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Nice finds, techrepo! The GT 1030 will definitely be a nice choice for low profile single slot and I see a number of those available on Newegg right now. I'll update the front post later on. Too bad there aren't any RX 550s in the same form factor yet.

The dual slot one that you and topinio linked is interesting but it doesn't seem to be available on newegg yet, and with a DVI slot on it it won't ever be single slot capable.

I'll keep an eye out for the others. The ASL card was brought up a month ago but still doesn't seem to be available anywhere.

RX 550 is in stock at newegg: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814137148

Unfortunately... it's a 2 slot card. Also slightly worse than the 750ti.

It does come with a low profile bracket though.

That said, there are a ton of 1030 cards at newegg now, which are both single slot/low profile capable...

Interestingly, it looks like many benchmarks put the 1030 ahead of the 550...

750 ti is still better than both, although I wonder if the 1030 would be better than my modded single slot 750 ti cuz of it's thermal throttling.

1030 it's not good option.
Procesor is better but memory is not so fast.
Change from r7 250e Still unprofitable.

Nomgle wrote:

ozyrys120 wrote:

Popular DELL SFF have only 1 single slot pcie. Only single slot gpu could be  

Look more closely at the black PCIe x4 slot on the right - DELL use an open-ended slot. Only the blue PCIe x16 slot is width-limited - you can run your low profile double-width card in the x4 slot just fine, and the performance-drop is minimal compared to the x16 slot. Here's a clearer picture of mine :

What card do you use with your Dell SFF? (Guessing by the shot it's a T1700, same as mine) I'm planning on getting a 1050Ti - just wondering if the 4x will be enough power for it, as from what I recall 4x doesn't provide as much power to the card as 16x does...

Yeah, a lot of the newer dell SFFs have the PCIe slots reversed (I think the ivy bridge ones were the last ones that had the x16 slot first, giving you room for a double-wide card in it). And I seem to recall seeing something about how the x4 slots were limited to providing 25W.

Can't say for certain but definitely a concern - the bandwidth probably wouldn't be a limitation, but the power could be (assuming the card would even work).

rich0dify wrote:

Nomgle wrote:

ozyrys120 wrote:

Popular DELL SFF have only 1 single slot pcie. Only single slot gpu could be  

Look more closely at the black PCIe x4 slot on the right - DELL use an open-ended slot. Only the blue PCIe x16 slot is width-limited - you can run your low profile double-width card in the x4 slot just fine, and the performance-drop is minimal compared to the x16 slot. Here's a clearer picture of mine :

What card do you use with your Dell SFF? (Guessing by the shot it's a T1700, same as mine) I'm planning on getting a 1050Ti - just wondering if the 4x will be enough power for it, as from what I recall 4x doesn't provide as much power to the card as 16x does...

I'm using this card right now - https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MSZ81C2/ ... 12_TE_dp_1 - and it works just fine. But I'm only using it to play 4K video via the HDMI 2.0 output using Kodi (OpenElec) - I haven't tried gaming.

As AMD in its wisdom has decided to not release the new WHQL driver for Windows 8.1 systems, and will not support that OS for the last 5.5 years of its 10.2 year lifecycle, my HTPC needs a new GPU. This will be a NVIDIA card.

I'm looking at the EVGA GeForce GT 1030 SC Passive Low Profile (02G-P4-6332-KR) and the EVGA GeForce GT 1030 SC Low Profile (02G-P4-6333-KR), thought they looked worth sharing here.

Topinio wrote:

As AMD in its wisdom has decided to not release the new WHQL driver for Windows 8.1 systems, and will not support that OS for the last 5.5 years of its 10.2 year lifecycle, my HTPC needs a new GPU. This will be a NVIDIA card.

I'm looking at the EVGA GeForce GT 1030 SC Passive Low Profile (02G-P4-6332-KR) and the EVGA GeForce GT 1030 SC Low Profile (02G-P4-6333-KR), thought they looked worth sharing here.

That's not great, but to be fair to the AMD developers there can't be that many systems running 8.1 at this point. There's even fewer that can't run Windows 10, even though it would be limited to the last major release for some Atom CPUs.

Vhalidictes wrote:

That's not great, but to be fair to the AMD developers there can't be that many systems running 8.1 at this point. There's even fewer that can't run Windows 10, even though it would be limited to the last major release for some Atom CPUs.

There are entire generations of machines which are supported with Windows 8.1 but not Windows 10.

