[SOLVED] Ancient Computer , Core 2 duo E6300. what Low profile GPU was compatible and suitable for that era ?

[BobknowsNothing]

Hello Forum

I have an old HTPC Medion MS 7324 mATX Mainboard

Mother board specs https://www.manualslib.com/manual/651765/Msi-Ms-7324.html?page=

Intel Core 2 duo E6300 ,3 GB ram ..

I appreciate some will comment on how old and unreliable the PSU will be & how poor the the CPU performs, this i have read several times when searching the net trying to find the correct information.

I was curious to know what old Graphics card would best pair with the old CPU with MSI motherboard ,
So way back then what would of been the best performing GPU card to match the CPU and compatible with the mother board ? Without bottle necking the CPU
I looked at the possibility of Over Clocking the CPU from within the Bios but have yet to find any settings to help with this.


What I understand I need so far ?

GPU must be Low profile due to the HTPC form factor
PCIE x 16 1.0 or perhaps PCIE x 16 2.0 ?
Not a power hungry card

I have found reference to a similar PC on a German site from a 2009 post, where the user bought a Passive Radeon 4550 Sapphire , could anyone recommend 2 or 3 alternatives ?

What other technical questions should I be asking when looking for a suitable card

Reason for wanting a graphics card ?. I want to increase the HTPC graphics .

Thanks for reading

 

[Metal Messiah.]

How about getting a GT 1030 low-profile GPU if you want ? Should work on this system, IMO.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gt-1030.c2954

 

[TerryLaze]

You would be better of getting a raspberry PI, better CPU performance and better GPU performance than anything from that era, at least for media playback.

I'm not 100% sure that new GPU's can even run on such old hardware, some GPUs need new bios (uefi) and secure boot options.
(also if your PSU is from that time I would not trust it enough to run new components)

 

[Wolfshadw]

I was running an AMD Radeon HD 2600 Pro with my E6600 on my old HTPC. Looking for a low-profile card, I'd probably go with a Radeon HD 5450 (assuming you can find drivers for your OS).

-Wolf sends

 

[BFG-9000]

I agree with Metal, GT1030 low-profile would be the most reasonable modern choice. I'd advise someplace you can return it if it doesn't work, but it usually does (though 9xx and 10xx cards may take awhile to POST in a legacy BIOS system).

The reason is you aren't going to be editing video with such a system so only really need good hardware decoding of video for HTPC use. It doesn't matter how weak the CPU is if the GPU can fully decode 4k H.265 and even Youtube's 4k VP9 videos by itself in hardware--something the E6300 has no hope of playing in software. So such a card would allow attaching a modern 4k television to and watching full-resolution video, even on such an old PC.

If you don't play games then a GT1010 has supposedly been released and should do the same--it's just a cut-down GT1030

Low-profile 750Ti is pretty rare but never has issues with Legacy BIOS. It's 30% faster than GT1030 in games but can only hardware assist H.265 decoding at 4k. RX560 low-profile is another option as it can fully hardware-accelerate H.265 but only partial assist VP9

 

[Jmi20]

I agree with Metal, GT1030 low-profile would be the most reasonable modern choice. I'd advise someplace you can return it if it doesn't work, but it usually does (though 9xx and 10xx cards may take awhile to POST in a legacy BIOS system)

Actually, the worst that could happen is the bios splash screen just won’t show up at all. And you won’t be able to enter bios settings. But this is more common on amd cards.

I’ve run an rtx 2060 on a mobo as old as G31, OP, you should be good even with a gtx 1650.

Low-profile 750Ti is pretty rare but never has issues with Legacy BIOS. It's 30% faster than GT1030 in games but can only hardware assist H.265 decoding at 4k. RX560 low-profile is another option as it can fully hardware-accelerate H.265 but only partial assist VP9

I can attest to this, i got an msi gtx 750 ti lp and it is a lot better than a gt 1030. In gaming at least.

EDIT: I just took a look at the specs now, sorry. The chipset appears to be an intel 945. Ive done some testing with a mobo with the same chipset before, a lot of modern gpus will not run on that board.

no modern amd (r9 3xx and above) gpus, gtx 1050 will work 99% of the time, rtx 2060 would work most of the time (after a few hard restarts and cmos clearing).

but gtx 750 ti will work 100% of the time.

 

[BobknowsNothing]

Thank you so much for the input ,its really appreciated

I will look into the suggested cards

Best regards

 

[Joseph_138]

Instead of trying to find an era appropriate match, I'd just get a GT 1030. It will run everything from the Core2Duo era fine, and use less electricity than anything from that time period. Trying to install a card more powerful than that won't net any performance gains because of the CPU, and will only waste electricity (GT 1030 only draws 30W). A GT 1030 will also be in driver support longer than any era appropriate card. GTX 600 and 700 (apart from the 750 and 750Ti) are already being phased out of driver support, and Maxwell probably will only have a year or two left before nVidia pulls the plug on them, too.

If you have the space for it, there are passively cooled versions that require two slots, that save even more power, are quieter, and you don't have to worry about a fan failing and frying your GPU. If you don't have the space, then one with a single slot cooler and fan will have to do. I was going to put one in a Core2Quad machine, but something happened where either the motherboard or the power supply failed, so I had to shelve that project until I have time to figure it out.

 

[jasonf2]

In theory anything PCIe should be backwards compatible all the way back, but UEFI can put a kink in things if the card requires it. Even on current gen cards many machines are running in legacy mode though so I doubt you will have any issues. As someone else mentioned a current generation raspberry pi won't probably quite match single core performance, but has modern decode functions, will smoke the duo in multi core and be cheaper than a video card. It is also a lot less power hungry. Putting a 1030 on a core duo seems kind of like supercharging an old style VW bug. Those chips were from a point in time where Intel was reacting to the Athlon 64 beating them to the 64 bit game and they just kind of tacked 64 bit on as an extension. It wasn't until Intel dropped the I7 920 bomb a couple of years later that IPC moved into the modern era. We ran P4s and Duos at work on workstations and I was never really able to tell much difference. It was a pretty stagnant era for PCs in my opinion. The first time I fired up a 920 you could actually feel the difference and we moved from early core pretty quickly because there was so much of a performance increase.

 

[BobknowsNothing]

Thank you all , I am really glad I asked on this forum, I am getting some very useful information.