 900mhz instead of the stock 800 MHz without adding any voltage at all. When I game I use HIS's overclocking utility and I can run stably at 1125 vs 800 core and 1325 vs 1125 on the memory, all with no extra power connector and with a cramp hole 300 watt Orem PSU for almost 2years now......but I only overclock when gaming and it pretty much makes it perform like a stock 7770.

It is pretty safe to say but I think it is the Best price/Performance/Power Usage HTPC card available. If you want to game at 1080p with meduim settings in high profile FPS and RPG games like BF3 ,Crysis 3, skyrim and Farcry 3 and get 40+ FPS. Games like Left for Dead 2 can be played with MAX settings and get over 60+fps. Games like Metro and Sniper Elite V2 can really put this card to its Knees so low-medium setting and 30+fps No AA i always use some AF since it hardly changes performance if enabled. If you need more FPS with a low FPS game just drop to 720p since it is a HTPC and you are not 18" from the screen and still make a prettier picture then a console can give you........Until November and the PS4 and Xbox One are UNLEASHED!!! :) I have to admit I am excited to see some new sports games and other console race games ETC.
here is a link comparing a GT620 vs a hd7750
http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.ph ... ck-edition

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 11:51 am
by mike_jonez
JustAnEngineer wrote:
mike_jonez wrote:
Radeon HD7750 is 2x the price of a GeForce GT620.
... and Radeon HD7750 provides more than double the performance, too. GeForce GT620 is a waste of money, since it's not better than integrated graphics in modern CPUs.


well if he's looking for 2x the performance maybe his cpu should be upped to a quad i see q6600's on ebay for 50 bux, so mix that with a 100$ gpu and you start to wonder... how much is op trying to spend?

edit

but if he wants performance INCREASE in the gpu department a 7770 is the way to go

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 5:37 pm
by DPete27
@vargis - You can get a 7770 for around $80 after MIR. I can't speak for that specific Powercolor card, but I did buy this MSI one that was silent at idle and decently quiet under stress test. I would never buy a 7750 for the same price as I could get a 7770 if there was even the slightest chance it would be used to play games.

** @OP ** when/if you're in the market for a lower end card, sales/promotions and MIRs are really going to drive your decisions. Knowing what a "good" sale price is can help. Here are some good prices I know of in the lower end:
GT620 - Got one for $20 after MIR in January.
7770 - Got one for $80 after MIR in mid-April.
7790 - Were ~$120 after MIR when I bought the 7770

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 6:20 pm
by vargis14
I like the 7790 over the 7770 any day. I thought the OP was wanting real low power use but if he wants to burn 30-35 extra watts of power over a 7750 i would snag a 7790 over a 7770. The performance difference is much higher then the wattage difference between the 7770 wich is at 80 watts and a 7790 is at 85 watts. But the performance advantage the 7790 has over a 7770 is a heck of a lot more then the 5 watt difference. Tessellation wise the 7790 is leaps and bounds above the 7770 since it's bonair silicon is a slightly bigger but a newer and much more power efficient design then the 7770s cape verde.
But i do not know if the OP's cpu would bottleneck either the 7770 or 7790 since i am not familiar with the CPU.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 6:36 pm
by Airmantharp
I agree with what's been said above about striving for effective, lower power GPUs. Should never settle for significantly less performance for only a couple of bucks. Get something you want to live with.

vargis14 wrote:
But i do not know if the OP's cpu would bottleneck either the 7770 or 7790 since i am not familiar with the CPU.


I am familiar; this CPU is holding back the HD4850 that's installed now, and would still hold it back even if it were overclocked as high as it could go with LN2. Intel hasn't really pushed the clockspeeds, but even with only two cores, Haswell is nearing twice the performance per clock as a Core 2.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 6:54 pm
by bthylafh
True that. My old C2D E6300 definitely held back the Radeon 4850 it was paired with. I can't think an E7xxx CPU would be any different.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 7:09 pm
by DPete27
vargis14 wrote:
I like the 7790 over the 7770 any day

For gaming performance vs. power usage I completely agree. But you're also talking about a 50% increase in cost (based on the sale prices I provided above) which fits the performance differences between the 7770 and 7790, but my 7770 suggestion offered more performance for the same price as your 7750. Given that, the power consumption differences are a moot point to me since they're both current-gen cards, hence offer optimal performance per watt comared to previous generations.

Irregardless, it really comes down to intended usage. We've gone from a $20 GT620 HTPC graphics card that could do 1600x900 gaming at low-medium settings to a $120 7790 that is more meant for 1080p gaming at medium-high detail settings. Furthermore, the OP still hasn't given any additional/updated comments on their usage intentions for this rig besides the original NAS box.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 8:42 am
by Chrispy_
Whoa, yeah - this started off for a plan to turn old hardware into a NAS or home-server.

