Upgrade Graphics Card. Any advice

amen

I have a dell optiplex GC620 with 4GBs of memory and a Radeon ATI x600 graphics card running Windows 7 64 Bit.
This supports Shadder 2.0

I would like to upgrade to a card that supports shadder 3 and will last about 1-2 years. Hope to buy a new pc then.

Any suggestions?

uberpixie

amen wrote: »

I have a dell optiplex GC620 with 4GBs of memory and a Radeon ATI x600 graphics card running Windows 7 64 Bit.
This supports Shadder 2.0

I would like to upgrade to a card that supports shadder 3 and will last about 1-2 years. Hope to buy a new pc then.

Any suggestions?

a radeon 5770 or lower would be what you should be looking for.
Any idea what PSU you have? This will limit what card your pc will take.

A dualcore pentium D and a 5770 should get you low to medium settings in new games at lowish resolution

What kind of games do you play?

amen

playing IL2:FB, HL:CS, want to play Arma (clan moving to it).

Also want to play Civ 5 when it is out!

I have a dual core P 4 2.8Ghz

no idea of the psu


for the radeon 5770 would the best one be 1GB one?

How can I tell if my existing x600 is a pci or pci express?

sorry for all the questions

VenomIreland

http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/desktops/optix_gx620/pd.aspx?refid=optix_gx620&cs=22&s=dfh

says it's PCI Express, I'm guessing 1.0 x16, which is pretty much the same (AFAIK) as 2.0 x8.

More than enough bandwidth for a 5770, but your CPU may be a bottleneck in many games.

amen

so should I just save up and buy a new pc?

uberpixie

amen wrote: »

so should I just save up and buy a new pc?

Ever think about trying to build your own.... :pac:
(sorry thats the usual response on this forum)

The 5770 is a good card, you could buy it and see what performance you have, if is not good enough, buy or build and transfer the card.

Otherwise you are buying/building new.

VenomIreland

+1 to build your own, I buily my first computer in late July, absolutely loved building it, it IS essentially expensive Lego.

Icyseanfitz

id say go build your own as well im going about building my first as well and if you have any problems these forums are a great place to get help and advice. At the end of the day how hard can it really be

TerrorFirmer

That Pentium D will die a horrible death in most games. I wouldn't even bother getting a 5770, the Pentium D simply won't be able to get anywhere near the ceiling of the cards performance. I had a Pentium D @ 3.5Ghz and the FPS in games went from 80 to 35, I wouldn't like to even imagine with one clocked at 2.8Ghz.

Something like this is more than enough for any Pentium D. It's also a massive upgrade from an X600.

BostonB

I thought most games were GFX bound not CPU bound. I still play games on my laptop with a Dual 2 Core 2ghz and GS7900. That said recent titles are a slide show. COD4 still plays ok, and some of the flight sims.

VenomIreland

Most games depend more on GPU than CPU, yes, however, if you have a weak CPU, it can often bottleneck the Graphics Card and limit your FPS.

TerrorFirmer

BostonB wrote: »

I thought most games were GFX bound not CPU bound. I still play games on my laptop with a Dual 2 Core 2ghz and GS7900. That said recent titles are a slide show. COD4 still plays ok, and some of the flight sims.

CPU isn't as important as GPU but it's still a vital part of the whole package. A 2Ghz Core 2 is actually much faster than a 2.8Ghz Pentium D. It would be the 7900GS holding you back in your case. I've a 9600 in my laptop and it's the bottleneck versus my 2Ghz Core 2 as well. You could pair dual 5970s with a Pentium D 2.8Ghz and games would still run like crap.

uberpixie

BostonB wrote: »

I thought most games were GFX bound not CPU bound. I still play games on my laptop with a Dual 2 Core 2ghz and GS7900. That said recent titles are a slide show. COD4 still plays ok, and some of the flight sims.

An example: I played halflife 2 on an and 2400xp system with a radeon 9800. It was pretty choppy.
Upgraded to an amd 3500 based rig using the same card and I doubled the frames

as venom points out a p4 d is pretty much Is min spec if you are lucky. Arma would prob eat it alive.

lmimmfn

Sorry but that P4 is just rubbish and will bottleneck any gaming card from the past 4 years, i.e. i had a P4 in 2004, got an ati X850 pro and when i used that in a AMD 4200x2 i gained approximately 15% average performance in games.
My old P4 2.4Ghz couldnt play 64 player Battlefield 2 in 2005.

Arma crawled on my old system, and Dual Core E6400 overclocked to 3.55Ghz, so i imagine it would be a slideshow with a P4.

As others have said, best flogging that old P4 rig for 70-100euro and adding 500euro and get yourself a rig thats good for another several years. The P4 was released in 2000( ok, it had some revisions but its ancient ) so.......