Here is a link to the card. Higher end when I put it in, but obviously years out of date. It’s sitting in an Asus M2N4 if that makes a difference.
Machine is primarily our HTPC. Music, movies, streaming, and a tiny bit of gaming (my main machine is upstairs, but like to play in the den occasionally).
If this were a newer card, I’d go about replacing the fan or upgrading it with an OC cooler. But given its age, I’m thinking that swapping it out for a basic card will be easier and possibly cheaper. I’m not necessarily looking to improve performance over what I have—as long as it’s equal to it performance-wise and has an HDMI output, I’m good.
So given my limited needs and the nature of the hardware I’m replacing, will just about any brand-name card with at least 512MB (though all I’m finding are 1GB+) serve us well? Do I need to spend a lot of time researching and comparing, or if I just jump on something like this Asus EN210, is it likely to be just as good, if not better?
And to make this more of a general-General Question, is it a safe assumption that a lower-cost, brand name, modern component will effectively replace (performance-wise) almost any six-year-old computer component, even if it were bleeding edge at the time?
The best graphics cards (performance per $) are in the $100-$150 range. The one you were looking at is pure junk. You may want to check out:
If you want to spend as little as possible, you should try to replace the fan (it looks difficult). Or look for a used graphics card.
In your place, I would replace the PC. For movies and streaming, even the built-in graphics in newer Intel and AMD chips will be sufficient.
If you want comparable performance you’re going to need to be in the $70-$100 range at least. A Radeon R7 240 or R7 250 would be probably about equal (240 slightly worse, 250 slightly better). The GeForce 210 that you’re looking at will be significantly worse, and I strongly recommend against it. I’d probably go with AdamF’s suggestion to look in the $100-$150 range, with Logical Increments as a good guide.
I had a 4850! Man, that card was an absolute Trojan. I’m not surprised that yours has been soldiering on for seven years. But I agree, it’s earned its rest.
Consider replacing it with this one - an nVidia 750ti super-clocked. It’s the card I’m using currently and I couldn’t be happier with it. In addition to its excellent performance, it draws very little energy and it’s super quiet. It runs so cool that it doesn’t need a separate power connection or a dedicated fan. Also, it’s small and fits in almost anywhere.
I’ve had this card for a year now and I still stop people on the street to tell them how good it is. Definitely give this a look.
Actually - I should have answered this specifically before I recommended the nVidia card.
It depends on your motherboard. What model Motherboard do you have?
Most modern gpus, including the 750ti, will need a PCIe 2 or PCIe3 connection. The version of the 4850 you linked to says it’s PCIe 2.0, so theoretically, the 750ti should slot right in. But I forget if 4850s came in an AGP model though. If yes, that was what your model was, that might be a problem, unless the newegg product you linked to was your specific card and not just an example.
How’s your power supply holding up? Do you know how much wattage it puts out?
I have GTX 750 Ti from Gigabyte (has 2 fans). My mini-ITX case sits right next to the display, and I can barely hear it. It is an excellent value for the money. But, it is an overkill for video streaming. On the other hand, it would be a good investment towards the replacement HTPC that you are going to (hopefully) buy in the next year or two.
I certainly understand holding onto an old hardware. I am looking after my parents’ 2008 Core 2 Duo desktop. It is a perfectly fine machine, though the integrated graphics struggles with 1080p Youtube videos.
You can replace the core of your PC very cheaply. You need a new motherboard ($100 MSI Z97 PC Mate) and a new CPU ($70 Pentium G3258).
Why those parts? It’s an inexpensive motherboard that has a recent chipset, and the pentium G3258 is a dual core part, with an integrated GPU that is probably as fast as what you have now, and it’s unlocked - meaning you can overclock to 4.5 ghz. Two processing cores that are hyper fast is almost as good as a quad core.
How hard would it be for you to rig up another fan next to the video board, or even pry the blade off the bad fan and zip-tie a skinny fan onto the heat sink? If the existing hardware works for what you want, that may be the simplest and cheapest fix. Yes, it’s pretty “ghetto” but for an HTPC, but you’re not looking for maximum performance, just silence.
The last time I did a video board swap, it was such a hassle to dislodge all of the old board-specific apps and drivers in preparation for the new one. I’d happily avoid that mess if possible.
Hold on, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I can’t think of any reason to replace the entire system. I probably can’t max out the graphics settings for HL3, but if I want to ‘seriously’ game I’ll go upstairs to my office (with its pair of 5700s, yadda yadda). In the meantime, this ageing powerhouse does a great job with what we do use it for. There isn’t anything the Internet can throw at it that it stumbles over—not YouTube, not Netflix, AZ Prime, anything. It plays the occasional BluRay without blinking and serves music and video to the rest of the house just fine, too. All without a single hiccup (latest fan issue aside) or slowdown.
Also, whoa! WTF happened to the days when anything over three years old was outclassed by a long shot? How to make sense of the video card industry? Yikes, I haven’t built a machine for several years and I’m really out of my element. How is it that such an old card is holding its own (fan excepted) against modern sub-$100 cards? What are the relevant specs I should be looking at?
(In the meantime, I’m going to see about disassembling/cleaning it and seeing what I can do.)