General Discussions

[naylorpd]

My son is using a rather old Core i7 computer with an Asus P6T Deluxe V2 mobo.  The video card is an ATI Radeon HD4800 4MB. We are running Windows 10, it's up to date and has DirectX12.

He has been experiencing problems with games not running and a bit of research showed that the driver for the HD4800 only supports DirectX 10 feature levels, not the DirectX 11 or 12 ones that we need.  And I can see that the driver is no longer being updated either by AMD or Microsoft, it dates from 2015. So it seems that we need a new video card.

Will we be able to get a modern video card that supports DirectX 12 and fits this mobo?  I don’t really understand about the changes in slot types since I bought the computer, so specific suggestions would be appreciated.

Or is this really a sign that I need to replace the mobo as well, which would really mean the whole PC...?

[RomatebitegeL]

As I understand it, a new graphics card will fit in the old mobo, but the processor might bottleneck the new graphics card if the card is much better than the CPU. But if you do not have great requirements, and you play simple games, this should not be a problem.

You can get relatively moderate to good graphics cards (depending on what you play) for cheap in the used market, such as GTX 960 2 to 4 GB, or GTX 970 4 GB.

Or if you prefer new cards, the GTX 1030 is cheap, and so is RX 550.

Good luck!

[elstaci]

Depends on your budget and how involved you son is planning to get with gaming.

You do have a rather old and probably not supported Intel Motherboard. You can try and upgrade the processor to the best one listed on the CPU SUPPORT List for your motherboard (https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P6T_Deluxe/HelpDesk_CPU/) and installed the latest BIOS version and CHIPSET drivers. That might help a little in bottle-necking your new modern GPU Card.

But if you replace the Motherboard you will also need to replace the RAM MEMORY and CPU along with it. SO yes it will be like getting a new PC.

By the way your HD4800 doesn't support DX12 only DX10 according to this tech site's Specs : https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-4850.c493

Plus since the last official drivers are so old it doesn't support Vulkan API which is used by most modern Games.

[naylorpd]

I think on balance that everything is pointing towards a new PC as it really isn't worth sinking too much money into a 10 year old one to keep it going.  Actually for everything except gaming it's a pretty solid PC given that it's over 10 years old and the businesses that I work for are still buying i5's. I guess we'll find a use for it.

So it looks like my son gets my water-cooled i7-6800 3.4GHz with RX 480 8GB and I get...something new.

Thanks for advice which has helped to clarify my thinking.

[black_zion]

The sad thing is that in this economy it might be best to get a laptop...

[naylorpd]

I've moved one of the companies I work for onto 100% laptops, and am working on the other. But for home I like the flexibility of a desktop (well, a big under-desk) PC.