Pavillion 500-007a with AMD Radeon HD8570 upgrade

[Mike2505]

Hi all,  I am looking to upgrade the graphics card my desktop computer so my son can play games like Overwatch and Path of Exile.   Our current system has insufficent frames to smoothly play these games.  I have been told that upgrading the graphics card should help.  We have a DELL 244Hz monitor but would be happy with anything over 100Hz. 

I have downloaded the following specs for the unit:

HP Pavillion 500 PC Series,

Product No. 4CE4030TSR,

Model No. 500-007a

CPU type AMD A10-6700 APU with Radeon HD  Graphics.  

I am running Windows 10 (64 bit)

Bus Type - PCI Express

Bus Settings - PCI Express 2.0 x 8

BIOS version - 015.025.000.002

BIOS date - 2012/09/21 03:47

Memory Clock - 900MHz

Core Clock - 780MHz

Total memory bandwidth 28 GBytes/s

The current graphics system overview is:

Radeon software version - 16.6

Edition - Crimson

Chipset - AMD Radeon HD 8570

Memory - 2048MB

Memory Type - DDR3

Core Clock - 780MHz

System Memory - 16GB.

I was looking to upgrade to a NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1070 ot 1070Ti

I took the unit to a retailer to have the upgrade and was told that this set up is a 'disposable computer'  with the 'minimum graphics card' that cannot be replaced /  upgraded and I need to buy a new system to be able to upgrade anything.   The computer is about 4-5 years old.

Am I being taken for a ride and should I be able to upgrade the graphics unit with system listed above  or can someone advise if this truly is a 'disposable computer'.

[sangria25]

Every PC is disposable, so you are taken for a ride.

I don't know why you shouldnt be able to upgrade your graphics.

Rearding playing games:

The card you mentioned has PCIe 3.0 architecture but luckily they are backwards compatible with the pc's PCIe 2.0

But the problem is your CPU.

AMD cpu's are not great for playing games and the compatibility with Nvidea graphic cards isn't great also.

Furthermore, because the CPU only has 4 cores, everthing will be bottlenecked.

So, in other words, you can upgrade your unit, but I don't it will make much difference when playing games.

Maybe you would be better off buying a new unit specially made for gaming.

[Mike2505]

Thanks for the quick reply Sangria 25.  I was hoping to avoid at A$2000-$3000 cost for a gaming computer, he is a good kid but still ........

 Are you, or anyone else, aware of a graphics unit comparable with the NVIDIA that would be an improvement over the Radeon HD 8570?

[Mike2505]

I am aware that our monitor is over powered for the system we have, but I would appreciate any advise that would help us get more out our unit that doesn't involve full replacement.