I tend to postpone upgrading my computers until it either breaks down or it gets too cramped in performance/memory/etc. This tends to take a long time.
So a colleague of mine was upgrading his computer, and I managed to get his old graphics cards.
Seeing as I am on a budget, I was looking into what the difference in performance were for second hand graphics cards.
A lot of graphics cards are replaced because there are better ones, even though the old cards still work perfectly fine.
And he just happens to buy the latest and greatest, which is still a pretty good deal after 7 years, compared to what I buy.
My original graphics card
It's a AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series.
"New" graphics card
It's a Nvidia GeForce 770.
Notes
Some notes of mine.
- type
- you cannot tell any more what kind of graphics card it is from just looking at the physical hardware. With any luck you can find the manufacturer, but that's it. There's just not more room or not important.
- external connectors
- So, no more VGA connector. And of course my old monitor only has a VGA Connector. (Don't ask, I'll write about it in the next blog about how ancient it is). It gave me an excuse to upgrade my monitor.
- internal power cable for PCI Express cards
- The old graphics card had only one internal power connector, a 6 pin. The new graphics card had both a 6 pin and an 8 pin. Time to look in the attic for my spare cables box.
- noise
- it's rather depressing that the new graphics card has three fans and is more quiet than my old graphics card which has only one fan.
- heaviness
- with all the fans, and the cooling fins, this new graphics card is a seriously heavy beast in pure weight. I hope my motherboard can cope with it.
- plastic
- instead of screws, my case has plastic easy-to-use click-and-go thingies to fasten cards. Of course, plastic is the first thing to become brittle after several years. No surprises there.
All in all, I am extremely happy. Except for a few little surprises mentioned above, I had the entire setup working relatively quickly.
References
- NVidia - GeForce GTX 770
- https://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-770/specifications
