Is there any gains to my system by upgrading my GPU?

[Roybromwell]

Hello, kind ladies and gentleman, I really need your input.

I was given a system, sometime ago, and I eventually changed just about everything, over time, except the GPU; it's a Sapphire 290X. I want to speed up my system and make it even more capable, if it's possible, and I was wondering if my old GPU is holding me back. I was told that it's not, as I don't game very often.

Do I need to upgrade if I use my PC as a workstation/television? Is there a GPU that gives a little for workstation and gaming, I do game a little bit? Thank you all in advance.

 

[geofelt]

What are all the specs of your system?
The big value of a discrete graphics card is for gaming where it can present fast action.

For some apps, the graphics card can do some work.
Look at your critical apps to see if they can benefit from the CUDA cores available on nvidia cards.

 

[kanewolf]

A 290X is still equivalent to a mid range new NVIDIA (1050ti or 1060) for most things. So unless you have need for CUDA based acceleration or want to go to a higher level than a 1060, you won't get much bang for the buck.

 

[ARICH5]

absoluteley. but adding a gpu to an unbalanced pc can give you problems. if we recommend a 200$ gpu thatll let you play AAA games today, it would unbalance the whole system then youd be looking at a new power supply and motherboard and cpu. etc.
based on when the 290x came out im betting you dont have the greatest cpu and psu for todays gaming. but its up to you.

edit: i digress. the 290 was power hungry though.

 

[Roybromwell]

Thanks for your input, folks. Now, how would I go about checking to see if I any apps I use could benefit from more CUDA cores?

I'm still very much a novice, sorry.

absoluteley. but adding a gpu to an unbalanced pc can give you problems. if we recommend a 200$ gpu thatll let you play AAA games today, it would unbalance the whole system then youd be looking at a new power supply and motherboard and cpu. etc.
based on when the 290x came out im betting you dont have the greatest cpu and psu for todays gaming. but its up to you.

edit: i digress. the 290 was power hungry though.

I did recently upgrade just about everything in my PC last year, though I'm still no sure if it will be balanced if I upgraded the GPU. Most of the stuff I got was from my brother so I really don't know. Is there any app or other thing I can use to check all the components in my pc?

 

[kanewolf]

The one thing that you didn't address in your original post is storage. Moving from an HDD to an SSD for most or all of your software could give you a nice performance improvement in many ways.

 

[Roybromwell]

The one thing that you didn't address in your original post is storage. Moving from an HDD to an SSD for most or all of your software could give you a nice performance improvement in many ways.

From what I can gather, I have 3 SSD and no HDD. Though, all but 1 is a hand-me-down.

 

[geofelt]

Again, it is hard to recommend anything unless we have details of what you already have.
cpu, ram, psu, case, drives.....

 

[Roybromwell]

I am going to Google a way to check my system components. I will be back soon.

 

[geofelt]

I am going to Google a way to check my system components. I will be back soon.

Run cpu-Z.
It will identify your processor, motherboard and ram.

 

[Roybromwell]

I am going to Google a way to check my system components. I will be back soon.

Run cpu-Z.
It will identify your processor, motherboard and ram.

Okay, this is what I get,

Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Memory Size - 4096 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Core Clock - 1000 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10 (64 bit)
System Memory - 32 GB
CPU Type - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz