New Graphics Card Recommendations for Dell Precision 490 and Precision 690

[99bignick99]

Hell Everyone
I am new to this forum and I hope that someone can help me. I have a number of Dell Precision 490 and 690 workstations that I have used to do CAD work over many years. These seem to be incredibly reliable and still fulfil their role quite well for 2D work. However, there shortcomings are become more evident now that we are doing more and more 3D work on applications such as Trimble SketchUp. I am keen to get a couple more years out of these trusty workhorses and it seems to me that their most obvious limitation is the graphics card. They all currently have either Nvidia Quadro FX3500 or Quadro FX4600 cards which are very old and an obvious bottleneck when doing 3D renderings. The computers are otherwise still quite functional as each has dual Xeon 5160 processors and 16 Gb RAM.

The reason for my post is to seek advice and suggestions from other forum members with similar computers who have successfully upgraded their graphics cards to something more modern and powerful. I have done a fair bit of research and reading online and there seems to be enormously conflicting information regarding which graphics cards will and will not work in these computers. From my reading, it seems that the most significant issue is compatibility with the old PCIe x16 (either version 1.0 or 1.1 – I cant definitively determine which) expansion slot that was included with these computers. Power supply does not seem to be an issue as the 490 come with 750w and the 690 has 1000w available. Hence my request for assistance and advice from members who have actually upgraded the graphics cards in these computers. I am not looking towards a Nvidia Quadro solution and would be quite happy to use a more mainstream graphics card either from Nvidia or AMD. As noted above, I am only looking to get a couple more years of service from these computers and would like to limit the cost of the replacement graphics cards to $100 to $150 each. Ideally, I would like to get a graphics card that is in the class of the Nvidia GTX 750 or Radeon R9 270 etc but something a bit slower would be okay, however, must be a significant step up from a Quadro 4600 so as to make the upgrade worthwhile. I am quite happy to consider graphics cards that are no longer available. It is usually pretty easy to pick any particular card second hand either here in Australia or from the USA.

Thank you everyone who takes the time to read this post and I hope that some of you could assist me.

I have listed below the information suggested for seeking advice on a replacement GPU.

System – Dell Precision 490 and Precision 690

Approximate purchase date – immediate

Budget range - US$100 to US$150

Usage – Trimble SketchUp Pro 2014 (but will be upgrading to 2015) mainly for 3D modelling, Autodesk AutoCAD 2014 mainly 2D CAD work, Adobe CS 5 for a bit of very light Photoshop and InDesign but nothing serious, other normal office functions such as word processing, email and web browsing etc. No gaming requirements.

Current GPU and power supply – Nvidia Quadro FX3500 and Quadro FX4600. Standard Dell power supplies 750w (490) and 1000w (690).

Relevant System Specs – dual Xeon 5160 CPUs, 16Mb PC2-533 FB ECC ram, Intel 5000x chipsets, motherboard Dell 0G0083 (490) and 0F9394 (690), I can not reliably determine if these motherboards support PCIe x16 verion 1.0 or version 1.1.

Country of origin – Australia but am happy to purchase from USA store or on eBay etc.

Operating System – Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

Parts preference – I am more accustomed to Nvidia but would happily use an AMD GPU if this best suits.

Overclocking – not interested (reliability is more important). Will be running a single graphics card in each computer.

Monitor resolution. We use 30” monitors. Resolution varies but mostly 1920 x 1200.

 

[99bignick99]

Has anyone successfully installed a modern graphics card in a Dell Precision 490 or 690?

 

[Jimmy-wad1]

It's not exactly a solution but i have a little experience with this subject as just today I put my old nvidia 8800gt into a dell precision 490 not expecting it to work as the specs say it does not support more than 512mb graphics?? Yet the 1gb works with windows 7 and my index score is at 6.8 for graphics!! Not bad for a cheap 1gb gpu!! So I would assume newer cards would work too! And PCI-e should not be a problem there are loads of cards out there using that socket if you want performance and good value I would say the gtx 770! That was my upgrade and damn it's a workhorse! If you wanted to definitely future proof for a couple more years I would get a 4gb model instead of the 2gb as it may not be a problem now but vram seems to be used a lot more recently! Hope i helped

 

[99bignick99]

Hi Jimmy

Many thanks for your response to my question. I would really like to install GTX 770 cards into my Dell Precision 490 workstations but I am not sure if I understood your message correctly. Have you actually successfully installed a GTX 770 into a Dell Precision 490? I had almost given up on the idea of installing a current generation Nvidia card as I have previously tried installing a GTX 750 TI and all I got was a blank screen and beeps at startup so I presumed that a similar era Nvidia card will not work.

The 8800 gts is not a really viable option as it is of the same era and only slightly better performance than the Quadro FX 4600 cards that are already installed in the workstations.

I had all but given up on a current generation Nvidia solution but was hoping that someone might have had some luck with some more recent AMD graphics cards (something like a R7 250 or R9 270 would be great) or possibly some graphics cards that are a generation between the 8600 gts and the current graphics cards available. I was hoping that someone might have tried and had success with a high end PCIe 2.0 or 2.1 graphics card either from Nvidia or AMD – effectively mid way between the 8800 gts and GTX 770 in timeframe.

The only other option that might be worth considering is to do a dual graphics card solution with SLI or crossfire but I am really trying to avoid this. Its hard enough getting one graphics card to work let alone two.
On a final note, I do not think that the Dell specification for Precision 490 is correct when it comes to the amount of graphics memory that is supported. I believe from everything that I read, 512Mb was about as big as you could get with graphics cards when the Dell wrote the specification sheet, so they were just saying that their workstations could handle the most powerful graphics cards available.

Again thank you very much for giving of your time and expertise. It would be much appreciated if you could confirm if you have installed a GTX 770 in a Dell Precision 490 workstation.


Any advice or suggestions from other parties would be gratefully received.

Regards

Nick

 

[norman1]

Hi Jimmy

Many thanks for your response to my question. I would really like to install GTX 770 cards into my Dell Precision 490 workstations but I am not sure if I understood your message correctly. Have you actually successfully installed a GTX 770 into a Dell Precision 490? I had almost given up on the idea of installing a current generation Nvidia card as I have previously tried installing a GTX 750 TI and all I got was a blank screen and beeps at startup so I presumed that a similar era Nvidia card will not work.

The 8800 gts is not a really viable option as it is of the same era and only slightly better performance than the Quadro FX 4600 cards that are already installed in the workstations.

I had all but given up on a current generation Nvidia solution but was hoping that someone might have had some luck with some more recent AMD graphics cards (something like a R7 250 or R9 270 would be great) or possibly some graphics cards that are a generation between the 8600 gts and the current graphics cards available. I was hoping that someone might have tried and had success with a high end PCIe 2.0 or 2.1 graphics card either from Nvidia or AMD – effectively mid way between the 8800 gts and GTX 770 in timeframe.

The only other option that might be worth considering is to do a dual graphics card solution with SLI or crossfire but I am really trying to avoid this. Its hard enough getting one graphics card to work let alone two.
On a final note, I do not think that the Dell specification for Precision 490 is correct when it comes to the amount of graphics memory that is supported. I believe from everything that I read, 512Mb was about as big as you could get with graphics cards when the Dell wrote the specification sheet, so they were just saying that their workstations could handle the most powerful graphics cards available.

Again thank you very much for giving of your time and expertise. It would be much appreciated if you could confirm if you have installed a GTX 770 in a Dell Precision 490 workstation.


Any advice or suggestions from other parties would be gratefully received.

Regards

Nick

Nick,

Did you find a solution? I, too, am looking to upgrade my Dell 690 to the fastest graphics card it can handle.
From what I can tell the Dell 690 requires a EFI graphics card. The GTX 750TI is a UEFI card. I wish someone could tell me what is the fastest EFI graphics card.

Thanks

Norm1

 

[99bignick99]

Hi Jimmy

Many thanks for your response to my question. I would really like to install GTX 770 cards into my Dell Precision 490 workstations but I am not sure if I understood your message correctly. Have you actually successfully installed a GTX 770 into a Dell Precision 490? I had almost given up on the idea of installing a current generation Nvidia card as I have previously tried installing a GTX 750 TI and all I got was a blank screen and beeps at startup so I presumed that a similar era Nvidia card will not work.

The 8800 gts is not a really viable option as it is of the same era and only slightly better performance than the Quadro FX 4600 cards that are already installed in the workstations.

I had all but given up on a current generation Nvidia solution but was hoping that someone might have had some luck with some more recent AMD graphics cards (something like a R7 250 or R9 270 would be great) or possibly some graphics cards that are a generation between the 8600 gts and the current graphics cards available. I was hoping that someone might have tried and had success with a high end PCIe 2.0 or 2.1 graphics card either from Nvidia or AMD – effectively mid way between the 8800 gts and GTX 770 in timeframe.

The only other option that might be worth considering is to do a dual graphics card solution with SLI or crossfire but I am really trying to avoid this. Its hard enough getting one graphics card to work let alone two.
On a final note, I do not think that the Dell specification for Precision 490 is correct when it comes to the amount of graphics memory that is supported. I believe from everything that I read, 512Mb was about as big as you could get with graphics cards when the Dell wrote the specification sheet, so they were just saying that their workstations could handle the most powerful graphics cards available.

Again thank you very much for giving of your time and expertise. It would be much appreciated if you could confirm if you have installed a GTX 770 in a Dell Precision 490 workstation.


Any advice or suggestions from other parties would be gratefully received.

Regards

Nick

Nick,

Did you find a solution? I, too, am looking to upgrade my Dell 690 to the fastest graphics card it can handle.
From what I can tell the Dell 690 requires a EFI graphics card. The GTX 750TI is a UEFI card. I wish someone could tell me what is the fastest EFI graphics card.

Thanks

Norm1

Hi Norman
I am not a computer expert and had net even heard about EFI or UEFI before seeing your question so please take this advice with a bit of caution.
After not getting much response from the forum, I tried a hunch that a PCIE 3 graphics card would not work in the PCIE 1 bus in the Dell. Based on some comments that I had read elsewhere I thought that I would give a PCIE 2 card a go and installed a GeForce GTX 550 TI (EVGA but I do not have the exact model number) and this worked fine. I have since tried a couple of GeForce GTX 560 TI (from a couple of different manufacturers) cards and these also work.
Although this is certainly not conclusive, it would seem that PCIE 2 cards are the way to go. I tried a couple of GeForce PCIE 3 graphics cards (GTX 750 TI and GTX 960) but could not get these to work. I have recently had advice from someone that they are successfully using a Radeon R7 260x which is a PCIE 3 card and goes someway to disprove my theory but I have not tried one of these cards personally. It may come down to the manufacturer or even the model of the motherboard in your Dell (the 490 and 690 shipped with several different motherboard versions). I went for the GTX 560 TI as it seemed to give the best balance between speed and power requirements. I also thought that the PCIE 1 bus in the Dells would ultimately become a limiting factor to the speed that would be realised from a graphics card upgrade.
All seems to be going reasonably well with the upgrades done to date and I will be embarking on upgrading another few of my old Dells in the next few weeks. I will try to get a second hand Radeon R7 260x or R9 270x to give it a try (more out of curiosity as these do not seem to be much different in performance to the GeForce cards but do have a lower power consumption).
I hope this is of some help.
Regards
Nick

 

[Jimmy-wad1]

Hey sorry I didn't message back after my original answer as I'm new to this and that was my first answer lol! I didn't try a newer cars no but atm in looking at getting another gpu for the 490 which I eventually sold to my sister and she now wants to get it proper gaming lol ram isn't an issue as it has 16gb but I too am looking for the highest card she could get working in the dell? Weird that pcie3 doesn't work? From what I have read it shouldn't make a difference at all? I'm using a pci-e 3 card (msi gtx970) in a pci-e 2 motherboard? I'm also looking to do some research on possible cpu upgrades but I know nothing about dual cpu motherboards or cpus that support it lol

 

[usernametomshardware]

I have 3 690's, nividia 8400, 210 64bit bus worked great.
nvidia gtx260 386bit it think, worked great.
amd hd6450 64bit bus worked great.
amd hd4880 256bit bus didn't work.
amd hd6770 128bit bus didn't work.
i want to get something like the gtx970 but I don't know if it will work.
you should upgrade the cpu's to quad cores xeon 5300 series they are dirt cheap on ebay. those are the only compatible cpus.(update the bios prior to updating the cpu's)
xeon quad core 5400 series won't work unless you hack the bios(dangerous).

 

[Neil Kerr]

i have a 490 and its got a asus dcu2 1gb ddr 5 hd 7790, ive just installed windows 10 and it does direct x 12 fine too, if that helps any, i used to have a hd 4870 1gb ddr5, but it was slow at gta 5

 

[jyoshcyox]

Big Nick,

I'm curious if you've had anymore luck with installing any new GPU's in the 690.

Im also looking to upgrade. It's my understanding the PCIe x16 slot is not the compatibility issue with upgrading. It's the UEFI BIOS. Which most new cards have and these MOBO's dont.

My biggest problem is Dell's website lists the PNY NVidiaGTX 960 2GB GDDR5 GPU as a compatible upgrade. If our OEM lists it as a viable upgrade it should work.. i nearly spent $200 on that GPU and felt I should research it a bit more first.

I also am trying to do 3D modeling with significant "LAG"

How are the upgrades you've preformed at solving this issue with 3D modeling?