Is a Geforce GT 440 an upgrade to my geforce 8600 gts?

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RobNC77

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Apr 10, 2012
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Hello, I currently have an 8600 gts DDR3 256mb PCI-E card that I've been using for almost 4-5 years. It requires a 6 pin connector to the power supply. I have a 1.86 Core 2 Duo processor, 4 gigs of ram and a 430 watt antec power supply with 3 rails. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do play World of Warcraft a lot. Right now I play WoW at max resolution (1920 x 1080) widescreen on medium-high settings with 30-60 fps. FPS depends on where I'm at. Usually I drop to 30ish in very heavy forests or in heavy populated zones.

I know WoW gets a little bit more demanding with each new expansion. I can see some of the newer zones are starting to push my card. I want to upgrade my card, but here's the kicker.....a dual slot card will absolutely 100% NOT fit in my PC. Gateway for some reason designed my PC to be backwards from normal PCs with normal motherboards. Only a single slot card will work. I wish I'd known that 5 years ago before I bought it. Plus, if I can, I don't want to upgrade my power supply at the moment.

Well anyways, I was looking at the Geforce GT 440 DDR 3 1 gig PCI-e card. I know the GT 440 isn't considered a gamer card, but I want to know if it is better than my older card. I found a comparison that showed the following numbers between my 8600 gts and the GT 440 . Assuming it's accurate....

The GT 440 has a little more than double the pixel fill rate and texture fill rate than my 8600 gts, but the memory bandwidth is a bit slower than my current card. The GT 440 has 28.8 GB/sec and my 8600 gts has 32GB/sec. The GT 440 has 96 shader processors and my 8600 has 32 shader processors. The GT 440 has 28 texture units and my 8600 has 16. Lastly, the GT 440 has 16 raster operations and my 8600 gts has 8 raster operations.

It seems to me that the GT 440 beats my card in every category except memory bandwidth. I've really tried to understand all this information and I'm confused. So after I've typed all that, I'll just try to put my questions in a nutshell.

Is the GT 440 a decent upgrade to my 8600 gts for less demanding games like WoW?

My 8600 gts requires a 6 pin power supply connection and the GT 440 doesn't. Does this mean the GT 440 is a weaker card? Or is the GT 440 just more efficient with power because it's much newer than my 5 year old 8600 gts?

So overall, I know the GT 440 isn't considered a hardcore gamer card, but considering it's much newer than my 4-5 year old 8600 gts, is the GT 440 more powerful and will it improve Wow over my current card? Is the GT 440 better than my 8600 gts?

Thanks.
 
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Yes it should be faster than the old 8600 GTS, obviously the 440 has newer architecture so you can't compare it by specifications like bandwidth, texel rate, power requirements, etc. In the latest Tom's hardware GPU hierarchy chart the 440 DDR3 is 3 class higher than your old 8600 GTS. Which is good for the upgrade. But if you are looking for cards in this budget you may consider the 6670 from the Radeon side. In the Same chart I showed you before, the 6670 is four class higher and consume less power.
 
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What about HD7750? There are some low profile models and it would be a huge upgrade from 8600 GT.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131461
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129232

I know your CPU might bottleneck it.. but really, if you're planning to keep this card for 5 more years, you will for sure upgrade your CPU sometime. And when you do that, this card won't be outdated. And it's not that expensive either.
 
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Like refillable said A 6670 would be a solid upgrade as well as a 440, depending on which one you can get cheaper. If you want to spring for a new card a 7750 can be had for around $110 and will stomp the 6670, but you can get those guys for $50-80 if you are in the US. I'm sure the pricing tiers are similar in other counties, depending on availability.

Dry
 
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I have an HP DC 7800 and it has a wierd mobo that is sort of upside down, with 1 pci-e slot and 6 pci slots. Who needs 6 PCI? Any way the pcie slot is the top most slot, but because the board is upside down in the case a double card wont fit because the second slot does not have an expansion slot to fit into. I was able to make a card fit by changing the metal mounting plate with a single slot one that I had. Problem is now the card exhausts in the case.

The fastest single slot card i have seen is a 6850, although this is over kill for you.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131433

This 6770 would be a good fit and it would be a huge lift over your 8600.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131445

or a 6750 would be good.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150602

I would update the video card before the CPU. As the computer sits now the gpu is by far the weakest link.
 
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For the people who don't play WoW: just saying, but that test is baaaaad. It is made on a fly point of an empty zone, and without any addons, so the fps is really high. In real world situation, like raiding, it goes way down. My GTX 560 Ti is rated for 80 fps, struggles with not dropping below 40 fps on a heavy fight. Just my 2 cents 😉
 
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Thanks for the feedback guys. I once heard that you should match Geforce cards with Intel chips and Radeon cards with AMD chips. That is one reason I've been focused on the GT440. That said, if the HD 6670 works smoothly with my Core 2 Duo, I'll definitely be interested in that.

akxpckwb, the E6300 C2D is exactly what I have. What did you upgrade yours to? Did you just replace your processor or did you get a new PC? I don't think I can upgrade past a C2D because my motherboard is about 5-6 years old. Although something like Core 2 Quad shares the 775 socket, I don't think it will work in my board.

