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What single-slot PCIe graphics card for a HP Compaq DC7900 minitower?

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First post, by Robonaut

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I recently acquired a NIB HP Compaq DC7900 minitower. Processor is a Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66 ghz. My plan is to use it as a Windows XP gaming machine for old RPGs. The most graphically intense game I'm likely to run is Neverwinter Nights 2.

I will be playing on my 19" Dell CRT monitor.

I couldn't resist this PC because it was never used, but it does have a couple of significant downsides:

(1) Power supply is only 365W (and supposedly only max 12A on the +12V rail) and is proprietary (from what I've been able to tell), so not easily upgraded.
(2) It has a PCIe X16 slot, but one of the case fans is positioned stupidly and prevents you from putting anything more than a single-slot card in (as I found out when I tried to put a GTX 750 Ti in it).

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I replaced the Western Digital hard drive in it with a Samsung EVO 870 SSD, so that should free up a tiny bit of extra power.

So, any thoughts on what to use?

Reply 1 of 2, by cyclone3d

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Quadro M4000.

Speed should be in between a GTX960 And GTX970.

8GB RAM and same GPU specs but lower clocks than a 970.

Probably have to mod the.inf file for the driver to use it in XP though a pre-modified file does exist already but not sure if it has the Quadro cards in it. I'll look when I am at a computer.

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Yamaha XG repository
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Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 2 of 2, by Robonaut

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As mentioned in my original post, the way that the PCIe x16 slot is positioned means that I couldn't fit my GTX 750 Ti in there.

However, it occurred to me that it *would* fit in the PCIe x4 slot just below the x16 slot.

With the GTX 750 Ti in the x4 slot, I was getting roughly 65 FPS (at 1024X768) in NWN2 with point light shadows turned on (which notoriously has a huge FPS impact in NWN2).

That was pretty good, but it felt like such a waste of the GTX 750 Ti to have it in the x4 slot.

So, I picked up a PNY Geforce GT 740 single-slot card and popped it into the x16 slot.

Now I'm getting about 85 FPS in NWN2 with the same settings. A worthy improvement, I think.

I should check to see how much power this rig is now pulling, but after several multi-hour sessions, everything seems to be running fine.

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