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| Thread ID: 125060 | 2012-06-04 07:17:00 | What graphics card would be best buy to match with the rest of my system? | Andrew123 (16643) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1279614 | 2012-06-05 00:33:00 | You could get almost any of the midrage graphics cards on the market and it'd still be the bottleneck for most games. Just get the best you can! Try the 6950 or something. You also want to get yourself additional RAM, 2GB more and you'll be right as rain :) |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1279615 | 2012-06-05 01:35:00 | You could get almost any of the midrage graphics cards on the market and it'd still be the bottleneck for most games. Just get the best you can! Try the 6950 or something. You also want to get yourself additional RAM, 2GB more and you'll be right as rain :) TBH Chill, anything over a 6770 will be bottlenecked by that CPU.....and I have yet to see a Pentium D make any use of over 2GB of RAM...plus, he would probably need a new PSU as well, so i would flag the upgrade period and save for a new i3 box! |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 1279616 | 2012-06-05 01:43:00 | Eh that's what I have in my wifes PC and we've thrown my 6950 in it a few times just to muck around with comparisons, she's got the 930 though I think? Ran games like DotA2, SWTOR, LOTRO, Borderlands etc all fine with the GPU still being the bottleneck (Multiple monitors with Task Manager & Speccy open on a secondary monitor). EDIT: Granted it still doesn't compare to my E6600 but it's still maxing out around 75-80% CPU utilization on games, wheres mine usually only gets to around 45-55%. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1279617 | 2012-06-05 23:45:00 | Your wife is a gamer? You lucky.... | Barnabas (4562) | ||
| 1279618 | 2012-06-06 00:10:00 | worth noting that you probably cant get a 2nd hand 6950 for $100-$150. | icow (15313) | ||
| 1279619 | 2012-06-06 01:08:00 | Thanks guys for the very helpful replies! Couple of factors I didn't mention . . . . am running XP and existing power supply is 350W . Was expecting to have to upgrade PSU but possibly I might not have to?? 6770 draws more power and offers a very slight performance increase in some games (1-5fps) Very slight increase from what? Would expect a LOT more than 1-5fps from what my on board graphics can do!? whereas the 7750 from memory doesnt need power direct from the psu . trademe . co . nz/computers/components/video-cards/pciexpress/auction-481230223 . htm" target="_blank">www . trademe . co . nz Minimum System Power requirement (W)|400W I would still need to upgrade the PSU wouldn't I? What is the advantage of the card not required power direct from PSU? By the way I would be happy to spend a bit more on newer more efficient technology if it saved the cost of a new PSU As a side note buying the best and most expensive card you can without considering the bottlenecks that your current hardware may provide can also be seen as a good thing as it means that the card you have will still be good/ won't bottleneck any new parts you may buy (e . g . cpu's) . No i'm not saying go out and buy a 680 GTX and don't do this if you don't plan to upgrade any time soon as within a year or two the card will be out of date anyway . Yeah, I see others are wisely suggesting that as well, but my current setup does everything I want of it except play the HD digital camera movies, and the only game I ever play is GTR2 (which is now 6 years old! haha) . Also when I do go for a complete upgrade, I would like to keep my current setup as a second PC - capable of network network racing on GTR2 :-) It's likely that your power supply won't be able to take a particularly powerful card, if you don't see your needs as ever changing (which is unlikely) then a card that doesn't require much of a supply could be of use . Otherwise, an incremental upgrade starting with a new power supply and nuts graphics card could see you with a sweet build eventually . There are going to be other bottlenecks but the biggest performance increases will come from putting in a gpu or upgrading your existing one, at least in terms of games performance (for the most part) . Yep as I said I have 2 basic and specific reasons for an upgrade and so hoping to spend the minimum to achieve that only . If my needs change to require more than that in the future it is time for a new build After another thread here on a similar Topic the GT 430 for $100 seems like an ok option . pp . co . nz/products . php?pp_id=AA26139 . " target="_blank">www . pp . co . nz However there are no guarantees it'll fix your issues, depends if the playback software can utilise the graphics card or just uses the CPU . A lot of video acceleration doesn't work under XP for example as I discovered trying to get some transcoding software to work, turns out it needed vista or later to use graphics acceleration . Hmmm, I hadn't thought about this . I am still running XP and mostly use windows media player or VLC . It's not a powerful card and won't game well at high resolutions if that's a factor but you don't mention gaming . It will play most current games on a lower res screen maybe with reduced settings for some, check out . pcworld . co . nz/showthread . php?125017-Graphics-Card" target="_blank">pressf1 . pcworld . co . nz for some links and discussion . No, there is just the one 6 year old game actually - GTR2, wouldn't think the XP/video accel issues you mentioned should apply to this? TBH Chill, anything over a 6770 will be bottlenecked by that CPU . . . . . and I have yet to see a Pentium D make any use of over 2GB of RAM . . . plus, he would probably need a new PSU as well, so i would flag the upgrade period and save for a new i3 box! Any more opinions on this? I never would have thought going from 2GB to 4GB would be a waste of money? |
Andrew123 (16643) | ||
| 1279620 | 2012-06-06 02:07:00 | Get yourself something cheap and nasty then if that's all you want it for, playing back the HD movies. Something like a 5450 is only like $60ish IIRC? Pretty sure the 5450 handles offloading h.264 decoding to the GPU? | Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1279621 | 2012-06-06 02:50:00 | 6450 probably, they added hardware blu-ray decode to the firmware or something IIRC for the 6 series. | dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1279622 | 2012-06-06 03:09:00 | www.amd.com says it's the "HD series" :) EDIT: See also Post #8 here: forums.bit-tech.net |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1279623 | 2012-06-06 03:37:00 | Very slight increase from what? Would expect a LOT more than 1-5fps from what my on board graphics can do!? I meant when compared to the 7750. |
icow (15313) | ||
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