This is one of them, and I'm not going to run an unsupported OS or replace the entire system due to a (unexpectedly early) end to video driver updates.

Even if I would, a new Windows licence would be required and that's £180. I can get the new GPU for £70.

The thing with the Cloverview Atoms is slightly different, and worse -- that's Microsoft dropping hardware within an OS's lifecycle. (It did the same with the Windows 8->8.1 update, users with e.g. a first-gen Athlon 64 X2 or the Intel DP35DP motherboard were dropped ... bad Microsoft.)

It's not Microsoft dropping support. The graphics driver is no longer in spec. Intel doesn't own the GPU, it's Imagination PowerVR. So, unless THEY want to fix their broken driver then there really isn't anything Microsoft can do about it aside from hold the whole OS back by allowing broken graphics drivers that do not conform to their spec.

you can still use the win 7 driver amd says.

I wonder if it is SPECIFIC support for win 8.1 features but in general it still works?

@Topinio

The EVGA cards are sort of the odd ducks of the available GT 1030s, at least the ones I've seen. The passively cooled one looks nice and if you've got a system where it would fit it would make for an excellent HTPC kind of card - as long as there's some airflow to keep it cool, of course. But the heatsink is tall and EVGA has it listed as a "1.5" slot card. The "SC" version is also listed as "1.5" slots but they don't provide height measurements for either one.

EVGA also has a full height, single slot, dual DVI GT 1030 which, I'm going to be completely honest you guys, is SO SO EPIC because it looks just like an old GeForce 8600GT or something, but it doesn't really apply to this thread and I just wanted to point it out because it seems EVGA is the one making oddball GPU configurations of the 1030, instead of say, Zotac or one of the other usual offenders.

At any rate, I was thinking of picking up one of the EVGA cards, my local Micro Center has them on sale right now. If I do I will measure the actual height, but I think if you've got a single-slot case that has a little extra space available for heatsink height, but not enough for a full second slot, they might end up being really good, quiet versions of the 1030.

Aranarth wrote:

you can still use the win 7 driver amd says.

I wonder if it is SPECIFIC support for win 8.1 features but in general it still works?

I have tried installing the Windows 7 version of the AMD Radeon driver on Windows 8.1 before now, and found it to not work. I guess I can try again, but don't hold much hope given AMD is offering only WHQL 17.4.4 or beta 17.7.1 for Windows 8, and separate installer files fo WHQL 17.7.2 on Windows 7 and Windows 10.

deruberhanyok wrote:

@Topinio

The EVGA cards are sort of the odd ducks of the available GT 1030s, at least the ones I've seen. The passively cooled one looks nice and if you've got a system where it would fit it would make for an excellent HTPC kind of card - as long as there's some airflow to keep it cool, of course. But the heatsink is tall and EVGA has it listed as a "1.5" slot card. The "SC" version is also listed as "1.5" slots but they don't provide height measurements for either one.

EVGA also has a full height, single slot, dual DVI GT 1030 which, I'm going to be completely honest you guys, is SO SO EPIC because it looks just like an old GeForce 8600GT or something, but it doesn't really apply to this thread and I just wanted to point it out because it seems EVGA is the one making oddball GPU configurations of the 1030, instead of say, Zotac or one of the other usual offenders.

At any rate, I was thinking of picking up one of the EVGA cards, my local Micro Center has them on sale right now. If I do I will measure the actual height, but I think if you've got a single-slot case that has a little extra space available for heatsink height, but not enough for a full second slot, they might end up being really good, quiet versions of the 1030.

Yeah, I like EVGA in general and what they're doing with the GT 1030 in particular, all 3 are nice-looking -- and you can see from the photos that the passive LP one is 2 slots wide.

There's not a page for it I can find on evga.com (though the standard LP one has one, and also a spec sheet which does have its height, a fairly standard 2.709".

I fully agree on the full-height one, and its heatsink (seen in the photo gallery) is beautiful.

The passive LP or active LP one is the question for me, as I have a LP case (Antec MicroFusion Remote 350) and the extra slot's width available -- but I don't know if I'd need to redo the case fans to prevent the GPU throttling and if so whether that could be worse than hearing a GPU fan. I think I've (nearly) settled on the active one in the hope that it is quiet, ideally with the fan off in "normal" usage. Or I might still change my mind...

Edit: ordered the active one, will post back on noise levels once it's installed.

