Should I get a new graphics card?

C

chunky

New Member
Hey everyone

I am wondering if it is worth getting a new graphics card.
I currently have a very average computer:
Dual Core E7500
4GB DDR3 1066 GHz
512MB graphics card

I do enjoy playing games on my computer, but would it be worth getting a better graphics card, a 1GB maybe? (btw I am not expecting to play every game on high graphics settings)
 
chunky said:
Hey everyone

I am wondering if it is worth getting a new graphics card.
I currently have a very average computer:
Dual Core E7500
4GB DDR3 1066 GHz
512MB graphics card

I do enjoy playing games on my computer, but would it be worth getting a better graphics card, a 1GB maybe? (btw I am not expecting to play every game on high graphics settings)
Click to expand...

depends if your PSu will allow an upgrade but i would definately say yes,

By the fact youve said a 512mb card rather than the name i presume this is a prebuilt machine in which case the card would possibly be quite weak.

Can you find out what psu you have as to upgrade your gpu you may need to upgrade your psu too
 
mikeb2817 said:
depends if your PSu will allow an upgrade but i would definately say yes,

By the fact youve said a 512mb card rather than the name i presume this is a prebuilt machine in which case the card would possibly be quite weak.

Can you find out what psu you have as to upgrade your gpu you may need to upgrade your psu too
Click to expand...

I built it myself, but I was on an extremely tight budget, the gpu is a GeForce 210 and the psu is a not so good 550w one.
 
Well I'm still on a very tight budget, and I was hoping to spend around £50-£60 on a gpu. Is a new psu very important? I know it is not well known, and it is very cheap, but I have had it for over 6 months and it hasn't failed on me once
 
It would be slight risky if you got high end video card. But with your budget, if you go for 5670, it should be OK. But as usual, we would always recommend psu from quality brand.
 
Thanks for the help, so a 5670 would be the best for my price range? Any particular one? (As I have looked and there are lots of different versions :confused:)
 
chunky said:
Thanks for the help, so a 5670 would be the best for my price range? Any particular one? (As I have looked and there are lots of different versions :confused:)
Click to expand...

Brands are generally personal preferance but try to stick with well know brands which have good customer service.

Asus, sapphire, HIS, zotac,

There are lots of manufatcurers so just ask some one on here if your not to sure.

(XFX gpu's look amazing, very stylish but from what iv seen on here recently they have rubbish customer service, so my advice would be cautious about this brand. that said there not bad video cards so you may not need to.)
 
Zotac does NOT have good customer service!!!!


I would go with a gt430 or 440. If he already has a 210, I wouldn't really recommend going to an ATI card.

http://www.ebuyer.com/242834-asus-g...i-out-pci-e-graphics-card-engt430-di-1gd3-lp-

That gt430 is around 5 times stronger than a gt210 and can actually play games pretty decently. The 128 bit gt430's are around the same strength as a 9800gt, which is really impressive.

The PSU is pretty crappy, but if you stick to a card that doesn't need a PCIe 6 pin connector you will probably be ok. But still, replace it as soon as you can afford too.

O and one last thing, the amount of memory on a graphics card has very little to do with anything unless you are gaming on very high resolutions. The biggest two things you look at are stream processors and memory bandwidth. But Nvidia and ATI/AMD do things very differently so you cannot compare stream processors with them only to the same company.
 
boiling it down, divide ATI/AMD by 5 to get nvidia processor count. It only truly works from AMD to nvidia, not vice versa.

And, where are you getting zotec? he linked a saphire HD6770, which IIRC is a good bit better than a GT430.
 
wolfeking said:
boiling it down, divide ATI/AMD by 5 to get nvidia processor count. It only truly works from AMD to nvidia, not vice versa.

And, where are you getting zotec? he linked a saphire HD6770, which IIRC is a good bit better than a GT430.
Click to expand...

Ehh, not really a good way to judge cards by that because like I said memory bandwidth has a alot to do with things now.

PLUS, the 6000 series you cannot do that with. The 6850 has 960 sp's but divided by 5 is only 192, the gts450 has 192 sp's when the 6850 would destroy it in games. The 6850 should be compared to a gtx560 with 336 sp's. So thats not really good to do that.

Someone said earlier to pick brands with good customer support and listed zotac as one of these good brands.

Yes of course the 6770 would mop the floor with a gt430, except on his power supply it would most likely burn out with 5 minutes of gaming. He doesn't have the money to buy a PSU and GPU, so I'm giving the best solution with the money he has to buy now.

Edit- I only see a link to a 6670....which is still stronger than a gt430 by a little. It's a decent card, but here again going from Nvidia to AMD can cause driver issues.
 
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the 6770 was linked in post 13. and sorry, I though you were talking about the card he linked, not just companies. my bad.
 
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