Heya Everyone. I thought I might ask around here for a bit of help. I need to upgrade my video card, but I have no real clue what would be worthwhile to get. I need something that will run the newer games fairly decently, the games I play tend to need good graphic cards, like battlefield 2.
I currently have a 2 year old Dell made computer, Intel Quad Core 2.50GHz, with 4 gigs of ram, running Windows Vista 32bit.
My current video cart is a ATI Radeon HD 3600 series with 256 ram.
My computer should be able to support a PCI-E 2.0 x 16 card, but I am not sure what would good to get, when it comes down to brand names and such.
If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would be glad to hear them, and if you need any more info, just let me know.
Oh, where a good place to buy the card would also be helpful, I live out in Merritt, and choices for computer stores are non-existant here :)
How big is your PSU (Power supply)?
I will be needing to get a new power supply to work with the card I get. The one I have is only a 300.
Well how much do you want to spend?
How big is your case? most cards Today are huge and might not fit in a older case.
I like the 5870 or the 5850, either one right now will run almost any game. Then in the future you can always get another and crossfire it.
I probally am looking around $100 to $200, most of the cards I was looking at were around $150. My case is a fair size I think, I do not believe I should have trouble putting in a full size card.
Brand name is something I am a bit worried about. I am not sure if there is much difference between them, but I would not want to get a card just for it to crap out cause it was a bad brand.
Also, where would you recommend getting a video card from?
And thank you very much for your help.
Brand names, well there are lots of good brands (in my eye and experience): ATI, Asus, XFX, Sapphire, Gigabyte, EVGA.
The only one company I had problems so far is Diamond, I would never recommend a Diamond card ever again. I owned one and a friend owned one. My HS fan started to make a grinding sound after a month. My friends card died in under a year, when I email Diamond to ask if I can get a RMA since it was under warranty, I never got a response back. Also they are slow to release updated drivers (Though I just get the drivers from ATI's ite anyways).
I would recommend getting your video card from NCIX since they usually have stuff in stock, if not within 3 day they will have it in stock. Also they will price match from anywhere in Canada as long as you don't go bellow cost.
As for a card within that price rang I would say a XFX Radeon HD 5770. It is a good bang for your buck card, there is also a lifetime warranty covered by XFX so your covered.
Thanks again Tai, I aprechate your help. All of the different brand names had me confused, unsure what was good and what was crap. I think I have a good idea what to look at now, thank you very much. Will do a bit of searching online at the different cards and power supplys to see what will work with my system :)
Your welcome. If you need any help deciding you can always PM me.
I recently bought a EVGA Geforce GTX 460. I cheaped out on the 768 MB model (rather than the gig) but got a deal with a 550 W PSU for ~$320. All of this was from NCIX. Also, EVGA has lifetime warranties on certain models, which is another reason I got that specific card. The other brands Tai said are also all good.
I highly advocate nVidia over ATI if you are a gamer, but there are comparable ATI cards for every nVidia. If you are not a gamer, ATI is probably better, especially if you do any 2D or 3D art.
I find both NCIX and EXPC are good stores to go to, if you can get there in person. EXPC's website sucks, but their have good staff. I am local to both stores, so I am not sure about shipping.
: Prathen October 28, 2010, 06:36:34 -06:00
I will be needing to get a new power supply to work with the card I get. The one I have is only a 300.
One of the shittiest things about Dell/HP "MADE" PCs is that they are very hard to upgrade. Your 300watt PSU will not be enough for any decent cards, and finding a PSU that will fit in your case will probably be very hard.
With that being said, if you get a PSU (500wish), I would recommend a ATI 5770. It will do Dx11 and it's a helouva nice card imo.
Yeah, I found that out about the PSU, doing a bit of info searching. Dell really has made a mess out of their setup, there is no real way to get the power supply out of the machine without half dismantling it, or cutting the wires. Luckally for me, the PSU is a 425w, which unforcently will not run the 5770 very well, but it will let me run a 5670, which is probally what I will end up getting. Was looking at one that was priced at just over $100. It is not as good as I was hoping for, but better then what I have, and getting the other one would run me about $150 for the card, and another $75 for the PSU, plus the time dismantling the computer to get the new PSU in place, the whole time praying I did not break anything :)
I'd probably be getting an Radeon 5870 were I buying something today.
As for ATI vs. nVidia... I dunno. I was an nVidia advocate for a long time, but I've heard they've been dropping the ball lately in terms of power consumption, performance, etc. I don't guarantee that's completely up-to-date, though, since I by and large get my hardware advice from others (read: when I need a new computer I go to Ravenwood and say "what's good right now?" and then buy whatever he recommends. :P )
The 5770 series does dx11, 5600 does dx10. That is basically the major difference.
Re: ati vs nvidia. This really isnt a huge question anymore. they are normally really close. some game designers will lean to one side or the other, but that is fixed pretty quick. An example would be BF BC2, it was made for nvidia cards, but twoh weeks later ati's drivers were updated to be equal to nvidia for that game. The reason I chose ati was because i had a AMD cpu and want xfire.. /shrug. To each there own, hehe.
They are, but since most games these days uses nVidia's PhysX for physics, I've found that nVidia cards tend to perform a bit better with dynamic rendering. Static rendering, such as 3d-modeling and the like, ATI still trumps.
It's more a matter of preference these days, as others have states. I promote nVidia for gaming from my personal preference.
: Zen November 02, 2010, 12:01:16 -06:00
They are, but since most games these days uses nVidia's PhysX for physics, I've found that nVidia cards tend to perform a bit better with dynamic rendering. Static rendering, such as 3d-modeling and the like, ATI still trumps.
It's more a matter of preference these days, as others have states. I promote nVidia for gaming from my personal preference.
I agree, and I used to be a Nvidia fan boi, now I am a ATI fan boi because I am an AMD fanboi.. it's complicated :P
I've got a metal nVidia mini-briefcase thing somewhere that I got with a reference RIVA TNT card back in the day. 's'pretty bitchin'. Got it from a friend in the industry.