@topinio

do post back with your impressions on the EVGA card! I missed the sale at the local shop (sold out fast!) so I'll probably hold off on picking one up for a little while yet, but I'm curious how well it works. Some user reviews at Newegg seem to indicate it has excellent overclocking potential, I imagine due to the cooling on it, so that could be interesting for gaming. Also curious about the actual heatsink height, if it's "1.5 slots" but only, say, 25mm, it might fit in a lot of single slot setups.

I might order the MSI low profile 1030; I like that it has a displayport and HDMI output, instead of a DVI port. Most of my PCs are out of commission these days, but I do have an old Dell i7-3770 box I could pop it in, maybe run some updated tests against the Kepler-based GT 730 (which really was the last card to occupy this segment from NVIDIA, so it's a huge leap past Maxwell and into Pascal for performance there) and an R7 250 (if I can track one down for cheap) to update that part of the main post. I know the processor is a little high end for testing $70 video cards, but it's the only system I've got right now. I could pick up in i3-3225 for $20 or so though, that might be an interesting comparison to do...

deruberhanyok wrote:

@topinio

do post back with your impressions on the EVGA card!

Will do. Ordered it Saturday and it arrived Monday, but first installation opportunity is Saturday...

I have several computers here at work that have two dell 30" monitors each running at 2560x1600. Now that I've gone through three R5 340x replacements I'm finally getting it through my thick skull that these vid cards may not be able to sustain such high res on two monitors.

Does anyone have a suggestion on a half-height (low profile) vid card that could push 2x monitors running at 2560x1600 res? Only needed for business applications, no gaming or 3d what-so-ever.

Edit: Needs to be single slot.

Edit Edit: Found this topic so I deleted my post and moved it here.

I'm fond of the Nvidia Quadro line for reliable, low end cards. They are professional graphics cards, not consumer gamer cards, and are very well made. We have a lot of the K600 and K620 cards driving two monitors in our Linux systems and they never fail. The K620 has recently been replaced by the P600, so that might be worth looking into.

Shinare wrote:

I have several computers here at work that have two dell 30" monitors each running at 2560x1600. Now that I've gone through three R5 340x replacements I'm finally getting it through my thick skull that these vid cards may not be able to sustain such high res on two monitors.

Does anyone have a suggestion on a half-height (low profile) vid card that could push 2x monitors running at 2560x1600 res? Only needed for business applications, no gaming or 3d what-so-ever.

Edit: Needs to be single slot.

Edit Edit: Found this topic so I deleted my post and moved it here.

The Dell option for the Radeon R5 340X is an OEM card, Oland IIRC, and per the machine specs only goes to 1920x1200@30 Hz on its single-link DVI output (though up to 4096x2160@60 on its DP output). If you need dual 2560x1600 monitors, I think you need to be buying the MT chassis with the GeForce GTX 745 card option.

/dayjob

I suspect you could hook this up on the Intel integrated graphics in the boxes, without buying new cards: have you tried using the DP and HDMI outputs and setting -- if you are prepared to tolerate -- a refresh rate a little lower e.g. 50 Hz ?

Shinare, what model Dells are they? Do they have displayport inputs or are they old school dual-link DVI required?

Either way I have to agree with rootbear, what you want is a low-end Quadro card, specifically from the Quadro NVS line:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs-product-overview.html

The Quadro NVS 310 (Newegg link, $83) has a pair of DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, so if your monitors are Dell U3011s or newer it would be able to drive those just fine. Another option is the new Quadro P400 (Newegg link) ($125, currently $40 off list price) which has three mini-displayport outputs and a little more oomph to drive those displays (256 Pascal cores and 2GB GDDR5 memory, vs. 48 Fermi cores and 1GB GDDR3 on the NVS 315). There's some other options that fall in the middle in terms of performance, but they were higher-end SKUs from earlier lineups, so they're still really expensive. I'd go with the P400 personally, just to have something based on the latest architecture, instead of sticking with the NVS 315's Fermi (over 7 years old now).

