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mikey100tv
Joined: 27 Oct 2013
Posts: 43
Location: North west Norfolk, UK
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 Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:53 pm Post subject: Update - Re; Compaq Presario upgrade... |
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Hallo, everybody.
Haven't been on here for ages; life 'got in the way'.
Those of the regulars among you may recall my last enquiry was about upgrading my SR1619UK Compaq Presario desktop PC, circa 2005:-
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23024
At the time, I'd just inherited it from my sister.....who had followed the usual path for those who know nothing about tech, and bought a new PC with Win 7 pre-installed. It was running XP; MSI MS-7184 mobo (identical to the MS-7093, but 2 SATA ports instead of 4); Socket 939, Athlon 64 3200+, 3 GB DDR1 RAM (up from the 1 GB it came with), a 160 GB WD Caviar 'Black' PATA HDD, and a very 'iffy' generic 'silver box' PSU.
I was after modernising it as best I could; my budget has always been my biggest problem.....'tight' is a charitable description. However, the advice given by mavroxur never did get followed; funds never really materialised. So, what I've done is as follows:-
1) A complete 'strip-down', examining all components. Unbelievably, after 10+ yrs of use, the caps (all Nichicons & Rubicons, by the way) exhibit no signs of 'bulging', leakage, or 'lift-off'; all are still sitting tightly perpendicular to the board, no discoloration, and no bulging tops. Amazing...although I'm well aware that they must be starting to 'dry-out' by now.
(Yes, I've visited badcaps.com...) 
2) The original Athlon 64 3200+ has been replaced with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (GB£7.50.....about US$12 off Ebay). Heatsink, fans, etc, have all been thoroughly cleaned, and the new CPU (still running cool (30-35C) with the original heatsink.....a huge lump of ally), reseated with CoolerMaster E1 TC; this is not 'high-end' stuff, yet works very well.
3) BIOS re-flashed with the newest version, to support the dual-core.
4) The 'iffy' 300W (!) PSU has now been replaced with a CoolerMaster single-rail B50 @500W.
5) The WD 160 GB Caviar 'Black' PATA hard drive has been replaced with a WD 500 GB SATA 'Blue' model; the old one was starting to report multiple 'Re-allocated Sector Counts', which showed it was 'going home'.
6) And the icing on the cake is a 120 GB SanDisk Ultra II SSD.
I've gone the Linux route. Started with Ubuntu, and now run 'Puppy' Linux. My 'Pups' sit on the SSD; the WD HDD, along with the external 500 GB USB Seagate more than take care of my storage needs. 'Puppy' absolutely screams with this set-up, and will give many a modern PC (or laptop), running Win 7 or 8/8.1, more than a run for their money. Graphics are still taken care of by the onboard SB400's 'ATI Radeon Xpress 200G' chip, which continues to work well, and delivers pin-sharp graphics for my photo-editing & graphic design. The partially faulty PCIE x 16 slot is now occupied by a Transcend USB 3.0 adapter card, sitting at the 'top-end'.
I've done what I can with available funds; all in all, I'm quite happy with the old girl. 
Mike. 
_________________
Life is what you make of it.
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You can only be certain of three things in life...birth, death, & taxes...hah!!
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mikey100tv
Joined: 27 Oct 2013
Posts: 43
Location: North west Norfolk, UK
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| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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Eventually got around to upgrading the 'beast'. After its annual 'spring-clean', 5-6 weeks ago, it refused to fire up any more. Lights flashing, fans running, but it wasn't even posting. I wasn't complaining, mind; at nearly 16 years old (and 5 yrs with the X2; approx £6 off FleaBay), I think she'd had a good run.
So; I treated myself to the first brand-new hardware I've ever had. Running 'Puppy' Linux as I do, I settled for an HP 'mini-tower', powered by an Intel Pentium 'Gold' G5400 @ 3.7 GHz, and paired it with 8GB of DDR4. Along with nearly 5 TB of assorted internal storage, and with Pup's demands being so light, it'll keep me satisfied for quite some time.
