Graphics card suggestions please

Personally, having zero use for a VGA connection, between these two I'd choose the card with the TWO DVI CONNECTORS (along with HDMI and DP connectors).

I still think both of these are a bit "overkill" for the announced need, though they're both certainly modern generation pretty high-performing cards for reasonable price.

They both use about 110W of power and take up two slots (second slotted for added cooling) because they generate heat and have larger fans.

Here's hoping they run without any problem in your older motherboard with PCIe 2.0 support.

The Intel board is having nothing to do with it... <see>

Strange Duck this Gigabyte R7-260 video card

Well, my sympathies. Much as I had feared.

Sounds like my own story described back in post #21 of this thread. My own HD4850 is also the "fail-safe, works perfectly and with high performance" fallback that I've been using for four years now, in two different machines with older motherboards where an HD5570 would not allow one machine to even boot, and the other machine simply was completely unstable and "flickered" constantly.

How about an exchange for an HD7750, which I'm guessing has far more likelihood of "playing nice" with your Intel motherboard?

Don't recall if you have a full-size case or SFF, but the HD7750 comes in both forms. The full-size card has a full-size bracket with full-size HDMI, DP and DVI connectors, while the low-profile card has two brackets (full-size and low-profile), both of which have microHDMI and miniDP connectors (but the retail card comes with two adapters for these connectors so that you can use a standard HDMI or DP cable to your monitor).

dsperber said:

Well, my sympathies. Much as I had feared.

Not looking for 'sympathy'... 'You rolls the dice you takes your chances'!
I do appreciate the input. Made a selection from the G3D Mark chart from the highest rating [always trying to learn something]. The R 7750 seemed a little pricy for the rating it got. The R7 260x was the highest rating and was only about $25 more than the lower rated GTX650 Ti, so I went with it. Knew I was maybe taking a chance but looking to the future. Disappointed that I don't have a HDMI on the R 4550 that was in it and the R7 260x video board was no help on this older Intel board.
The R7 260x seems to be an OK board, so I will just run it in the Gigabyte MB that it works in and (maybe) go ahead and replace the Intel board with another Gigabyte, which has always been good to me in the AMD processor line.

Much Appreciated :)

Are you mixing up your card ID's? Am I confused?

By "R 4550", do you mean "MSI R4550" card which is actually an HD4550? As I read things it has HDMI, DVI, and VGA. Do you have a different model of that card... in the 4550 family, but without HDMI??

And yet you say "Disappointed that I don't have a HDMI on the R 4550 that was in it". Seems inconsistent.

Also, I thought you had an HD4850. So you have BOTH (a) and older MSI R4550 HD4550, as well as (b) Sapphire HD4850 (which was your successor to your R4550/HD4550), which was actually being used in the MSI board and which you tried to replace the HD4850 with the R7-260x which failed?

As I read things the Sapphire HD4850 doesn't have an HDMI connector, but does have two DVI connectors. This would have worked fine to connect to an HDMI monitor/display.

If you want to connect a female DVI connector on the video card to an HDMI display which has a standard female HDMI connector, you just need the right gender cable... DVI-male -> HDMI-male, like this one. Or, you can use an adapter DVI-male -> HDMI-female like this one, and then you use a standard HDMI cable (with male HDMI connectors at both ends).

You don't actually need a new video card just to provide an HDMI connector at the video card end, when there is already a DVI connector on the card. You just need a proper DVI-to-HDMI adapter or cable. Also, if the video card had DP you could also connect to DP, DVI or HDMI, with a proper cable or adapter+cable. That's the advantage of the digital connectors. Only restriction: you can't connect TO a DP connector from anything but another DP connector, as DP is a 1-way only (from-DP -> to-DP).

And besides, the HD4850 is a very decent performing card given its age, although it does use more power than today's more recent generation of cards. As I mentioned previously, I have a 1GB Gigabyte fanless HD4850 (for 100% silence) myself, which actually DOES have DVI and HDMI connectors, although I only use the DVI connector in my PC with only one monitor.

Modifying your text <...> in response:

Are you mixing up your card ID's? <yes> Am I confused? <no>

By "R 4550", do you mean "MSI R4550" card which is actually an HD4550? As I read things it has HDMI, DVI, and VGA. <EXACTLY correct; but it came out only a little over half of the HD 4850 on the Windows Experience Graphics index>

And yet you say "Disappointed that I don't have a HDMI on the R 4550 that was in it". Seems inconsistent. <that's because I meant HD 4850/ mine has 2 DVI's and an S-Video>

Also, I thought you had an HD4850. So you have BOTH (a) and older MSI R4550 HD4550, as well as (b) Sapphire HD4850 <which was the predecessor to the new Gigabyte R7-260x>, which was actually being used in the MSI <no- Intel> board and which you tried to replace <'d> the HD4850 with the R7-260x which failed? <to initiate>

As I read things the Sapphire HD4850 doesn't have an HDMI connector, but does have two DVI connectors. <correct> This would have worked fine to connect to an HDMI monitor/display.