If, on the other hand, you are unfortunate enough to have inherited a bunch of 3007fps, which require a dual-link DVI connection, you won't find a single-slot low profile card for what you need. There are some Quadros in that form factor that have 1 dual-link DVI output and 1 displayport output, but none with two dual-link DVI; the connectors are too big to put two of them on a single slot, low profile card and I don't think an old school DMS59 or VHDCI connector was ever made to carry two dual-link DVI outputs. In this case I would suggest you decide whether it is more cost effective to replace the PCs, the monitors, or the users.

deruberhanyok wrote:

If, on the other hand, you are unfortunate enough to have inherited a bunch of 3007fps, which require a dual-link DVI connection, you won't find a single-slot low profile card for what you need. There are some Quadros in that form factor that have 1 dual-link DVI output and 1 displayport output, but none with two dual-link DVI; the connectors are too big to put two of them on a single slot, low profile card and I don't think an old school DMS59 or VHDCI connector was ever made to carry two dual-link DVI outputs. In this case I would suggest you decide whether it is more cost effective to replace the PCs, the monitors, or the users.

If you can find such a card, combining it with one of these may be an option. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any reasonably priced DP to dual-link DVI converters with positive reviews; that appears to be the cheapest one that doesn't suck.

deruberhanyok wrote:

...has three mini-displayport outputs and a little more oomph to drive those displays...

For anyone else reading this, don't forget you can convert DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 with full 4K support - and HD Audio too - using a https://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Displaypo ... B017BQ8I54
They come in DisplayPort and MiniDisplayPort flavour.

I finaly sell my r7 250e.
What is the better chois:
1. gt 1030 in single slot
2. gtx 1050 lp (but i can put it on pci x4 becouse it's duble slot)

I think the 1050 would perform better even on the x4 PCIe bus. I'd be really surprised if it didn't. The 1030 is basically half of a 1050ti, and I don't think the decreased bandwidth would hurt its performance near that much (if at all).

I have a solution for all my problems with GPU...
except aesthetic

Remove PSU and waiting for msi 1050 lp 2gb

ozyrys120 wrote:

I have a solution for all my problems with GPU...
except aesthetic

Remove PSU and waiting for msi 1050 lp 2gb

Removes all issues except aethetic ones, dust ones, and possibly safety ones. Also not sure if physically detaching the PSU means you should add a ground wire from the PSU to the case.

Don't think you can just buy a cheap standard case, so maybe some metalwork to extend the case around the PSU with a hump

Normally I'd suggest replacing the power supply with a pico psu or something similar - they have ones that push 200W so are more than capable of handling a system like that (I used one to power an i5-4590S and Quadro K1200 for a while and I think it was way overkill for that), but those Dell systems, the same time they reversed the placement of the PCIe x16 and PCIe x4 slots, they also switched back to using a proprietary power connector to the motherboard. :/

I was super disappointed to discover that, because I used to recommend to anyone looking for a inexpensive gaming PC to go pick up an old Dell Optiplex off of ebay or something; you could get a decent box for $250-ish, swap out the power supply with a $40 refurb Corsair and add a low-end GPU (the micro ATX full height "MT" versions of the workstations only support up to about 9.5" GPU length, so it's not like you'd be putting a titan in there) and basically have a nice quiet gaming box for not too much money. They're still not bad for gaming if you go with the Ivy Bridge generation (9010 / 7010 / 3010), since Ivy is still relevant for gaming, and those systems are getting pretty cheap, but it's tough to recommend buying used technology from four product generations ago. It looks like HP has done the same thing with the Z series boxes. :/

Topinio wrote:

deruberhanyok wrote:

@topinio

do post back with your impressions on the EVGA card!

Will do. Ordered it Saturday and it arrived Monday, but first installation opportunity is Saturday...

So, I finally got this done on Monday night and today have time to post...

deruberhanyok wrote:

I missed the sale at the local shop (sold out fast!) so I'll probably hold off on picking one up for a little while yet, but I'm curious how well it works. Some user reviews at Newegg seem to indicate it has excellent overclocking potential, I imagine due to the cooling on it, so that could be interesting for gaming. Also curious about the actual heatsink height, if it's "1.5 slots" but only, say, 25mm, it might fit in a lot of single slot setups.

So, it's mostly faster than the HD 7750 it replaced, and quieter under load (not that the Radeon was noisy). I'd expected the latter from a new 30 W card, though I did not expect the performance to be so close to the 5.5 y.o. 55 W one -- I expected more from the NVIDIA one, it cost 70p more

Height is 27 mm from the back of the PCB, versus 16 mm for the Radeon (the screws &c. stick 2 mm out the back, versus 3 mm).

