HP Compaq Elite 8300 Tower (QV994AV) video card replacement

[BillHolland]

Thanks Paul! Just one more question for my understanding: for photo and video editing I now have an unsuitable video card so all actions have to be done by the PC's processor. That is an Intel® Core™ i7-3770 (3rd Gen) and thus not the fastest by today's standards (although the PC with an SSD (560 MB/s read and 507 MB/s write on SATA3 bus) as a whole performs very well). Taking a video card with a powerful GPU allows it to take over work from the CPU making editing actions faster. Will that be clearly noticeable, after all the card is not in a matching bus. In other words, do I understand correctly that a GTX 1650 on PCIe 2.0 x16 slot outperforms the fastest PCIe 2.0 card? And that operations will be many times faster than now? I assume the differences mentioned in this benchmark apply when using GTX 1650 in a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot.  A 3.0 PCI slot is 2 times faster than a 2.0 slot I understand so does that leave the (otherwise great) +2.424% say +1.212%? That's obviously a fantastic speed gain!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

While I cannot specifically tell you what the performance increase will be, it should be substantial just because the GTX 1650 is newer technology with faster graphics memory and a better graphics chip as well as a 128-bit memory interface instead of a 64-bit memory interface the HD 7450 has.

In other words, it isn't going to run the much the same as the HD 7450 because of the PCIe 2.0 slot, but considerably better just because it is a much more powerful card.

You can always move it to a newer PC in the future that has a PCIe 3.0 slot.

[BillHolland]

Thanks Paul, I think I am going to buy a GTX 1650. One more question: the card is quite wide and takes up the space of two slots. I noticed that around the slots there are some electrolytics on the board, these don't get in the way of a wide card? In other words, physically speaking, is the card going to fit in the 8300?

I think the GTX1650 will take up the space indicated by the red box, see picture below

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Wow, that's big.

I didn't realize they all took up all of that real estate.

However, it should fit because it will sit above the slots and the capacitors provided the height of the capacitors do not exceed the height of the slots.

The card goes in the black PCIe x16 slot.

The identical looking white slot is a PCIe x4 slot.

The downside is of course that neither the PCIe x4 or PCie x1 slot will be accessible for use.

I did find this discussion which indicates that someone installed the GTX1650 in their 8300 Elite CMT and it worked.

The discussion also was about the 1050ti.

Solved: elite 8300 cmt card upgrade? - Page 3 - HP Support Community - 7111961

Here's a video where someone installed a GTX 1060 (double slot) in the 8300 CMT.

HP Compaq 8300 Elite 2023 Upgrade CPU RAM GPU and SSD - YouTube

So, it doesn't look like it should be a problem for you.

Looks like the GTX 1060 needed a supplemental power connector.

[BillHolland]

I don't use the other slots. I was just concerned about those electrolytics. Below is a picture of the card. I hope that there is enough room under the plastic cover of the fan for the electrolytics visible in the photo of the main board

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I don't see it being a problem given the other information I posted.

One other thing to note and it is important...

Before you remove the AMD graphics card, uninstall the Radeon software and driver in the Windows control panel>progams section and then after that has completed, make sure that if the Radeon HD 7450 card is still listed in the device manager under the Display adapters device manager category as such, right click on it, select Uninstall and check the uninstall driver box.

Then shut down, unplug the PC, remove the AMD card and install the GTX1650.

Failure to remove the old card's graphics drivers/software is almost guaranteed to cause a driver issue after you install the Nvidia card.

[BillHolland]

Thanks Paul for this important addition! This is my environment, see screenshot.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

So, you would uninstall the AMD Install manager, and if that doesn't also uninstall the graphics card and driver shown in your lower screenshot, I have given you the information for how to uninstall the video card from the device manager.

[BillHolland]

Thanks Paul, I'm going to work with all the knowledge gained and will let you know when everything is up and running.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome. 

Looking forward to reading about the results of your PCs video card upgrade project. 

Cheers,

Paul