Graphics Card for Dell Inspiron I660-6038BK

[Hornburger]

Hi Everyone,
I want to make sure before buying a desktop that I am buying the right one.

A few questions:
1. Is the computer I list a good buy? I was looking at i5s because I heard they were the best, but I wasn't sure if an i3 would be good enough if games are mostly using dual cores. However, with the new consoles, they may start using 8 cores? So I wasn't sure how many cores would be ideal. I heard a lot of places that i5s are pretty good and are fairly future proof so I went with that.
2. I heard the Intel Integrated Graphics may not be good enough. Can I just try and play games on low settings, or will this overheat my computer and damage it based on overheating the GPU? I now have a laptop, and I think I fried the PSU from my games, so I was looking to avoid the issue. I don't care much about graphics or frame rate, as long as it is playable and doesn't kill the computer. However, would I need to upgrade the graphics card? If so, is there one you recommend that would be compatible with the computer and power supply? When looking around the max based on wattage may be an AMD Radeon HD 7750 or may 7770 but wasn't sure. Preferably one not overly expensive but does the job well.

Hopefully I included all relevant information, but if I missed something let me know. Sorry about not having the exact specifics on some parts, I couldn't find where to get them.

So the pre-built computer with monitor (I don't trust myself building one) is a Dell Inspiron Desktop I660-6038BK for $500 on Black Friday.

The main specs of this PC are:
CPU: i5-3340
Memory: 12GB
GPU : Intel Integrated Graphics (I think 2500 but it doesn't say?)
Power Supply: I think it has a 300 watt power supply, but it doesn't really say.
Usage: I will mostly be using this for gaming (ideally some like Rome 2, NBA 14, Civilization V, X Reunion, Cities of Tomorrow?), movies, web browsing, a little photo editing.
Monitor: It comes with a 24 inch monitor, but doesn't say the resolution. I think 1920 x something?
Budget: Preferably no higher than $500 for the prebuilt computer. Not sure a $ amount for GPU upgrade, but good enough to play games at around low or medium settings.

Thank you in advance!

 

[trismigistus]

Diablo III has a Control + R function that maintains a constant readout of your FPS while you play the game.

In Diablo III my 7750 is not even breaking a sweat using highest game graphics settings w/ anti-aliasing and w/ my monitors recommended resolution of 1680 x 1050 I am getting 85 and 90 FPS even in battles. It dips into the 70's at times.

Using 1920 x 1080 Resolution using all the highest Diablo III graphics settings and with anti aliasing turned on I am constantly well over 60 FPS; including during battle. In the pre-battle areas where you can move around and mess with inventory and interact with NPC's it stays in the 70+ FPS range. I even saw it increase to a high of 81 FPS at one point.

I expect those numbers will come down some when I try it out in Group Play with other players, but if it does that well in single player mode I do not expect I will be disappointed.

The difference between what I am getting now and what I had on my other computer is like night and day. I remember messing with my old computer using 800 x 600 resolution on all the lowest graphics settings to boost my performance enough to engage in multi player. I think I was down to like 20-25 FPS even in neutral NPC area.

You only need 30 FPS to be able to get what is considered good quality graphics, so that gives you a pretty good idea how high a ceiling I have to play with.

 

[fortunaswheel]

If this thread remains open, I shall report back relatively soon about how things turned out for me.

 

[fortunaswheel]

I wanted to add my report because my perspective is different from a gamer's perspective. I don't play games. I have a different hobby. I make videos of my dog at the park. I make one video of her every day. I turn these videos into movies using the Sony Vegas Pro software. Here is an example of the title sequence for my movies, if you are interested:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwAs_Jn2UY7lcFVzODZTTWg4dVU/edit

Rendering these movies with my laptop takes a lot of time. I have a Lenovo B570 with an Intel Pentium B950 (2 core, 2.1 GHz) CPU. That's why I wanted a new system. I wanted to render my movies faster.

Sony Vegas Pro 12 allows for GPU acceleration of the rendering process. Sony did a test. Its test showed that rendering a movie using Sony Vegas Pro 12 and an NVIDIA GTX 570 graphics card went four times faster than rendering the same movie on the same computer using Sony Vegas 10 and no graphics card. See this page for the results:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration

Now, AnandTech reports a benchmark test comparing the the rendering performance of the NVIDIA GTX 570 card with the Radeon HD 7770 card, using Sony Vegas Pro 12. (I know the card I got was a Radeon HD 7750 not a 7770. I knew, going in, that my card's performance was only going to be a fraction of the performance of the 7770 card. But I couldn't find any tests comparing the Vegas 12 rendering performance of the GTX 570 with that of the HD 7750.) In the AnadTech test, a movie it took the Sony Vegas Pro 12 program an hour to render with the GTX 570 card took 40 minutes to render with the HD 7770 card. Here is the page where you can find the comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/831?vs=777

Well, thanks to trismigistus, I didn't have any problems getting my new system set up with my new card. It took awhile, but I finally got around to doing some tests. I must say I am disappointed with the little acceleration I get with my new graphics card. Here are the results. I rendered the same 24 minute movie, using Sony Vegas Pro 12, on three different platforms. I used my Lenovo laptop (with no discrete graphics card). I used my new Dell Inspiron 660 with with its i5-3340 (4 core, 3.1 GHz) CPU and no graphics card. And I used my new Dell with my new Radeon HD 7750 card. The rendering times turned out to be as follows:

(1) the Lenovo = 5 hours, 27 minutes and 34 seconds

(2) the Dell with no graphics card = 1 hour, 30 minutes and 46 seconds

(3) the Dell with the HD 7750 = 1 hour, 18 minutes and 55 seconds.

I don't consider the 12 minute speed-up that much of an improvement. I was expecting more. I guess if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have bothered to get the card. The better CPU in the Dell gives the most bang for the buck all by itself.

 

[IRONBATMAN]

The amount of RAM is also a factor

 

[fortunaswheel]

Maybe it would have been more cost-effective to have gotten more RAM instead of the graphics card?

By the way, the link I gave to the title sequence for my movies shows the clip I run the titles over, without the titles themselves. Here is a link to the clip that shows the titles:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwAs_Jn2UY7lOTBKLW8yU25jdlU/edit?usp=sharing