Question New Graphics Card on 10+ year old hardware

Jul 22, 2022
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So I've been out of the hardware game for a little over 10 years now, but used to love building my own PCs. I see things have obviously advanced quite a bit since, and I'm looking for some advice on upgrading my graphics card only and whether this would be possible with my current setup.

So I currently rock a Core I7 920 on an ASUS P6T motherboard, with an ATI 4850 GPU. I recently purchased an ultrawide monitor to use with my work laptop, but then realised that my own graphics card did not support 3440x1440, so if possible I would want to upgrade the graphics card only. I see my motherboard only supports PCIe2.0x16, but a lot of modern graphics cards seem to sport PCIe4.0 connections. Is my motherboard going to severely limit what I can do in terms of replacing the GPU? Note that I am not planning on intensive gaming anymore (those days are long behind me!), so just need a relatively cheap GPU that supports the ultrawide resolution for standard internet browsing, videos etc.

My budget is around £150 - £200, and in the past I have preferred Sapphire ATI cards (for no particular reason). Do I need a complete system overhaul, or is there a cheap graphics that I can just throw in? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
realised that my own graphics card did not support 3440x1440, so if possible I would want to upgrade the graphics card only...
Note that I am not planning on intensive gaming anymore (those days are long behind me!), so just need a relatively cheap GPU that supports the ultrawide resolution for standard internet browsing, videos etc.
i would suggest just finding the lowest end card that supports ultra-wide 1440p.

maybe a GTX 700 series or possibly even earlier.
they were PCIe 3.0 but still backwards compatible.

browse through those old series cards, compare their supported resolutions, and see what is the cheapest option available for you.
my motherboard only supports PCIe2.0x16, but a lot of modern graphics cards seem to sport PCIe4.0 connections.
if you don't plan on gaming or any intensive graphical processing then a PCIe 4.0 card vs 2.0 won't make any difference for you anyway.
Do I need a complete system overhaul, or is there a cheap graphics that I can just throw in?
i would definitely recommend a complete rebuild with modern hardware but i guess that really just depends on what type of overall system speed you can stand to deal with.

even any of the lowest-end processors from the last few generations of AMD or Intel with an onboard iGPU, DDR4 RAM, and an SSD for OS & applications would seriously blow your current setup out of the water and provide your desired resolution without a dedicated graphics card.
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
Last of the Terascale cards would be the HD 8490 / R5-230. After that AMD switched to using the GCN architecture with PCIe 3.0.

Still I think you would be fine with any of the GCN cards in terms of compatibility. So something like an RX460/RX550/RX560
 
Jul 22, 2022
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Thanks both for your responses, it's given me food for thought.
I'm struggling to find older generation of cards brand new (which I would prefer over buying preowned), so a question I have is would a current generation card 'work' in on my motherboard? E.g. A new 6500XT uses PCIe4.0x4. I know it will be bottlenecked by my PCIe2.0 slot, but would it still function, and would it still perform better than my old Radeon 4850?
 
Jul 7, 2022
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Thanks both for your responses, it's given me food for thought.
I'm struggling to find older generation of cards brand new (which I would prefer over buying preowned), so a question I have is would a current generation card 'work' in on my motherboard? E.g. A new 6500XT uses PCIe4.0x4. I know it will be bottlenecked by my PCIe2.0 slot, but would it still function, and would it still perform better than my old Radeon 4850?
Honestly if you aren’t gaming anymore just get the cheapest currently available like the AMD RX 6400 or nvidia gt 1050, they all support at least 4K resolution these days
 
are you willing to go used?
This might be your only choice tbh
I would look for a gtx 970/980,even a gtx 670-680 depending on the psu
you've got a fair amount of forward motion from a 4850

a gtx 770 feels right
with a proper psu I'd even look to a 7970/280x/285

almost anything will be a huge upgrade.
 

KyaraM

Admirable
Mar 11, 2022
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If gaming is off the table and all you want from the card is a picture, your friends are the GTX 1630 or RX6400 if you want to go new. Used, everything GTX 700 series up should work. Yes, the PCIE slot will limif the cards, but on desktop use, you will never notice it. That's only a concern if you want to put actual load on it.
 
Jul 7, 2022
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Thank you all for the responses. Based on all of the comments, think I've decided to get an AMD 5600G and build something cheap that way using integrated graphics!
If you are not going to use it for gaming or GPU accelerated video editing, etc. I highly recommend that course of action. I built my mom a 5600g based computer with 3600mhz memory and a 970 plus SSD and that thing is smoking fast for most tasks! Put it in a small micro-atx case and she really loves it