I'm going to do some research on the Radeon HD cards, because if they are better than the one I'm looking at, I would definitely prefer that.
 
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You didn't mention your motherboard but you can probably use a Quad.
I did think about upgrading to either a C2Q or a better C2D but I live in the middle of freaking nowhere and it's kind of impossible to get decent hardware. And the prices are absurd. So instead I just got myself a H61 motherboard with a G620 CPU. They're not the top stuff but it's a very good upgrade. And a single Quad would have costed me more.

About the AMD graphics cards bear in mind that they tend to better than Nvidia's for the price you pay. Just check the charts on the main website. Most cards with a good performance-price ratio are AMD
 
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who ever told you that don't know what they are talking about.

as for the 440, it performs like the gtx8800 which is a upgrade to the 8600 but not much.
 
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you will find it performs nothing like an 8800gtx.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GT_440/12.html
read that, it pretty much sits on par with a 5570, which is slower than an 8800gtx or 8800gts. I agree to what others have said, you will have a cpu bottleneck. Most games these days have requirements of 2ghz or better Core 2 Duo, you will find that regardless of what gpu you get, the cpu you have will be the weak point. So in the end, it will improve performance, but if a games your running is heavy on the cpu, you may not find much of a boost.
 
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I understand what you're saying. However, the only game I play is WoW. I might play Diablo 3. Other than that, I'm not a hardcore gamer and I don't play first person shooters or other games with higher hardware demands than WoW. I understand that many newer games require much more powerful cpus and such. I just wanted to find a graphics card that will improve WoW some. Right now, I play WoW just fine with what I got. I would just like to improve it a bit and since a new expansion is coming out soon, I want to have a card that is a bit better than what I have now.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with any potential bottlenecking issues, but when I play WoW, I see that I use about 50-60% of my cpu. It can hit around 65% cpu usage in extremely heavy traffic, like in Orgrimmar on a very high populated realm, where you have hundreds of players standing around casting spells and such. It seems to me that this means my CPU is not having to give it's all to run WoW. I just wanted to improve my card in hoping I could turn a few settings up and have higher FPS in areas where I drop to 30ish.

Does the intensity of certain games trigger bottleneck problems with an old cpu and new card?
 
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Hello, the gt 440 DDR3 is not worthwhile in my opinion, unless you still use low resolutions such as 1024x768 in an old CRT monitor. The performance would on par or even below the Radeon hd 5570.
It will be a better performer than your old 8600gts, but don't expect an important jump in performace. For resolutions from 1280x1024 on, get at least a 6670, which is way better. The problem with these cards, such as the 6670 is that for a little more, you get a much better 6770 or 6850...
 
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Thanks for the input. I have now moved away from the GT 440 and I'm looking at the HD 6670, the HD 6750 and the HD 7750. I found a benchmark list that had numerical values to rate the cards.

8600 GTS (my current card) (520)
GT 440 was (834)
HD 6670 was (1201)
HD 6750 was (1617)
HD 7750 was (1808)

The HD cards seem to be WAY better. I'm glad you guys steered me into the right direction. On the CPU benchmark list, it had my CPU at a (1108). I wonder if something like the 6670 would be more of a match for my cpu and would limit bottlenecking, or should I just go for the HD 7750? If there is bottlenecking, does that simply mean that the card will just limit it's potential to my cpu or will I have problems such as computer crashes and such?
 
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Bottlenecking doesn't crash computers, it just makes the graphics card to perform at 100% because it doesn't get enough instructions from the CPU. I'd say you should go with HD 7750, because it fits your budget and it will last you longer than HD 6670. Those numbers don't have to match, and I doubt your CPU will be bottlenecking at all.
 
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The HD 7750 has a pretty similar performance to the older HD 5770/6770 (both are the same card). This card would suit you perfectly, and it's single slot. It also consumes roughly 50w and won't require external 6 pin conector. The only real problem of this card is its price/performance ratio. Its too expensive for the fps it provides. But fps are not the only thing to consider.

Regarding bottlenecking, if your GPU is much faster than your CPU, you will be able to play with all eye candy and resolution (up to certain limits) but with low framerates no matter what graphic details you change. The other way round, if your CPU is much faster than your GPU, you will have to reduce all the graphic details you can such as resolution, AA etc, in order to get higher framerates.

Hope it helped
 
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If you find out what chipset your motherboard came with, you can find out what CPU's it will support. Just because it's a Socket 775 doesn't mean it will support something like a Core 2 Quad.

I had a little HP PC with and I was able to find out on their website that the chipset on my board only supported up to a E6600 Core 2 Duo, I could not put a Quad core in it.

If you want to keep your expenses low and are playing at something 1080p or less, just stick a 6670 or a 7750 in it and be happy!

Hurray!! Your graphics performance will be MUCH better even if the CPU does bottleneck it a little.

Problem is, if you start getting into replacing the CPU, by the time you price it out, its not worth it unless you are going to replace the MB, RAM, HD... wait, that's a whole new system...

Dry
 
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cuz buying a Core 2 Duo used its only like $15 less than buying a new generation Sandy Bridge based Pentium, which is faster than the C2D but you'd have to replace the rest of the stuff, and then you're talking $300-400 (USD) and not a simple $70 upgrade...

Dry
 
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