graphics card buying advice please

KAYPEE

Hello peeps,

Looking for some buying advise please in relation to buying a new card. Ive been running a Geforce 8800 GTS 512mb which decided to finally kick the bucket the other day, it served me well, what would be recommended in the 100-150 price range?

System is as follows:
dell 22" LCD monitor
Dell GX620 Tower.
2.8Ghz Pentium4 HT CPU.
4gb of Crucial DDR2 BallistiX TRACER PC6400 RAM. 30GB SATA drive.(500GB external)
nvidia 8800GTS overclocked (dead)
580watt PSU twin-fan
5.1 dolby sound card

thanks!!

swirlser

Avoid nV's 9 series, it wasnt a great line up nor is its price/performance up to the competition.

If you are a fan of nV and want to stay there then the GTS250 is basically the best of the 9series rehashed and would be a step up from your old card (a 1gb model is a bit over 100 euro). The GTX 260 (core 216) is a good card, but it'll push your budget and its hard to justify it when the red team have it beat in the same price bracket.

Bang for buck, ATI have the edge tbh, Id be suggesting the upper end of the HD4000 series. If you like to OC, then a Vapor-X model will serve you very well (and if you dont go beyond ati's own oc tools Id say you'll enjoy a longer life from it than the 8800 gave you ;p)

KAYPEE

thanks for the help dude, good info there. i was thinking of a 4870HD, would this run ok on my system, tbh i dont realy mind going a bit overkill and spending decent money as i will be ugrading the mobo and CPU to something better in the new year, cheers!! would this be a good option card wise?

swirlser

KAYPEE wrote: »

thanks for the help dude, good info there. i was thinking of a 4870HD, would this run ok on my system, tbh i dont realy mind going a bit overkill and spending decent money as i will be ugrading the mobo and CPU to something better in the new year, cheers!! would this be a good option card wise?

Well ofc Im going to give that card the thumbs up since I own one lol ;-p

It will probably work in your current rig - but probably isnt good enough. Do check your PSU, how old is it? If you are carrying on your upgrading next year then there is no harm with getting a newer PSU now (a solid one will be money well spent). The prob here is that your modding a dell rig, altho Im not familiar with the model you have, Dell's are far from ideal when it comes to changing the likes of a PSU

Tbh, even tho it'll cost you more than you had planned now - since you are doing ur own upgrading etc, it might/will be worth looking into getting a case & psu with your new gpu. It will make life much easier going forward for anything your going to do. Dells are made to just about do what it says on the box. While you can switch in and out certain parts, the case is specifically designed for the original parts only. Modding it may put more stress than you realise on your new components... something to think about :-p

KAYPEE

yes lol it seems as if youve seen my pc already it only has half a case, the PSU is sitting on the top of the case with all the wires going in, and the GPU etc are all sticking out the side, half the cpu platic heatsink cover is cut away to fit the 8800 il be the first one to say its a mess lol:o il post a pic later purely for entertainment

It performs well to be fair, as its a PC out of a business and has no crap on it, but like you said not ideal i agree. I was going to upgrade to a Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3Ghz BUT:

Will this work well with my mobo? Also will my mobo fit in a large gamer case?

cheers dude

edit: sorry the PSU i only bought last week! there was a 500w antec in it but it had seen better days

swirlser

Lol, well your not afraid to get your hands dirty are you

KAYPEE wrote: »

I was going to upgrade to a Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3Ghz BUT:

Will this work well with my mobo?

Er... maybe? ^^ Easy to find out tho, for starters you could just lean back a lil, tilt your head and read the socket number off your mobo XD (you'll want 'LGA 775'). If its covered, just post/google your mobo model name, no harm to check it online anyway as it might be able to take the C2D cpu but may bottleneck if it doesnt support the fsb of the C2D.

KAYPEE wrote: »

Also will my mobo fit in a large gamer case?

Er.... maybe? ^^ lol... Going outside my comfort zone! I believe mobo sizes are relatively standard, while they do vary - most do follow a standard size for midi-full tower cases. And having components exposed isnt necessarily great for them, a case is designed to suck in air front/side, push it thru the case and out the rear, causing an airflow which gives better temperature regulation - better than leaving things exposed (and cooler running components means better running and longer living).

What I would suggest is, if your mobo does support socket 775 and a fsb of 1333, then by all means get yourself a C2D on next upgrade. If it doesnt support this and your going to get a new mobo in order to continue upgrading, you may wanna check out AMD's offerings. Socket 775 is dead, but AMD's AM2+/AM3 boards have a bit of life left in them (and purely in terms of gaming they do just fine, cheaply).

Im typing a lot today ^^ To get more definitive answers, I think you should make a thread in the B&U forum, they'll be more knowledgeable than I. I generally buy pre-built (usually buy pretty beefy stuff and dont trust myself with that size), once they've aged is when I play with um ;p Incl your PSU model & mobo model and Im sure you'll get some more helpful answers

KAYPEE

thanks for the help dude, super stuff. I think i might just wait and get a new mobo cpu combo soon, instead of buying an "ok" cpu for this then upgrading again.

Managed to get a great deal today, got a 4850HD in maplin, last one in stock so i got it for 95euro!!! stoked, its sweet just need a case now to portect this one.

thanks again for all your points swirlserand all the typing, lol cheers

swirlser

well gz on the buy

KAYPEE

cheers, here she is i need a case lol

swirlser

lol, messy messy, u werent kiddin'

That should be a pin up to flip the bird to Dell who spend as much time designing things to just-about work with supplied components in an attempt to force u back to them when u want something further done as they do with anything else!

(I really dont like Dell do I? ^^ They serve a purpose...)

Im curious to know what you play actually and what sort of settings etc, coz there are others with the likes of a P4 and want a GPU upgrade to give games a bump and its part guess work as to how much they can expect to get out of sticking in a newer GPU.

superfly

haha! nice rig, btw thats a desktop not a tower gx620
Dell mobos are designed to fit their cases, so i would wait till you are ready to buy/build a new rig before doing anything with that
it would be good as a 2nd rig for turning into a HTPC maybe?

KAYPEE

lol thanks lads, yes well now ive decided to upgrade it, as i installed the 4850 (with alot of trouble, getting "zero display service error" message on installing the drivers ) and im not really happy with the way the pc is performing now, it still runs COD4 good as before with the 8800GTS, but modern warfare 2 is not great and fps is crappy, so im assuming it has to be the P4?

@swirlser - im really only getting into gaming, I play LFS which is not hard on graphics at all, COD4 and MW2, and a bit of Warcraft but im not a fanatic lol. for a start to gaming its worked ok to be fair on older games, but since MW2 came out im seeing alot of weaknesses now

Thanks for the help lads, if you feel you cancontribute to my new thread in builds PLEASE feel free :);) thanks!!