Although I'm more than happy with the on-die Intel UHD 610 GPU, I'm looking to grab an Asus GeForce GT710 w/2GB of GDDR5 (the 'passive' cooling variant), as I do quite a bit of video tutes for the Puppy community, and hence need to perform a fair chunk of video rendering from time to time. Openshot tends to offload this work to the GPU whenever it can, so I'm going that route. Might as well send the work to the component best able to handle it, eh?
Mike.
_________________
Life is what you make of it.
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You can only be certain of three things in life...birth, death, & taxes...hah!!
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Wasmachineman_NL
Joined: 04 Jul 2019
Posts: 988
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 5:52 am Post subject: |
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"GT710"
Don't. Get a GT1030 or better yet a RX550. |
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mikey100tv
Joined: 27 Oct 2013
Posts: 43
Location: North west Norfolk, UK
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| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 5:58 am Post subject: |
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I have absolutely no use for a more powerful GPU. I don't play games, and have neither the interest, inclination or budget to run to a more expensive one.
The recommendation is appreciated, but it's completely irrelevant for my use-case.
(*shrug*)
Mike.
_________________
Life is what you make of it.
--------------------------------
You can only be certain of three things in life...birth, death, & taxes...hah!!
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svmlegacy
Joined: 15 Jun 2016
Posts: 551
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 8:26 am Post subject: |
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Arguably, the GT710 is at par with the integrated graphics on the Pentium Gold G5400. Does Openshot not support the Intel UHD graphics properly? Mostly just curious on how the 710 is actually valuable here.
If you do end up getting the 710, please update us with the improvement in render time. I'd be more than curious. |
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mikey100tv
Joined: 27 Oct 2013
Posts: 43
Location: North west Norfolk, UK
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| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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| svmlegacy wrote: | Arguably, the GT710 is at par with the integrated graphics on the Pentium Gold G5400. Does Openshot not support the Intel UHD graphics properly? Mostly just curious on how the 710 is actually valuable here.
If you do end up getting the 710, please update us with the improvement in render time. I'd be more than curious. |
@ svmlegacy:-
Granted, operationally there's not a lot of difference 'twixt the two. But the thinking here is that a dedicated card will use its own pool of RAM, and not eat into system memory for its requirements. Openshot utilises graphics resources correctly, but won't use anything like as much of the system RAM in the process, so I'll be able to 'multi-task' better.
That's the thing I want to avoid; I'd rather the 8GB RAM was for the OS's exclusive use, rather than having to share it with the GPU....
And the 'passive-cooling' is for one simple reason. I've got an even older , very basic GeForce 210, which I bought about 4 years ago. It's been sitting at the back of a shelf in the utility room all that time as well; I was never able to use it with the old Compaq tower; for one thing, the PCI-e slot was the ancient 1.0a standard, and the slot itself was physically damaged when I inherited the machine from little sis.
I tried it a few weeks ago in this new one. Performance was.....so-so, TBH; admittedly, I wasn't using the proprietary driver, though the Linux kernel's 'in-house', nouveau driver has come on a hell of a long way in recent years. But what really niggled me was the god-awful, demented buzzing sound that little fan on the 210's tiny heatsink made. Drove me nuts, it did..!
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Whatever I find out, vis-a-vis render time, I'll report back with my findings. Shader units are on a par, though the 710's memory and base clocks are quite a bit higher, plus the ROPS and execution unit figures are better, too. And we're looking at 'dedicated' GDDR5 here, as opposed to the DDR3 the original 710 shipped with...
We'll see.
Mike.
_________________
Life is what you make of it.
--------------------------------
You can only be certain of three things in life...birth, death, & taxes...hah!!
***********************
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debs3759
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 9477
Location: Northampton, Divided Kingdom
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| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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Personally I would opt for a GT 730 (the GDDR5 versions are all Kepler based, so double the shaders.) rather than the 710. They are very cheap on eBay, I got one recently in original box for around £20 shipped within the UK
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My graphics card database can be found at http://www.gpuzoo.com.
I can resist anything except temptation.
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