Need Advice Regarding a Neew Graphics Card for my Windows 10 rig

Moondoggy

Moondoggy

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Jun 16, 2015
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I have a Sapphire VaporX HD4850 PCI-E with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory that was installed in my Windows 7 Pro machine when it was built about 5-6 years ago. I recently upgraded my system to Windows 10 and the card still works on that platform but there may be an issue with the card.


To make a long story short it's been suggested that there's an issue with the driver for this card that's causing a black screen delay when booting Windows 10 and that I need to uninstall the existing driver and install a updated driver. Unfortunately, AMD stopped updating drivers for this card 3 years ago and I'm concerned about uninstalling/reinstalling the driver for fear that something might happen and it will mess up my PC even more. As I see it the best solution, since the card is old, is to upgrade to a new card that supports Windows 10 and DirectX 12.


So, what I'm looking for is some recommendations on cards that might work for me. Note that I'm not a gamer but I do play a game occasionally. My objective is to find a good quality card that's not too cheap but not too expensive that's Windows 10/DirectX 12 compliant, that's new enough that AMD or Nvidia are going to support there card for some time, and on that will run quietly and coolly.


Can I please get some recommendations from you all with a reason or reasons why you think this card would be a good fit.
 
My objective is to find a good quality card that's not too cheap but not too expensive
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That could mean $50 to $100 for one person and $200 to $500 for another.

How long is this black screen delay? Seconds or minutes? Does it work fine once it has finally booted? If so, and it plays the games you play, then not sure I would worry about it.

Do note that a black screen delay is being reported for quite a few W10 users. It is a known issue and will likely be sorted out before too long.

Where did you look for drivers? I generally recommend going to the card maker and not AMD or NVIDIA directly. Oddly, I looked at Sapphire and can find several VaperX HD4850 models, but none that have 2Gb of RAM. ??? You might want to send a note to Sapphire and see what they say.

Otherwise, if you just want a new card anyway, I recommend you check out Tom's Hardware, Best Graphics Cards for the Money, June 2015.

And remember, because GPUs are often the most power hungry devices in our computers, ensure your current PSU has the necessary current on the 12V rail and connectors to support any new card you are considering.
 
OK, let me try and answer some of the questions you've raised......

First, I fat fingered the memory in my card as it only has 1 GB of GDDR3 memory. Sorry about that.

I have not actually timed the black screen issue but in my opinion the time lag is about 1 minute. Once the black screen has gone away and is replaced by the login screen the machine works flawlessly.

If you go to the Sapphire website and try to download a driver from them they will provide you with a utility provided by AMD which will tell you what the latest driver for your OS is and point you to that driver on their (AMD's) website. So, in this case it doesn't make any difference if you go to the Sapphire web site or AMD's web site the only driver your going to get is from AMD's web site.

My concerns are that I believe that I tried out the most current driver a year or so when I was running Windows 7 and had some issue that caused me to back level the driver back to a previous driver. Unfortunately, I did some cleanup on my PC and I no longer have the driver that I'm currently using. Even if I did have the driver I'm using I'm concerned that in uninstalling and then reinstalling the driver my system might become corrupted and then what would I do. Right now, at least, I just have to put up with a 1 minute delay during the boot.

Additionally, I'm just a bit concerned about support. I have an issue today that may or may not be caused by the video driver but what happens if something else gets upgraded or changed and that causes a graphics card issue. What do I do then as I already know that AMD is not going to support my card. For me, although it is an expense, I think I would be more comfortable just getting a new card that would probably last me as long as the rest of the hardware will last.

As far as cost is concerned I think I want to stay at or below $200 but would be willing to go over $200 a bit if necessary to get a quality card. Naturally, since I'm not much of a gamer, I don't need a high zoot gamer card. On the other hand, I want to have a card that's fast enough that my system performs well. The qualities that I'm looking for in a card are support, priced right for needed performance, cool in terms of heat generated and quiet.

In regard to the power supply I have not checked this out but I know when I built the system I put a quality power supply that people were suggesting was overkill considering the devices that it was powering which are 2 DVD's, 1 HDD, and the graphic card that gets it's power via the motherboard.
 
Coincidently, PCWorld left a review of the GTX 950 in my inbox this morning.
Bottom line: The Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 delivers a nice 1080p gaming experience at a price that won’t break your budget. Nvidia has a clear winner here.
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I was reviewing my old posts to day and thought I would update this one. Since I first posted this thread I had nothing but problems with my PC but I could not 100% blame it on my old ATI based graphic card. I know there were times when I would play a very high motion video (like the on where your flying inside the cockpit of Blue Angel jet) my system would crash but there were other periodic crashes that I could not. There were also plenty of times when for no apparent reason the fans in my PC would start running very fast and sometimes a crash would also happen afterwards but again I could not blame this on my old graphics card either.

About 2 months ago in had the opportunity to purchase an EVGA GTX950 as a replacement graphics card as the slot I have available in my PC for a graphics card is a shorter slot than I imagined. After installing my GTX950 I can play very high motion videos, I've had zero crashes and my PC is quiet as a church mouse.
 

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