Recommend me a new graphics card

kgiller

Just bought COD5, but my graphics card isnt up to it. I have a Radeon X600 series 256MB graphics card, but require a better one to play the new game. Problem is cash at the moment is low, so need recommendations for a new good graphics card that wont break the bank but will handle itself well.

Thanks in advance

Spear

kgiller wrote: »

Just bought COD5, but my graphics card isnt up to it. I have a Radeon X600 series 256MB graphics card, but require a better one to play the new game. Problem is cash at the moment is low, so need recommendations for a new good graphics card that wont break the bank but will handle itself well.

Thanks in advance

AMD 4850 is about €145 or so.

kgiller

ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 System Requirements

* PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
* 450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
* Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
* Minimum 1GB of system memory
* Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
* DVD playback requires DVD drive
* Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive
* For a complete ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card (included) are required

How can i fond out if my PC meets these requirements? Is there a free diagnostic test i can do or what?

Spear

kgiller wrote: »

ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 System Requirements

* PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
* 450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
* Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
* Minimum 1GB of system memory
* Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
* DVD playback requires DVD drive
* Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive
* For a complete ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card (included) are required

How can i fond out if my PC meets these requirements? Is there a free diagnostic test i can do or what?

Everest www.lavalys.com

Sandra www.sisoftware.net

They can't judge your PSU though. If it's a pre-built machine that info should be easily available.

kgiller

Thanks for the help @Spear. Its a dell insprion 9100 desktop. what do i need to look out for when buying a graphics card for this system?

TerrorFirmer

Budget of 50

Budget of 80

Budget of 100


Budget of 150

To give a rough idea. Even the cheapest one there will run COD5 at medium-high on a 17" monitor.

Spear

kgiller wrote: »

Thanks for the help @Spear. Its a dell insprion 9100 desktop. what do i need to look out for when buying a graphics card for this system?

I assume you mean Dimension 9100, in which case that comes with a 375W PSU. You'll need to upgrade that in which case. It does at least have a PCI-E slot.

kgiller

Is there a huge difference between them? And will they all work on my machine? My budget is as low as possible, without resulting in a loss of performance, so if the €150 card is a lot better than the €100 one, id go for that; but if theres little difference that im gona see, id go with the cheaper option.

Also, could you tell me whats the difference between thge cards. Was looking around and can see the same card with different names: ASUS, GIGABYTE, SAPPHRE etc.

Cheers

kgiller

Spear wrote: »

I assume you mean Dimension 9100, in which case that comes with a 375W PSU. You'll need to upgrade that in which case. It does at least have a PCI-E slot.

Ya sorry, Dimension 9100 about 3-4 years old. How does this affect my choice of graphics card? Just to note, i wil be upgrading my PC in a year or 2.

Spear

kgiller wrote: »

Ya sorry, Dimension 9100 about 3-4 years old. How does this affect my choice of graphics card? Just to note, i wil be upgrading my PC in a year or 2.

The machines fairly lacking compared to current machines, only one processor and only 512 meg of RAM by default. Modern games will bottleneck on this aspects and severely limit the performance of a newer graphics card.

kgiller

Spear wrote: »

The machines fairly lacking compared to current machines, only one processor and only 512 meg of RAM by default. Modern games will bottleneck on this aspects and severely limit the performance of a newer graphics card.

Well i have 3 GB of RAM and Pentium 4 Processor. It was top of the range when i bought it, but now its starting to lack behind alright. I just need to know what graphics card will do me for a year or 2 untill i get my new machine.

TerrorFirmer

Didn't realise it was a Pentium 4 based machine, in which case Spears advice is sound.

Best option is to get this card - then think about buying a new machine altogether down the line. No point throwing money into it. A 4670 is also an OK option but it'll be limited by the CPU. At the end of the day the 2600XT is still many times faster then an old X600. It's not really a case of just getting a card that'll last a year or two - because your processor is so old, it'll soon come to the stage when it won't even be officially above minimum requirements for FPS games.

That'll give you a well balanced machine and it'll still play through COD5 fine.

You'll get about 15 euro for the X600 as well to tally into your budget, so at the end of it all it'll cost you the 45 euro net with postage.

edit: just changed details, didn't realize you had 3gb ram.

kgiller

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Didn't realise it was a Pentium 4 based machine, in which case Spears advice is sound.

Best option is to get this card - then think about buying a new machine altogether down the line. No point throwing money into it. A 4670 is also an OK option but it'll be limited by the CPU. At the end of the day the 2600XT is still many times faster then an old X600. It's not really a case of just getting a card that'll last a year or two - because your processor is so old, it'll soon come to the stage when it won't even be officially above minimum requirements for FPS games.

