longshot video card recommendations question....

[Eric5]

Despite all my efforts and help from Affinity and others, I can't seem to get past the daily black screening issue using AP on my PC.  This is where, after working with AP stable or beta versions for an hour or so, I get a sudden black screen and have no way to clear it except to reboot.  I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, disabling all processes except essential ones in clean boot mode, switching to an SSD from the original HDD, etc.  Very often, the issue is made worse because no AP or AP beta crash reports are generated.  Windows reliability does show the errors, but they don't seem to be helping the AP staff when I've posted report contents.  Since I am suspecting that it might be a dated video card, this is a long shot, but I wanted to perhaps trying upgrading the card to something that might work with AP.  So, I am turning here for maybe some recommended cards.  I am currently using a Dell XPS 420 desktop Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q9400 @ 2.66GHz × 4 that has Win 10, a 500 GB SSD drive, and is maxed out with 8 GB memory.  The current video card is an AMD ATI Radeon HD 3870.  It's an older card from 2007 and I suspect it isn't quite compatible with AP for one reason or another.  It worked find with Photoshop, but no use re-beating a dead horse as I've already said that over and over.... still not resolving current woes.  I tried a slightly newer card (2009 vintage) Gigabyte GE Force 210, but again same response with black screen out after working in AP for a while.  So.....

Without breaking the bank and with my older system, are there any reasonably priced video cards on the market that I could try? Something that wouldn't break the bank, maybe something others are using with AP without incident with a system somewhat like mine?  I know there are a lot of variables of course.  Now if I have to spend, say, over $100 US on this, I might as well got with PS subscription for the next year for the same cost and that's also really pushing it with this older system.  Budget is the biggest factor here, limited funds and resources.  Please share anything that has worked for you and/or any suggestions you might have.  

Thank you in advance.   

[carl123]

Have you first tried switching AP to Warp for a few days and to see if the problem still occurs?

[Gnobelix]

Hello @Eric5,

Search in the Internet to "MSI GeForce GT 710 2GD3H LP DDR3"
This graphics card is offered here in Germany for 44, - €.
Remember that this graphics card is already older.
For all Fermi GPUSs (GeForce series) from Nvidia applies,
current drivers are no longer supported.

But I think, this graphics card can solve your problem with the black screen.
It's worth a try.

Cheers

[firstdefence]

Have you considered overheating as an issue, either the CPU, the graphic card or even both. Maybe even the chipset, which normally has a heat sink on it. The reason I say that is because having tried 2 Graphic cards the issue still persists. A lot of the older cards had passive heat sinks so just blocks of fancy cut aluminium and no fans.

I think considering the age of the PC it's likely the hardware is working very hard, especially the CPU which Affinity products use a lot.

The BIOS can give you fairly accurate temp readings and a few "in windows" apps will. I used to use one on windows called Speedfan

I used to take the side off my PC and put a desktop fan blowing into it in summer I was playing Crysis on max settings lol!

[Eric5]

9 hours ago, carl123 said:

Have you first tried switching AP to Warp for a few days and to see if the problem still occurs?

No, but thanks, I will definitely try it now. 

[Eric5]

5 hours ago, Gnobelix said:

Hello @Eric5,

Search in the Internet to "MSI GeForce GT 710 2GD3H LP DDR3"
This graphics card is offered here in Germany for 44, - €.
Remember that this graphics card is already older.
For all Fermi GPUSs (GeForce series) from Nvidia applies,
current drivers are no longer supported.

But I think, this graphics card can solve your problem with the black screen.
It's worth a try.

Cheers

Thanks for the card recommendation.  Definitely not expensive, but I am a bit confused: are you saying that it will or will not support Win 10?

[Eric5]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Have you considered overheating as an issue, either the CPU, the graphic card or even both. Maybe even the chipset, which normally has a heat sink on it. The reason I say that is because having tried 2 Graphic cards the issue still persists. A lot of the older cards had passive heat sinks so just blocks of fancy cut aluminium and no fans.

I think considering the age of the PC it's likely the hardware is working very hard, especially the CPU which Affinity products use a lot.

The BIOS can give you fairly accurate temp readings and a few "in windows" apps will. I used to use one on windows called Speedfan

I used to take the side off my PC and put a desktop fan blowing into it in summer I was playing Crysis on max settings lol!

The only thing I can say is that I ran Furmark recently to test and the card took as much as I could throw at it without fail.  I suppose I could try Speedfan or even blow a fan into the side without the cover to see if it makes any difference.  I had to do just that (fan) with a poorly cooled laptop to get it to do a long term task without fail a while back.   

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

The BIOS can give you fairly accurate temp readings and a few "in windows" apps will. I used to use one on windows called Speedfan

Speccy (from Piriform, the makers of CCleaner) is another one.

[Gnobelix]

10 hours ago, Eric5 said:

Thanks for the card recommendation.  Definitely not expensive, but I am a bit confused: are you saying that it will or will not support Win 10? 

The graphics card works in Windows 10
As already mentioned for the above called graphic card,  there will be no new drivers, because Nvidia has discontinued support.

 

Cheers

[Eric5]

On 12/21/2018 at 10:05 AM, carl123 said:

Have you first tried switching AP to Warp for a few days and to see if the problem still occurs?

Since switching to warp, I haven't had any more blackouts of the screen.  I still have extreme slowing and stalling to the point where I have to force closure with the task manager. 

Watching the task manager, the item that seems to be at fault is the CPU.  It starts off at less than 10%, then certain tasks or opening of multiple files, and it climbs to over 90% and the entire system becomes sluggish.  If I wait long enough, percentages will drop just enough when I can close open files or save existing work, but the wait is sometimes 15 min.  

Judging from the above, I'd say that the CPU is at fault and not the video card.  The card might be a symptom of the hard working CPU and perhaps switching to warp simply solved the black screening.  

For now, I am going to have to limit how much work I do in AP.  In order to keep CPU percentages lower, this won't be very much unfortunately.  

I am now considering a new desktop altogether if I can sell this one at a reasonable price.  To my surprise, something like a  12-Core Xeon X5650 Workstation, 32GB RAM, HP Z600 even with a good video card is <$350 US.  I'm sure a system like that would have no trouble with AP.    However, it does cost, so I think I'm going to download the latest Photoshop and see how the task manager responds with the same sort of processes I do with AP.  I just had PS on this very system until this past summer and never had issues of any sort, but I want to monitor this time to be sure.  

I've been told that AP uses directX or something like it whereas Photoshop uses OpenGL, and this may be the cause of many of the issues users are experiencing in AP. 

If PS continues to operate successfully, I may just have to get a subscription for a year before deciding on any upgrades of my system.