Video card upgrade suggestions for a 5 or 6 year old rig...

[Storm]

As stated in the title I have a 5 or 6 year old rig with the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16Ghz
Asus P5Q Pro LGA Intel P45 mobo
4 GB of ram
Antec 500W Power supply (SP-500)
Radeon HD4870

Running windows 7 64bit

For whatever reason whether it is in older games like CS GO or LoL or even in windows it will freeze and in the lower right hand corner I will get a message saying that the display device has been recovered and it will proceed to continue to work until it freezes again.

I've already tried rolling back the AMD driver to be Catalyst pre 13.2 to no avail.

So I'm asking the community, are there any video card suggestions based on my older specs I can upgrade to. I'm not sure if this is an AMD video card issue or not because it hasn't happened until the last month.

Criteria is options for less $100 and less than $150. Options for both Nvidia and AMD are fine.

Any other suggestions for possible fixes, I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

 

[vailr]

Try:
Display Driver Uninstaller
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/display_driver_uninstaller.html
If that doesn't work, I'd suggest replacing with a GTX 750, for a card in your price range.

 

[DominionSeraph]

A 4800 series matches pretty well with that CPU, so first I'd check to make sure you're not overheating. You can use GPU-Z. Under Sensors tab tick the "Continue refreshing this screen..." checkbox, then load up one of these games and see what temp you hit.

If you need a new card, used 5770/6770/GTX 460's can be picked up for cheap. 5770/6770 are about the same speed as a 4870, while a GTX 460 is 4890 speed. If you want to go ridiculous, there are two 6950's sitting on FS/FT for $70 shipped each.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2362929

Here's the difference between one of those and a 4870:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/510?vs=513

You'd be bottlenecked by that CPU a lot, but that just means you get to crank antialiasing.

 

[vailr]

Yes: visually check the video card's cooling fan.

 

[mistersprinkles]

I second getting a used 6950 for $70. Good deal. Your CPU will bottleneck the snot out of it though.

 

[Storm]

Thanks for all the info everyone!

valir,

The display driver removal utility worked great. No problems in Windows or games...


Until the pc wouldn't start.

Seems like it was the case's power button switch to the mobo shorted... could not turn it on.

Luckily, I had an even older computer and I did a transplant. When moving parts from the newer pc to the older pc's case, I found out I had a Antec 500 (SP-500) watt power supply. Also the HD4800 ended up being an HD4870. Unfortunately one of the plastic pins on the Artic Freezer Cooler snapped. Again luckily I had the original Core Duo heat sink and fan which I'm using now.

I powered up the 5 year old pc in the old case, everything powered up but both hdmi ports wouldn't display anything. The Radeon's gpu fan was spinning. Swapped the HD 4870 out with an old Geforce 7900 GS and I am able to post about it now.

I think I am leaning towards getting a Geforce GTX 750. It's nice the card is shorter and doesn't require extra PCI E power cables like the old HD4870.

I am also looking at the R7 250 and R7 260.

 

[Yuriman]

A 750 would be somewhat underutilized by that Core2, but if you don't mind, it's a nice card. R260 is the modern, low power equivalent to the HD4870. It's not as fast as the 750 but you probably won't be able to tell. R250 would be a downgrade.

In the case of an old computer, I'd probably go for something used. You can probably find a HD77xx/R260 for something like $45.

 

[Aspendancer]

R7 250 on ebay are pretty cheap right now.

 

[Termie]

GTX 750 or the R7 260 are the right choice for sure. The 260, however, is a very limited-run model. The more expensive 260X is more common, and it's not a good choice for you. The MSI 260 just happens to be on sale at Newegg right now, if you're interested. It's $73AR.

The 750 is faster than the 260, and would be an actual upgrade from what you have. If you'd like a shot at slightly better performance, that's a great choice. It will be bottlenecked frequently, however, as others have mentioned.

My guess is that the HD4870 you have burned out. It ran notoriously hot.