Question best card for an old system?

[flexOnYourEx]

so recently my brother asked me if i could upgrade his old system he still uses for gaming, it's an i3-530 and a radeon r5 230, he said he only wants a gpu upgrade and he only gave me 100 bucks as a budget. i know that modern hardware will be bottlenecked by this old i3. i'm thinking of getting a used gtx 950 or 1050. which one should i get? or is there like a better card i should get? he plays csgo/league/rainbow six seige at 900p.

 

[WildCard999]

Either 950 or 1050 would be fine and a big upgrade over the R5 230. As for the CPU/MB/RAM I'd wait anyways for Ryzen 3rd gen as it will have some budget friendly options that would be a massive upgrade over his i3.

If your buying used be careful of fakes as there's plenty out there. One way of noticing is if you see a 1050 with a VGA connection as the 10XX series doesn't support VGA (unless using active adapter).

 

[flexOnYourEx]

Either 950 or 1050 would be fine and a big upgrade over the R5 230. As for the CPU/MB/RAM I'd wait anyways for Ryzen 3rd gen as it will have some budget friendly options that would be a massive upgrade over his i3.

If your buying used be careful of fakes as there's plenty out there. One way of noticing is if you see a 1050 with a VGA connection as the 10XX series doesn't support VGA (unless using active adapter).

Thanks a lot! I'll watch out for those fakes. On the CPU side, he probably won't upgrade but if he does in the next few months or so, I'll tell him that. 😁

 

[sparkles1000]

so recently my brother asked me if i could upgrade his old system he still uses for gaming, it's an i3-530 and a radeon r5 230, he said he only wants a gpu upgrade and he only gave me 100 bucks as a budget. i know that modern hardware will be bottlenecked by this old i3. i'm thinking of getting a used gtx 950 or 1050. which one should i get? or is there like a better card i should get? he plays csgo/league/rainbow six seige at 900p.

gt 1030 seems to be quite good, check out its benchmarks

 

[cryoburner]

A GT 1030 offers significantly less performance than a GTX 950 or 1050 though.

If they have a semi-decent 500 watt power supply with the approprite graphics card power cable, a Radeon RX 570 might be good option around the same price range as a 1050, as it offers more performance still.

I do suspect that the performance of any of these cards would be limited by that older i3 processor in many games though. Something like Rainbow Six Seige is relatively demanding on the CPU, and might only manage frame rates in the 30s. One would likely be able to turn the graphics settings up to reasonably high levels at that resolution though, at least.

 

[sparkles1000]

A GT 1030 offers significantly less performance than a GTX 950 or 1050 though.

If they have a semi-decent 500 watt power supply with the approprite graphics card power cable, a Radeon RX 570 might be good option around the same price range as a 1050, as it offers more performance still.

I do suspect that the performance of any of these cards would be limited by that older i3 processor in many games though. Something like Rainbow Six Seige is relatively demanding on the CPU, and might only manage frame rates in the 30s. One would likely be able to turn the graphics settings up to reasonably high levels at that resolution though, at least.

yup its less performance but i prefer a new product instead of an old one.. and also i think there might be no bottleneck issues with the cpu with gt1030?

 

[drinkingcola86]

Honestly, I would put in a 1050. However, what I'm seeing for current costs that are at $100 price range are the RX 560 or a GT 1030. What I would look for would be to spend a bit more and look at an RX 570. Linked below is a 570 that out performs the 1050 ti for the same price as a 1050. Assuming your power supply can handle the card, that would be his best option.

$130
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/ty...0-4gb-gaming-4g-video-card-gv-rx570gaming-4gd

 

[Math Geek]

have you checked the psu in the pc for pcie connectors?

most of the cards you are talking about don't need extra power, but some of the models may use a 6-pin. be good to know if that's an option or not so you can be sure not to get one that needs some extra power. there are not many that do at that gpu level but a few do exist you might run across while shopping.

 

[cryoburner]

However, what I'm seeing for current costs that are at $100 price range are the RX 560 or a GT 1030.

Actually, an RX 560 would probably be a good option if one wants to buy new and can't spend over $100. Normally, I would say it's worth paying the extra $30 or so to move up to an RX 570, since that card can offer double the performance in some games when not CPU-limited, but even the RX 560 is quite a bit faster than a GT 1030. I believe at least some of them don't require a PCIe power cable either.

One thing to note though, is that there are two versions of the RX 560. The original version with 1024 graphics cores, and a second version with 896 cores. The first version performs pretty much on par with a GTX 1050. The second offers similar performance as the RX 460 did, which is around 10% behind the higher core-count version. The weaker version tends to be more common at around the $100-$105 price point, but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it, as it is still significantly faster than a GT 1030...

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/overall-list/#c=416,395&sort=price&page=1

The only real downside to a graphics card being "bottlenecked" is that you won't get the full performance out of it more often. Even if the CPU limits frame rates, a faster card can often still allow for graphics settings to be turned up higher though.