Need advice: New ZOTAC GeForce GT 1030 for old MSI G41M-P28 MB?

ohante · 01 May 2021

I wonder if anyone here who still dabbles with older systems might be able to offer advice on upgrading my graphics card. I built an HTPC in 2012 with a MSI G41M-P28 MB (see specs here) that has served my purposes well since. I don't do any gaming, though recently I've been streaming a lot more video in multiple windows and am seeing some uneven playback when starting a 2nd or 3rd stream while recording one of them. There are 3 issues I'd like to address with a new card:

* Can't screen record full screen 1920 x 1280 smoothly.
* Jumpy video streaming video in multiple windows while recording one of them.
* Scrolling web browsers gets slightly jumpy while streaming video.

From what I can see, it seems the best new graphics card for my budget and motherboard is probably the ZOTAC GeForce GT 1030 (see specs here).

I'm not all that tech savvy, but it seems the biggest performance issue may be my motherboard's PCI-E X16 2.1 expansion slot. The ZOTAC should fit in the x16 slot, but I'm wondering how much performance I'll loose from its PCIe 3.0 capability. I'm seeing these PCIe specs on Tom's Hardware that indicate my mb will limit the ZOTAC to a 5 GT/s transfer rate:

PCIe 2.0 - 16 GB/s - 5 GT/s - 5 GHz
PCIe 3.0 - 32 GB/s - 8 GT/s - 8 GHz

I'll paste the ZOTAC GeForce GT 1030 specs below, and you can find my HTPC's specs in my user info in the left sidebar here under 'My Computer'.

Could someone tell me if I might face issues with this ZOTAC card other than a slight reduction of performance speed? I'm guessing it ought to address the 3 issues I list above that my old ATI AMD Radeon HD 5570 (see specs here) is experiencing.

Thanks so very much for any feedback on all this!

My MSI G41M-P28 MB Specs

ZOTAC GT 1030 Specs
--------------------------------
GPU
GPU Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1030
Stream Processors: 384 CUDA Cores
Boost Clock Speed: 1468 MHz
Base Clock Speed: 1227 MHz
Interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
Supported APIs: DirectX: 12, OpenGL: 4.5, CUDA, Vulkan
MEMORY
Memory Speed: 6 Gb/s
Memory Configuration: 2 GB
Memory Interface: GDDR5
Memory Interface Width: 64-Bit
Memory Bandwidth: 48 GB/s
DISPLAY SUPPORT
Display Connectors: 1 x DVI-D SL, 1 x HDMI 2.0b
Maximum Digital Resolution: 7680 x 4320 @ 60 Hz
POWER REQUIREMENTS
Max Power Consumption: 30 W
PCI Power Connectors: None
Recommended System Power Requirement: 300 W

bobkn · 02 May 2021

A little Web searching indicates that a GT 1030 will run in a G41 motherboard.

The GT 1030 goes in a PCI-E X16 slot, but it only runs X4 (4 lanes). Whether the resulting 2GB/s bandwidth (PCI Express - Wikipedia) would bottleneck the card, I don't know. I'd bet that there would be no problem.

The 1030 was a low-end "Pascal" card, but it appears to be much better than a Radeon 5570. UserBenchmark: AMD Radeon HD 5570 vs Nvidia GT 1030

I hope that it's adequate to your needs. It's too bad that most graphics cards are scarce and overpriced at the moment.

ohante · 02 May 2021

bobkn said:

A little Web searching indicates that a GT 1030 will run in a G41 motherboard.

The GT 1030 goes in a PCI-E X16 slot, but it only runs X4 (4 lanes). Whether the resulting 2GB/s bandwidth (PCI Express - Wikipedia) would bottleneck the card, I don't know. I'd bet that there would be no problem.

The 1030 was a low-end "Pascal" card, but it appears to be much better than a Radeon 5570. UserBenchmark: AMD Radeon HD 5570 vs Nvidia GT 1030

I hope that it's adequate to your needs. It's too bad that most graphics cards are scarce and overpriced at the moment.

Thank you for confirming the GT 1030 card will work with my G41 MB, and for the gpu.userbenchmark info link bobkn.

I edited my original post to reflect that I'm only seeing the jittery / sluggish video playback when I'm recording a stream with 2 or 3 windows open either streaming or playing a video file. That's the issue I'm primarily wondering if the GT 1030 will address. That and the ability to do 1920 x 1280 fullscreen recordings with this MB's 2.40GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU and 8GB DDR3 RAM that result in video files that play back smoothly.

The only other issue I've seen with the old Radeon 5570 has been problems rendering high bitrate video files over 8000 - 10000 kb/s smoothy on the HDTV screen.

And yes, with data mining causing a run on graphic cards recently, this isn't the best time to be looking for an upgrade.