Windows 10: Replacement for my nvidia GT 610 - what would you suggest.

just don't buy any RAM unless you are going to upgrade OS to 64 bit windows.

32 bit Windows can only handle 4 GB RAM

 

yu gnomi

Thank you so much for that very relevant information. You have saved me from making an unnecessary and expensive move. I had no idea that 32 bit O/S restricted one in this way.

My grateful thanks to you

 

They aren't opposing views, some people are gamers and base anything on Graphics cards and SSDs at any cost.

Then you come back essentially saying you are not a gamer and really don't want to spend any money.
Fair enough, but if you move the goal posts you will get other answers.

I'm not entirely sure running Intel HD 2000 graphics is the way to go as that shares some of the 4 GB of RAM you have, reducing that available for applications.

We don't know what applications you run and so on. You say you have 3 Laptops and 2 Desktops one of which you say is home built so you are more than capable of answering your own question with that experience.

 

Helmut
perhaps a little harsh? and perhaps the word 'opposing' was not the correct term to use.
Nevertheless I have no wish to get into some sort of animosity with you or anyone. Perhaps I should have made it clear at the start that my potential needs were possibly on a budget basis.
Accept that my listing of spec was given at the very outset, and that the enquiry was made in all good faith. This was met with a mini rush of update to the max response, and in the final analysis that 'advice given' proved to be way off. Consider that although I indicated that my PC ran 32 bit o/s - several forumsters said 'add more memory'.

you (I quote) said 'using 32 bit windows and 4Gb ram restricts your performance to an extent' - perhaps I failed to fully take this on board.
But Yu gnomi made the definitive straight comment, by simply saying '32 bit can only handle 4Gb -hooray for such clarity.
This factor I was unaware of, but suitably informed this saved me from spending for no reason or prospect of performance gain.

 

Hey Skofab!

OK, so first off, your OS is 32bit. Even if the MB accepts 16 Gigs of RAM, the OS limits the RAM to no more than 3.75 Gigs.
That's including Video RAM.

Upgrade to a 64 bit OS and you could then, install more RAM but, since you don't game then, I wouldn't suggest you invest
in another stick of RAM. This is also a problem. You would have to at least match the stick that's already installed by the builder.
It could be a challenge to find another stick of the same values {MHz / DDR?}

Switching to the onboard video setup will also take up some of those RAM cycles meaning that, you are now sharing the total
RAM with the OS AND the video which might slow things down.

All in all, I don't think you should upgrade anything other than the OS for the time being. Get that straight then, come back for more info.

IF it works for what you are doing then, leave it alone. You most likely will run in some kind of problem and will end up here asking why those changes don't work.

Not being harsh, just giving some advice that I had to work out myself in the past.


.

 

Interesting!

I have 2 devices (laptops), both on 64-bit OS and 8GB RAM. Both devices run on integrated graphics. 8GB RAM is more than enough for me for 99% of my tasks, and I do software development and even run a lot of virtual machines. Both laptops has an SSD as system drive, which has boosted performance 10x, if not even more.

Then I also have 2 64-bit desktop computers with only 2GB of RAM. Both run on integrated graphics. They also run smooth and I see absolutely no reason why I should upgrade the GPU or add more RAM at the moment. This might change however if I decide to run different applications or run GPU assisted calculations (which can be 1000x more efficient than on CPU)

For running simple office applications, checking mail and surfing the web, a 32-bit OS and 4GB of RAM is more than enough.

What can slow the system down, is the slower i3 CPU, slow memory timings and a slow and fragmented HDD. Also overheating device, because of dust and simply just old hardware would slow things down a lot. Also a cluttered Windows registry, a lot of installed fonts and a HUGE user profile slows things down a lot.

Many Antivirus Software also slow the system down significantly. Especially many freely available ones as they use a lot of RAM and has slow threat detection algorithms etc...

Having multiple Antimalware applications installed degrades performance significantly. Messing with system applications that mess with the Windows registry can slow things down a lot if not careful.

Having a lot of services running in the background that one does not really need consumes a lot of RAM. I know many who have tons of apps running at all times, even if they are not needed.

Upgrading to a 64-bit OS and adding another 4GB of RAM will not help much, if any. I would gladly go back to a 32-bit OS if all my apps could run there. But this is not the case, so it's not an option for me.

Upgrading the GPU to something with support for a bit newer tech can however make the desktop screen updates feel a bit snappier. But that is quite minimal. Video playback can be quite a lot smoother with a newer GPU, especially if playing on high resolution. So this could be a great reason to upgrade it. But do you need a GTX1030-1080 for that? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! Almost any GPU you can purchase today would be more than enough for this system.

EDIT: The other desktop has 4GB of RAM (not 2GB) and it's the slower computer of the 2

 

this will be a long post...

This is an interesting problem, which I am sure is relevant to many people running older hardware, and not wanting to spend a fortune upgrading just to play new games. Posters have been pulling in 3 different directions: upgrade OS & RAM; upgrade GPU; or install SSD. I am going to expand on these options and hopefully help you decide.

