Upgrading graphics card

[lewislewis]

Hi all, I have a HP ENVY H8 1590ea desktop pc and im looking to upgrade the graphics card

graphics card: Nvidia GTX 660 which I am looking to upgrade.

motherboard: Pegatron 2ad5, BIOS update of AMI 8.18.

processor: Intel Core i7-3770

power supply: 460w

Ideally a budget of £100 to £200. I was looking at the GTX 1060, would that be compatbile? Also, are any of the other components severely holding back the PC? If you need any other details please ask.

thanks in advance

[erico]

Take a read of this third party forum thread
https://linustechtips.com/topic/397592-pre-built-gaming-pc-upgrades-graphics-card-case-power-supply/

" I was looking at the GTX 1060, would that be compatbile?" 

This GPU requires a PCIe cable from a PSU that can supply 120 Watts to it. The OEM PSU will not be able to do that. 

[OneThriftyMan]

First of all,

As for gaming, the #1 most important thing to upgrade is the system ram nowadays. If you only have 8GB, a video card upgrade won't really matter because the game won't start due to a lack of ram. [[You really need 16GB.]]

• I think the super light duty, modern e-Sports games like Rocket League can do 8GB.
• Most AAA games made before 2015, are probably able to run on 8GB.
• Fortnite requires a minimum of 12GB.
• Most AAA games made after 2017 require 16GB while AA games made after 2021 require 24GB to 32GB of ram.

Your cpu is a severe bottleneck for most of the Directx 11 only games. since Directx 11 only uses **one** cpu core.

The newer Directx 12 and/ or Vulkan games can use EVERY cpu core for 3D games.

The only way to get the most value from your CPU is to use DXVK and a newer video card made after 2015 if you're planning on playing older games.

• Although DXVK is simply an API wrapper, it is considered a cheating tool by online multi-player game companies. So only use it with offline games. So using DXVK with online games may get your online game account banned.
• Your CPU only supports the slower DDR3-1333 speeds instead of the DDR3-1600 speeds. Ram speed makes a huge difference in performance with some things.
• Also, I think you might be stuck with PCIe Gen 2.0 speeds which severely limits the performance whereas this card can do PCIe Gen 3.0 speeds.

As for power supplies...

Don't just simply use generic advice, do the electrical math on the power supply that you have. How electrical math works is (Volts X Amps = Watts).

Long story short, depending on your build, your 460w power WOULD HAVE been able to handle your (120w) Geforce GTX 1060 when your power supply was young. But due to capacitor ageing, you might only be able to squeeze 370w to 410w out of it.

1. Any 500w+ ATX power supply made after 2016 should be fine.
2. Any regular 450w power supply made after 2018 should be fine.
3.  A very high quality 430w ATX power supply made after 2017 might work for a while. 
   • It is very hard to find these rare gems.

Very long backstory...

Each power supply has a thing called POWER RAILS on them. Each power rails has an amperage limit.

Each voltage RAIL is typically labeled like Vmain, Vcpu, Vgpu, Vpcie, or etc.

• The super old or super cheap power supplies would have a ton of amperage on the +5V & +3.3v with barely anything on the +12v.
• The newer power supplies, they have a ton of +12v, but not enough of the combined +3.3v or +5v amperage in case you rely on 5v dependent stuff like SSD's or USB.
• Try to AIM for a power supply who's combined +3.3v & +5V is 120w or more.

Video cards typically consume up to 75w from the PCIe x16 slot AND THEN  either 75w from the 6-pin power cable, or (2) it will take like 150w from a 8-pin pcie power cable.

So if the power supply's 6pin / 8pin pcie power rail is rated for 12v @ 16a, then it can handle 192 watts.