That'll give you a well balanced machine and it'll still play through COD5 fine.

You'll get about 15 euro for the X600 as well to tally into your budget, so at the end of it all it'll cost you the 45 euro net with postage.

edit: just changed details, didn't realize you had 3gb ram.

Thanks. So will this card be able to run the latest games? COD5 etc. ANd will it defiintely work on my PC? If so, it sounds like a plan.

And theres nothing else better than this that will work on my PC?

Thanks for the help lads

TerrorFirmer

Of course there's better cards, but what I was trying to explain is that the CPU is so old, it'll limit what you can actually gain from the card.

By getting a 4670, you'd only be gaining a few frames per second over the 2600XT at double the cost - whereas someone with a decent, dual core processor would see 20-30 frames per second of a difference between the two cards.

Another option for you to look at would be switching to a dual core Pentium D - an old, outdated dual core, but it will still tremendously help out and give your machine a huge boost for games. They sell for outrageous prices however (as in, the price: performance ratio is woeful in comparison to modern processors), and for the upgrade to be effective, you'd have to be looking at a 3.2-3.4Ghz model. You might pick up a cheap one somewhere like Adverts.ie - but again, you'd have to aim for the higher clocked ones, which demand high prices, especially on places like Ebay. Example. Getting a slow 2.66Ghz or 2.8Ghz Pentium D - the cheapest and most common - wouldn't be a whole lot of help.

But that would allow you to stretch your legs quite a bit, and would allow you to utilize something like a 4670 pretty effectively - with a Pentium D @ 3.2Ghz+ and a 4670, COD5 would run at high settings on a 17" monitor, for example.

But to answer the question yes the 2600XT will definitely run COD5.

Matt Simis

Spear wrote: »

I assume you mean Dimension 9100, in which case that comes with a 375W PSU. You'll need to upgrade that in which case. It does at least have a PCI-E slot.

Not necessarily. People seem to be PSU power mad these days. Did you ever read the Anandtech article "Debunking PSU Myths"?
http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3413&p=1


I like to have good, solid PSUs, but the wattage number is very misleading, both in quoted output and listed GFX requirements.

Spear

Matt Simis wrote: »

Not necessarily. People seem to be PSU power mad these days. Did you ever read the Anandtech article "Debunking PSU Myths"?
http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3413&p=1


I like to have good, solid PSUs, but the wattage number is very misleading, both in quoted output and listed GFX requirements.

86W for the CPU, and 160W for the suggested AMD 4850, doesn't leave a lot of headroom out of 375.

Matt Simis

Spear wrote: »

86W for the CPU, and 160W for the suggested AMD 4850, doesn't leave a lot of headroom out of 375.

The HD4850 consumes just 110w at load it would appear, it only has one power connector anyhow right?

From Tech Report:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14967/10

Processor Core 2 Extreme QX9650 3.0GHz
System bus 1333MHz (333MHz quad-pumped)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6
North bridge X38 MCH
Matrix Storage Manager 7.8
Memory size 4GB (4 DIMMs)
Memory type 2 x Corsair DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
Graphics 4850
Total System Power Consumption at load: 236w



Ars Technica also backs up the numbers above on a similar high end system:


Remember, they arent just GFX + CPU, entire system load is in those figures and a 375w (even a terribly inefficient one) is more than fine.

The problem on most forums discussions regarding PSUs is that people look at the absolute maximum quoted power draw on every device which for a variety of reasons is inaccurate in practice.
Seriously, read the Anandtech article!

Spear

Matt Simis wrote: »

The HD4850 consumes just 110w at load it would appear, it only has one power connector anyhow right?

From Tech Report:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14967/10


Remember, they arent just GFX + CPU, entire system load is in those figures and a 375w (even a terribly inefficient one) is more than fine.

The problem on most forums discussions regarding PSUs is that people look at the absolute maximum quoted power draw on every device which for a variety of reasons is inaccurate in practice.
Seriously, read the Anandtech article!

There seems to be a load of contradictory claims regarding the power usage of the 4850, but that figure of 110W is quoted consistently enough that I reckon you're right about it.

kgiller

Where would be the best place to get this Radeon HD 2600 from? Ive looked at a few sites ...

Komplett
Pixmania
Dabs
Elara

Plus, can anyone tell me the diffrence between some of these cards, as they are different prices depending on the name?

TerrorFirmer

Buy the one I linked you to, the 2600XT on Komplett for 45. The 2600Pro is a slower card, and most of them use DDR2 memory. The card can't make use of 512mb of memory either, so a 512MB DDR2 2600Pro is much slower then a 256mb 2600XT (all 2600XT are DDR3).