1st option - upgrade OS and RAM. If your OS was installed on your PC when you got it, you probably have the OEM version of Windows 10, not the full version. The difference is that people who own the full version of windows can install either 32 bit or 64 bit version, and change for free if they want. If you only own the OEM version, you cannot do this and would have to buy Windows 10 in addition to whatever RAM you are going to add.

You should also know that, in general 32 bit OS's are more efficient with the RAM at at their disposal, because they only write 32 bits at a time. So a boolean value (True or False) would be 31 zeros followed by a 0 or 1 for True or False. On a 64 bit system, that same value would be 63 zeros followed by a 0 or 1 for True or False, because 64 bit OS's write 64 bits at a time to memory, regardless of how small the value to be saved is.

2nd option - upgrade GPU (but not OS & RAM.) Assuming what Flashorn posted is true about 4GB RAM limit including Video RAM also, then a beefier video card would likely cut into the RAM available for running the software. The more memory the GPU used for graphics performance, the less you would have available to run the software. Hard for me to say for sure whether that would make a big difference or not.

I have looked at benchmarks that compare your GPU to the GT 1030 posters have recommended, and the 1030 seems much better (like 6 to 8 times better). But I am fairly certain those results are from 64 bit systems, where there was no need to share RAM addresses with the OS.

3rd option - Install SSD. Unlike the other options, you should be able to just add this in - the other two options are swapping old for new. So you would still have your HDD. SSDs are just better technology than HDDs, and if they were cheaper, no one would even buy HDDs anymore. As long as you have a spare SATA port and a spare power connector, you should think about adding an SSD to this machine at some point. However, to really get the most out of your SSD you will need to transfer your OS to the SSD, so you can boot from it, which might be a bit of work.

As far as which to choose, personally I think either a new GPU or adding an SSD will get you the best results. I can only offer the following guidance:

Upgrading your GPU will help if playing games at the lowest possible quality settings, gives you adequate performance - but you want higher quality.

Using an SSD will help if games are just taking too long to load the game assets from the hard drive into RAM.



PS - whatever you decide, post again and let us know how it went.

 

Don't take my word for it:

How much RAM does your version of Windows support?

Memory Limits for Windows and Windows Server Releases (Windows)

Don't forget, that 4 G of RAM includes everything on the PC that uses RAM at some point in it's operation.
So, the 32 bit OS [any OS] will be presented with what's left.

I also only suggested to upgrade the OS , not the RAM.

 

This thread is becoming too technical. Though I DO understand everything that has been posted here and referred to on other sites, I am not sure the OP will understand the technical part as well. No offense intended to the OP.


Personal experiences when upgrading hardware:

For normal desktop usage on 32-bit OS:
Switch from integrated graphics to a cheap dedicated GPU improved video playback performance on high resolution (less stuttering).
Upgrading RAM from 2GB to 4GB improved performance a bit when I was running AV and other software that seemed to consume HUGE amounts of RAM by default. Switching AV software to something less memory hungry improved performance a lot.
Swapping the OS system HDD to an SSD improved performance for all operations drastically.
Upgrading the low end GPU to something a bit more efficient had no performance improvements during video playback nor for desktop usage. Gaming of course was affected drastically for those games that were 3D-types of games.

For normal desktop usage on 64-bit OS:
Upgrading 4GB of RAM to 8GB of RAM did nothing to performance. It only affected the amount of stuff I could run at the same time.
Switching from integrated graphics to dedicated graphics did nothing to video playback nor desktop performance. Games however were somewhat faster.
Upgrading the GPU to something high end, improved gaming drastically, but had no effect on anything else.
Switching from OS system HDD to an SSD, yet again improved overall performance drastically for everything.

So what should the OP do?
He play no graphics intensive games so a high end GPU is total waste of money.
If it seems he's running out of RAM and get "Out of RAM" errors every now and then. Then first thing to do would be to switch from 32-bit OS to 64-bit OS and at least double the amount of RAM.
If performance is still poor, an SSD as system drive would help a lot, so that's next on the list.

If games start to interest later then maybe a better GPU would be a good investment. But in this case I would rather upgrade the whole system to something with an i5 CPU of generations 6 or 7 which also enables a lot faster RAM and has faster chipsets to operate the whole system. Everything would be a lot snappier, including desktop operations in general. This kind of system would live a very long time, at least 5-10 years into the future if desktop usage nor software don't change drastically.

 

@ Flashorn - I was not actually disagreeing with you or even doubting you, it had simply never occurred to me that GPU and CPU would share memory addressing before I read your post, and so was a bit cautious. I have come around, and I believe you are right on about that.

The bigger picture here is that 32 bit computing reached it's limits (at least for desktops) some time ago, and has been superseded by 64 bit computing. New hardware and high-end games are made for 64 bit CPUs with 64 bit OS's. However, millions of people (probably 10's or 100's of millions) still use 32 bit OS's with older CPUs that might be 32 bit or 64 bit processors.

