Budget video cards.

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EthanJM

Member
Hey, I am building my nephew a system from my old motherboard and other parts. The specs are.

Biostar TA790GXE
AMD Phenom 965 Quad
4 GB 800 mhz DDR2 ram

I want him to have an entry level gaming pc, I really wish I had kept my old 9800gt I had, but it is gone and I have to find something else. I think the best budget video card I have been able to find so far is this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150542

Anyone know of any better suggestions? 70 bucks is about as high as I can go on the card.
 
You're doing fine with this card. I had a Sapphire HD6670 and it worked well. XFX is a good brand.

I upgraded to Sapphire HD7770 for my i5 system. The HD6670 is now in my i3 system.
 
Twiki said:
You're doing fine with this card. I had a Sapphire HD6670 and it worked well. XFX is a good brand.

I upgraded to Sapphire HD7770 for my i5 system. The HD6670 is now in my i3 system.
Click to expand...

So do you think it is in the same league as the 965?
 
The Phenom II X4 965 can do much better than a 6670. You could go up to AMD R7 260X $130-ish without noticing any bottleneck at all.
But that doesn't change your budget I suppose. I would really look at some used GPUs, as I think you could find a much better card for $70
I've tried, but I'm a noob at Ebay, so I don't know if you can use these links to anything. Tried setting it to think I'm from the US.
ASUS HD 6850 1GB: $50.52
EVGA GTX 295 1.75GB: $66 (might be a bit noisy, but much better than a 6670)

Low end GPUs tend to have a really bad price/performance, then mid range cards get up there and then it drops again once you go high end.
 
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The Phenom II X4 965 is underrated I think. You could pair a R9 270X with that CPU and you'd still be good.
 
Alright, thanks for the suggestions. I will attempt to find one used then. If I can't, maybe I can bump up to 100 bucks.
 
Skips said:
What games will he be playing?
Click to expand...

He currently has to play an old junker that is over 10 years old, so he really only gets to play minecraft, and even then he has massive framerate issues. He is only ten, and currently has a ps2, there are so many games he is missing out on. He won't be playing anything that is best online most likely because he is too young to play online, I think there are plenty of classics he would enjoy, half life series, portal, terraria, maybe the newer starbound. I know that card would run them just fine. He is not much of a gamer, he is highly active, much like I was as a kid, but he is showing an interest now. Come to think of it, I don't think he will be playing anything very demanding. I guess that card would do.
 
A 965 is perfect for him then. It's a true quad core, so it'll still be usable for a while to come.
 
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