GT 720 for a 8+ year-old PC with 380W PSU?

PCIe 3.0 should be backwards compatible with all previous revisions of PCIe, but, sometimes things happen. Once in awhile I do run into older boards running PCIe 1.1 that just won't work with 2.0 or 3.0 cards, but it tends to be the cheaper boards with early implementations of 1.1.

That aside, a 720 should work perfectly fine in such an old machine as long as your not planning on gaming.
 
PCIe 3.0 should be backwards compatible with all previous revisions of PCIe, but, sometimes things happen. Once in awhile I do run into older boards running PCIe 1.1 that just won't work with 2.0 or 3.0 cards, but it tends to be the cheaper boards with early implementations of 1.1.

That aside, a 720 should work perfectly fine in such an old machine as long as your not planning on gaming.

Ok, I have already bought the card (finally a MSI GT 730 1GB GDDR5 that I found at a very close price to the 720's). Let's see... fingers crossed!

Thanks! :)
 
Why put a performance card in a 8 year old system? That board supports Core 2 Duo or Pentium D CPU chips. And it runs DDR2 ram. GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 775 - GA-945P-S3 (rev. 3.3)

It's not about the PCI-e slot or how many lanes the slot has or if it's backward compatible. It's about how slow that system is. I think you're about to be sorely disappointed.

CPU chips it can handle. N/A means it's not supported.

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=2475

Memory it can use. Notice at the top it says DDR2 667.

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/motherboard_memory_ga-945p-s3_3.3.pdf
 
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Why put a performance card in a 8 year old system? That board supports Core 2 Duo or Pentium D CPU chips. And it runs DDR2 ram. GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 775 - GA-945P-S3 (rev. 3.3)

It's not about the PCI-e slot or how many lanes the slot has or if it's backward compatible. It's about how slow that system is. I think you're about to be sorely disappointed.

CPU chips it can handle. N/A means it's not supported.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Socket 775 - Intel 945P - GA-945P-S3 (rev. 3.3)

Memory it can use. Notice at the top it says DDR2 667.

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/motherboard_memory_ga-945p-s3_3.3.pdf

I'm not expecting great performance nor any upgrade even. It's just that my PC does not run (I have to borrow one to write here, for instance) and, as I don't have integrated graphics in my Core 2 Duo, I needed some affordable option. If I just get a close performance to my old 7950 GT I'll be fine. I know that I won't be able to get most of the power from the GT 730, but I won't use my computer for that. I'm just hoping it to work. Thanks for the info.;)
 
GT730 really isn't a a performance powerhouse of a GPU, his old system should be able to use it rather efficiently since he doesn't really plan on any gaming, even then it would handle older games perfectly fine.
 
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Well, the pins are the same in all PCI-E x8 and x16 standards, and they are pretty much the same across the board, the only real difference is the bandwith of the bus, which even on 1.1 is not going to be saturated (there is still a lot of headroom in terms of speed between PCI and CPU even on 1.1 I mean, the bus is faster than the components at each end)

There's always a bit of risk involved when putting newer stuff in an older system. If it was me doing this, I'd just go for it and see how I got on since after reading up a bit I'm pretty confident it would work.

do let us know how it goes if you bite the bullet, im always interested to see how things like this pan out :thumb:

Hi! Today I've set my new card (MSI GT730 1GB GDDR5) and... It works! The only down side is that I have to use the VGA D-Sub out (I tried using HDMI but my PC got into trouble and it couldn't even start Windows...), and it seems it lacks a bit of quality. I'm not referring to games or 3D stuff, but just to the overall appearence of the pixels. The characters from this text, for instance, look a bit thicker, somewhere in between optimal and blurry. Not annoying at all, it just reminds me the quality you get from low quality projectors. I have also tested an old game (2007 Test Drive Unlimited) and it looks good and smooth, and a couple of Benchmark tests show that the card performance is what it should be compared to other 730's. Anyway, my PC is alive again :). I'll try to get a DVI-D to HDMI cable or adapter to see if I can get some better results whithout killing my computer.

Thank you all guys! See you! ;)
 
Are you sure windows wont boot when the HDMI port is connected? Turn the speakers on and listen for the sound you hear when windows loads to the sign-on screen.
 
The VGA resolution is limited so that's why it looked wonky. Once you get your digital hookup you'll have better resolution.
 
Your screen may be looking for an analogue input, (though most should detect digital automatically too), if there's an input button or something on the monitor, that might work!

Or just try turning the PC off and on again a few times, what problems do you get when you're using HDMI?
 
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