<Wish I would have known this before: At some point in the past I believe I was told that HDMI was 'incompatible' with the other connectors (not just in configurations, but feeds as well) so I never bothered to check and am amazed that adapters exist- Obviously they DO share common electrical feeds!).>

If you want to connect a female DVI connector on the video card to an HDMI display which has a standard female HDMI connector, you just need the right gender cable... DVI-male -> HDMI-male, like this one. Or, you can use an adapter DVI-male -> HDMI-female like this one, and then you use a standard HDMI cable (with male HDMI connectors at both ends). <Apparently there is no degradation from this cabling?>

You don't actually need a new video card just to provide an HDMI connector at the video card end, when there is already a DVI connector on the card. You just need a proper DVI-to-HDMI adapter or cable. Also, if the video card had DP you could also connect to DP, DVI or HDMI, with a proper cable or adapter+cable. That's the advantage of the digital connectors. Only restriction: you can't connect TO a DP connector from anything but another DP connector, as DP is a 1-way only (from-DP -> to-DP). <Got it >

And besides, the HD4850 is a very decent performing card given its age, although it does use more power than today's more recent generation of cards. As I mentioned previously, I have a 1GB Gigabyte fanless HD4850 (for 100% silence) myself, which actually DOES have DVI and HDMI connectors, although I only use the DVI connector in my PC with only one monitor.

<Had I known this earlier, I would have spent the chump-change for the adapter cable and saved a butt-load of $$'s. As it is, I decided to go ahead and treat the i7 to a new Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H motherboard and put the R7 260x video card in it. In the long-run I think it will be a first class rig and I should be happy with it. Obvious overkill but I'm that kind of guy! Thanks again dsperber... >

idahjo said:

<At some point in the past I believe I was told that HDMI was 'incompatible' with the other connectors (not just in configurations, but feeds as well) so I never bothered to check and am amazed that adapters exist- Obviously they DO share common electrical feeds!).>

If you want to connect a female DVI connector on the video card to an HDMI display which has a standard female HDMI connector, you just need the right gender cable... DVI-male -> HDMI-male, like this one. Or, you can use an adapter DVI-male -> HDMI-female like this one, and then you use a standard HDMI cable (with male HDMI connectors at both ends). <Apparently there is no degradation from this cabling?>

Except for some very rare and exceptional motherboard setups that provide audio capability, the only issue with "adapting" a female DVI connector on the video card to an HDMI cable for connection to the HDMI female connector on a monitor/TV is that it results in VIDEO-ONLY. In other words, you cannot deliver audio on that HDMI cable if you had speakers on the monitor/TV that you wanted to get sound out of. And of course that's because DVI is a video-only protocol, only intended to carry video over the cable.

But if you have desktop speakers on your PC, fed from your sound card, then the absence of sound from your monitor or TV is not an issue. Or, you can connect the sound card to the usually-present line-in audio connector on the monitor (as is almost universally true when the monitor has imbedded speakers). This is definitely one approach that will work, using analog audio output from sound card to the monitor/TV speakers via analog line-in.

So you don't need to deliver audio to the monitor/TV only via the digital HDMI connection, although that would certainly work if you started from an HDMI connector on your video card and set the "default" audio output (in Playback Devices) to digital HDMI, rather to the analog sound card. Then both digital audio and video would go out the HDMI cable, and the speakers in the monitor/TV would then produce sound if audio input was specified as coming from digital HDMI rather than analog line-in.

Anyway, my discussion of using a DVI-to-HDMI adapter or adapter-cable relates strictly to delivering video to your monitor/TV, via HDMI cable. No sound. And zero "loss of quality". It is a 100% bit-perfect pure digital path, simply starting from digital video DVI and terminating at digital video HDMI, via the adapter. Exactly identical to having an HDMI connection on the video card... just no sound possible.

idahjo said:

Modifying your text <...> in response:

Just one side note, regarding posting on the forum, and in particular "quoting" sections of text from a previous post and then responding to that section, perhaps followed by another "quoted" section of text and then replying to it, etc.

The "quoted text" section (which you can carve out using any edit method you want, including COPY/PASTE, etc.) is simply prefixed with a "start quote" delimiter and terminated with an "end quote" delimiter.

The "start quote" delimiter is [with imbedded spaces removed] simply:

[ q u o t e ]

and the "end quote" delimiter is simply :

[ / q u o t e ]

This is the standard forum posting technique for "quoted text", used on virtually 100% of online forums.

If you just surround the text you want to quote with those two delimiters (again, remove the in-between blanks shown in my examples) then you will be producing the graphically highlighted quoted text you commonly see (and, for example, you see in my quotes of text from your posts). It is much more readable to see and much easier to read that graphically different alternating graphically highlighted quoted text followed with your non-highlighted plain text response, than doing something else non-standard like trying to surround quoted text (or your reply) with your own specially devised delimiters.

And once you are finished quoting and responding to one of my sentences/paragraphs or thoughts, you then simply start the next "quote/response" sections, again bounding my next text section you wish to quote with the above delimiters, and then putting your response after it.

Once you try it (you may need a little practice, but you can use "preview" to see what it looks like and then you'll immediately see if you're doing it right or wrong) it'll now become second-nature to you.

dsperber: Valuable information. Even if I forget, now I can access the forum and refresh my 'aging' memory. BTW: The method of reply you referred to was done 'to specially address your posting'; I was the solo moderator on the GunBrokers Political Forum for a couple of years..

Thanks