PC Graphics

[john_nevill]

My Radeon HD 6670 is showing its age.  I don't do gaming.  suggestions for a reasonable upgrade would be welcome

[Thanny]

If you don't do gaming, in what way is it showing it's age?

[pokester]

Without knowing your other computer specs and exactly what you are doing that utilizes the GPU and your budget it is pretty hard to help. 

Please respond with more information and we can go from there. 

[john_nevill]

Hi

Thanks for getting back to me. I have a desktop PC with an i3 ASUS

H81m-Plus motherboard. Having recently replaced my monitor, I decided

to benchmark the PC to see if I was getting the best out of it. The

weakest element was the GPU rated at -82% of the mean "middle of the

road" machine. I use the PC for office type applications and although

my perception is the video performance is OK perhaps I won't know what I

am missing if I don't upgrade - a touch of FOMO is suppose!

Anyway, I will be grateful for any recommendations.

Best Regards

John

[black_zion]

Sounds like you used Userbenchmark which is pretty meh, and shouldn't be paid much attention to.

Honestly now is NOT to the time to upgrade a GPU. Prices are horribly inflated, and even the lowest end video cards from both teams, the 1650 from nVidia and 5500XT from AMD, are quite expensive for what they are and well beyond what you would need, as office applications are much more CPU dependent than GPU.

Given that computer is 7 years old, it is getting time to replace the entire machine, perhaps even with a laptop.

[john_nevill]

Thanks for the advice, I guess you are probably right in that it works

OK so leave alone. I tend to run things on until they fall to pieces;

only just sold my car at 16 years old! - Best regards John

[black_zion]

I'm the same, but electronics, especially computers and phones, are different, in that support is dropped after only a few years, or, in the case of the HD 6000 series, one year, and performance improvements along with power and efficiency gains are so great that upgrading regularly is just what you need to do, especially if you hope to get anything from selling your old equipment.

The reason I suggested a laptop was that with AMD Renoir processors (Ryzen 4000 series), around $750 will get you a whole machine that's much quieter, faster, portable, and power efficient than your current desktop, and can be used with your current monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Many can also be used plugged in all the time without detriment to the battery as they have an option to limit the battery to 55-60% to greatly reduce battery stress.

Also, by the time you buy a new motherboard and RAM to use a new APU, as well as the APU itself, you're easily looking $500, and a laptop is not that much more. Check out the Lenovo ThinkPad models on B&H, linked below, for example, and they will only get cheaper as the Ryzen 5000 series comes out and those models are discontinued. 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1576583-REG/lenovo_20t60021us_thinkpad_14e_gen_2.html/specs

[john_nevill]

Many thanks for the advice but I don't think the head of the family

budget committee will give financial approval! - Best Regards John

[pokester]

While you gave some more information I still have no idea what your daily computing needs are. I can say that if you are fine right now and running only a benchmark made you think about an upgrade then maybe no upgrade is needed. I will say that unless your have gaming or workstation needs that you will likely find the advances of CPU and faster storage and memory technology as a much more appreciable factor on your daily computing. Like black_zion‌ kindly added a current laptop even could be a good choice. If you don't need the portability and are willing to wait a couple months there are some exciting new APU choices coming out for mobile and desktop that have graphics built into the CPU that will run circles around both your cpu and GPU. These systems will likely be able to be built around the 500 mark. 

If overall you are not unhappy with what you have now. You would be amazed by what just adding an SSD to your sytem instead of booting from a hard drive will do in terms of making it feel fast. 

[john_nevill]

Pokester - Many thanks for your advice. I have an SSD for the OS side

of things and that works fine. I used Novebench for bench marking.

Guess I should settle for what I have as it works OK. - Best Regards

John

[Thanny]

If you're not gaming, and just doing 2D tasks, that card is perfectly fine.  GPU performance just isn't a thing in that context, unless you find that you're having trouble playing newer videos, or something like that.

[john_nevill]

Thanny - thanks; I think you have saved me some money. - Best Regards

John

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