Edit to add: changing the bracket was a pain. EVGA in its wisdom has placed a retaining screw under the plastic shroud for the heatsink, such that the screwdriver needs to be angled in at 30° or so, and so has to be quite carefully turned. This is silly, could easily be avoided (not least by putting the screw head on the outside i.e. the back of the PCB, and I hope I never see its like again.

I haven't tried overclocking, but if I do I'll post back here.

Benchmarks below, all @1920x1080@60 over HDMI; Radeon HD 7750 (800 MHz, 1 GB GDDR5 4500 MHz) -> GeForce GT 1030 (1290 MHz, 2 GB GDDR5 6008 MHz):

Star Swarm D3D (Mantle didn't run) Low : 65.38 -> 81.85; +16.5 FPS = +25%

SteamVR Performance Test, Average Quality : 7.4 (High) -> 0 (Low)
SteamVR Performance Test, Frames Below 90 fps : 1838 (32.9%) -> 5944 (100%) = -100%

F1 2010 High 8xMSAA, Average FPS : 77 -> 76; -1 FPS = -1%
F1 2010 High 8xMSAA, Minimum FPS : 69 -> 67; -2 FPS = -3%
F1 2010 Ultra no AA, Average FPS : 45 -> 56; +11 FPS = +24%
F1 2010 Ultra no AA, Minimum FPS : 41 -> 53; +12 FPS = +29%
F1 2010 Ultra 8xMSAA, Average FPS : 39 -> 39; +-0 FPS = +/-0%
F1 2010 Ultra 8xMSAA, Minimum FPS : 27 -> 36; +9 FPS = +33%

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, max'd +ink : 68.181 -> 196.549; +128.4 FPS = +188%

Metro 2033, DX11, Low, MSAA 4X, AF 16X, Average Framerate : 43.35 -> 44.62; +1.3 FPS = +3%
Metro 2033, DX11, Medium, MSAA 4X, AF 16X, Average Framerate : 39.88 -> 42.98; +3.1 FPS = +8%

deruberhanyok wrote:

Shinare, what model Dells are they? Do they have displayport inputs or are they old school dual-link DVI required?

U3014's with dual DP.

PC's are OptiPlex 7040's SFF desktops.

deruberhanyok wrote:

Either way I have to agree with rootbear, what you want is a low-end Quadro card, specifically from the Quadro NVS line:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs-product-overview.html

The Quadro NVS 310 (Newegg link, $83) has a pair of DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, so if your monitors are Dell U3011s or newer it would be able to drive those just fine. Another option is the new Quadro P400 (Newegg link) ($125, currently $40 off list price) which has three mini-displayport outputs and a little more oomph to drive those displays (256 Pascal cores and 2GB GDDR5 memory, vs. 48 Fermi cores and 1GB GDDR3 on the NVS 315). There's some other options that fall in the middle in terms of performance, but they were higher-end SKUs from earlier lineups, so they're still really expensive. I'd go with the P400 personally, just to have something based on the latest architecture, instead of sticking with the NVS 315's Fermi (over 7 years old now).

Will look into them, thank you!

ozyrys120 wrote:

I have a solution for all my problems with GPU...
except aesthetic

Remove PSU and waiting for msi 1050 lp 2gb

LOL I've had too many "coffee spillage" incidents over the years to recommend that to any of my end users.

Topinio wrote:

Shinare wrote:

I have several computers here at work that have two dell 30" monitors each running at 2560x1600. Now that I've gone through three R5 340x replacements I'm finally getting it through my thick skull that these vid cards may not be able to sustain such high res on two monitors.

Does anyone have a suggestion on a half-height (low profile) vid card that could push 2x monitors running at 2560x1600 res? Only needed for business applications, no gaming or 3d what-so-ever.

Edit: Needs to be single slot.

Edit Edit: Found this topic so I deleted my post and moved it here.

The Dell option for the Radeon R5 340X is an OEM card, Oland IIRC, and per the machine specs only goes to 1920x1200@30 Hz on its single-link DVI output (though up to 4096x2160@60 on its DP output). If you need dual 2560x1600 monitors, I think you need to be buying the MT chassis with the GeForce GTX 745 card option.

/dayjob

I suspect you could hook this up on the Intel integrated graphics in the boxes, without buying new cards: have you tried using the DP and HDMI outputs and setting -- if you are prepared to tolerate -- a refresh rate a little lower e.g. 50 Hz ?

Unfortunately there is no leeway in which model I am allowed to purchase because of reasons... Its only the Optiplex SFF line, been moving up the 70X0 numbers these days..