If it's going to be an HTPC on-the-cheap, the target should be passively-cooled. Whatever gaming performance you can get is a bonus extra but not at the expense of extra noise and power requirements. A passively-cooled HD6570/5570/5550 should be something that's cheap enough (new, or ever used) to swap for the 4850 and that's going to be a fine HTPC choice without spending any more money - which I assume is the primary goal when deciding what to do with old parts.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 9:48 am
by Aranarth
You could do a minor upgrade by going to a quad core. You can find q6600 on ebay for ~$75. Most of those chips will overclock to 3 - 3.6ghz.

The one I have went to 3.6 but not entirely stable so I have it running at 3.2 ghz instead. (1200mhz ddr2, 400mhz FSB, 8x multiplier)

I'm also using a radeon 4870 and usually game at 1920x1080, I just need to turn down some of the settings a bit and works just fine.

I can see such a setup working great as an HTPC.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 10:24 am
by DPete27
Something like the CM Elite 361 is going to be about the smallest case you'll find for an ATX mobo. The 361 has a decent amount of ventilation/fan mounts available (obviously you'd want to use as few fans as possible to keep noise down) and even offers room for five 3.5" hdds (if NAS box is still the intention). Too bad it doesn't come with a 120mm fan included like the Elite 360 did :(

Chrispy_ wrote:
If it's going to be an HTPC on-the-cheap, the target should be passively-cooled. Whatever gaming performance you can get is a bonus extra but not at the expense of extra noise and power requirements. A passively-cooled HD6570/5570/5550 should be something that's cheap enough (new, or ever used) to swap for the 4850 and that's going to be a fine HTPC choice without spending any more money

Passively cooled is good and all, but they have a tendancy to get real hot. In a case like the Elite 361, I don't think you'd ever hear a Sapphire 6570 for $40. I owned a Sapphire 5570 (same thing) and it was always silent, even while gaming (which it can do admirably well). Come to think of it, that's probably the best mix of HTPC/gaming performance, price, and noise of anything in that range right now. Anandtech proclaimed it the perfect AMD HTPC card in 2011...

See here for a rough GPU performance hierarchy chart.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 2:05 pm
by Flying Fox
swampfox wrote:
Can I turn these into a low power home server, or am I going to be better off selling these and getting a Synology or something like that?

Looks like the OP is interested in a "home" storage server for his old box's second life. How did it go from there to HTPC or some mini gaming box? OP, apart from serving network storage, do you have other uses for this? If not (especially if you are going to run it headless), then you can get away with almost anything.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 6:16 pm
by JustAnEngineer
Remember that Radeon HD7000 and GeForce GTX600 series GPUs are fabricated on TSMC's 28nm process, while the older Radeon HD6000 and GeForce GTX500 series are fabricated at 40nm. The newer chips are significantly more energy-efficient than the old ones. Also remember that an HTPC is going to spend most of its time asleep or at idle, not running furmark. My HTPC has a Radeon HD7770.

However, since Swampfox hasn't indicated that he intends to make this an HTPC, any graphics card should be acceptable for a server.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:58 am
by mike_jonez
so.. i'm only guessing but from my observation... nobody reads the thread before posting? get a 620, op and get it over with :p

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 1:02 pm
by DPete27
mike_jonez wrote:
nobody reads the thread before posting?

This spiral was probably my fault, so I'll explain my interpretation.
swampfox wrote:
I'm thinking about upgrading my rig (see signature), but I'm not sure if there is anything I can do with the old parts. Can I turn these into a low power home server, or am I going to be better off selling these and getting a Synology or something like that?

My take on the OP can be translated into: "I have an older system that I'd like to repurpose. I was thinking about making it into a home server. Would it suffice for that? Are there any other useful applications for this hardware?" Concupiscence answered the first part, so I figured I'd offer some alternatives.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 6:36 pm
by JustAnEngineer
Why should the OP waste any money on a GeForce GT620 that's useless for just about everything if he's already got a functional Radeon HD4850?

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 6:54 pm
by Airmantharp
JustAnEngineer wrote:
Why should the OP waste any money on a GeForce GT620 that's useless for just about everything if he's already got a functional Radeon HD4850?


I inferred the answer as that he might want something quieter; even though that could be made a non-issue, and the HD4850 is still a potent little card, all things considered.

But I agree that if money is to be spent on anything, it shouldn't be spend on a graphics 'decelerator' like the GT620. Like the S3 video cards that presaged that designation, I could see that card making things worse instead of making them better, and the OP might as well put something reasonably useful in there for another ~$20-$30.

Re: Suggestions for 775 rig

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 5:04 pm
by mike_jonez
JustAnEngineer wrote:
Why should the OP waste any money on a GeForce GT620 that's useless for just about everything if he's already got a functional Radeon HD4850?


this. but the answer is because he said it was getting too hot. also i see the words " low power " ( consumption ) in op's first post...

op just downclock ur 4850 save money save power and don't make your room a space heater.