However, my own experience of running Windows XP (32 bit) and Debian (Wheezy) Linux (64 bit) on the same system in a dual-boot situation, leads me to believe that just changing from 32-bit to 64 bit, with the same hardware, gives no improvements. This is based on comparing performance of some cross-platform softwares I installed on both OS's -e.g. Eclipse IDE, Code::Blocks IDE, GIMP and Opera browser. That is why I don't endorse upgrading the OS to 64 bit windows, unless he can do it cost free.

In my view, this is a matter of shoe-horning the right hardware into what is essentially an obsolete system (I hope no one's feelings are hurt by me framing the issue this way.) In that light I still think that either adding an SSD or upgrading the GPU is the best way.

However, I think that, if you stay with 32 bit windows, you should probably only look at GPUs that come with 1GB or less of RAM. A GPU that comes with 2 GB or more will cut into the amount of available RAM you have for general use. AMD made some GPUs (7850, 7770, etc.) that are quite powerful, but only have 1GB RAM. They are a few years old, and you can probably only get them from websites like Amazon or Newegg.

 

Slicendice said

"I am not sure the OP will understand the technical part as well. No offense intended to the OP."
No offence taken - be aware that the technicalities were easily within my knowledge from start to finish.

Its been an interesting thread, but it really has run it's course now.
I had totally forgotten about the restrictions that apply to 32 bit o/s - It was only when yu gnomi pointed this out
that the penny dropped.

What did surprise me was the initial advice to spend literally hundreds of pounds on gear that would not work on a 32 bit system. I can only assume that others (like me) had forgotten the aspects of the lesser o/s.I also seemed to have great difficulty in putting across the point that I was NOT into gaming.

My only remaining query (arises from one of the posts) relates to graphics card memory - as far as I am aware this memory is there to assist the ram. The card provides this addition to spare the initial 'drainage' from the starting nominal ram figure.
Therefore a card with 2Gb memory is better than a card with 1Gb memory.
Have I been wrong for many years on this issue?

Just as a point of interest - removing the GT610, and running the onboard graphics (Intel (R) HD) on the motherboard did actually improve matters markedly (an unexpected result admittedly)

I have discovered that hidden away somewhere in the loft I should have a 2GB MSI GT710 - this I will try and find and install.
Genuine thanks to all who responded, and be aware that the points that I made are not for point scoring in any way.

Thanks again

 

*Thumbs

Yes, test that GT710 and see what happens.

You are absolutely correct. The GPU RAM is there to keep all graphics related assets on the GPU for 2 main reasons:

• To speed up GPU to MEM and MEM to GPU copy operations.
• To conserve RAM so the CPU has more to work with for other operations.

If a specific dedicated GPU consumes a lot of RAM, it is just because the drivers for it are HUGE, especially if the user enables all features that aren't even related to pure 3D graphics processing.

I will still repeat this because I think it is very important regarding any operations on a PC, not only gaming like many think...

!!!Upgrade your boot/system drive to an SSD!!! A 120-256GB is more than you will ever need on a 32-bit system and you can keep the old drive for, backups, dedicated user data storage and even applications.

Your computer will fly after the upgrade.

 

I would either go with the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or the 1060 as a midrange GPU upgrade. That way you get the awesome Pascal architecture and all the improvements that come along with all architectures since Fermi.

And of course if you want to upgrade to high-end later on, the 1070, 1080 or 1080 Ti are great GPUs.

 

Explaining this will unavoidably get technical. For a 64 bit OS with 64 bit CPU, the more RAM on a GPU, the better. Situation is different for 32 bit OS because of the limit of number of possible memory addresses.

A standard write to memory for 32 bit OS is copying the entire contents of a 32 bit register on the CPU, to a memory address found in a separate 32 bit register. A standard read from memory is copying 32 bits worth of data from memory address found in a specific 32 bit register to a separate register found on the CPU.

The number of possible memory addresses is limited by possible unique values in 32 bit register, which is 2 to the 32nd power (2^32), which is around 4 billion, which translates to 4 GB RAM.

From https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...its_windows_10

Windows 10 does not support PAE (from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx)

So, because of the 4 billion limit on number of possible memory addresses, the more RAM your GPU has, the more addresses your BIOS will re-map to the GPU, the less of your installed RAM will be available to your OS.

64 bit OS would not have this issue.

 

No, you can even run a GPU with 12GB of GRAM on a 32-bit Windows, all usable by the GPU, as long as the card has a 32-bit driver. The GPU has it's own address space. Windows however reserves about 300MB of system RAM for data buffering of textures and other assets into the GPUs GRAM. The OS nor the CPU can not access GRAM directly, so they don't need to address anything. The OS uses however a 36-bit virtual address space, or we would also be limited by 4GB HDDs. *Smile