Thinking about upgrading my Gpu
First of all here a summary my current setup.
Operating System: Windows 7 edition Familiale Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU: Intel Core i7 960 @ 3.20GHz:
RAM: 12,0 Go Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 661MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard: Dell Inc. 05DN3X (CPU 1)
Graphics: 1024MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 6870 (ATI)
Storage:931GB Seagate ST1000DM003-1CH162 (SATA)
238GB M4-CT256M4SSD2 (SSD)
238GB M4-CT256M4SSD2 (SSD)
I was thinking of buying a Geforce GTX 960, but my main concern is about the compatibility with my current motherboard. I can't seem to get a definitive answer as to whether it will be compatible or not.I think it might be a problem with the PCI-e bus, my current motherboard has at least a 2.1 bus since that's what my GPU need, but I'm not sure if it support 3.0 too like the GTX 960 needs.
4 Comments • Newest first
What matters in this situation, is if your power supply can handle a 960, or if it has the connector(s) needed (6-pin)
A good quality 4-500W power supply is what I'd want in a system like this ^^
Motherboard compatibility with the GTX 960 is fine. PCI-E 3.0 is fully backward compatible and current video cards have yet to saturate PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth. Power supply compatibility is also fine because the HD 6870 pulls more power than the GTX 960.
Arguably, the Radeon R9 390X, the GeForce GTX 970, and all other lower GPUs are not powerful enough to output games at 4K, leaving extremely large amounts of VRAM as a wasted feature.
The 390x with 8gb of vram sound a bit like an overkill. I doubt many game will actually use that much.
It doesn't matter PCI 3.0 will fit in the PCI 2.0 slot on your mother board. Also, if your budget allows it get the 390x with 8gb of vram, probably the cheapest video card with that much vram.