what graphic card to buy

[danibabe572]

I need a new graphics card, and i dont know whats the best one to get, i need it to play online games like....wow, the sims3, Age of coana online.

my processer: AMD athlon(tm) II X4 635 processor 2.90
RAM: 3.00GB.
Waatage is : 300waat

im looking to spend near £80-£100

can anyone please help me thanks

 

[floppybootstomp]

So what's your current graphics card?

Why do you think you need to change it?

What is 'Waatage is: 300waat'?

The games you list don't need a particularly high-specced graphics card, btw.

 

[danibabe572]

its a integrated graphics card : Nvidia geforce 6150se nforce 430

i recently upgraded my monitor , and my graphics card does not support the resolution.

300W - power supply

 

[floppybootstomp]

Sounds like you have a really old system there.

To my mind it's not worth spending any money on it at all, consider a new computer.

 

[danibabe572]

thats funny there lol, i just bought it out of comit this month , so i dunno how it can be old, all i wanted to know what was the best graphic card that i could put in to it better than this integrated card i have.

 

[TriplexDread]

"AMD athlon(tm) II X4 635 processor"

Not really old I think flopps has misread mate

of course there are many hundreds of cards to choose from. Make sure you choose wisely and sometimes its worth spending a little more to save you spending extra in the future

Below is a very small selection of cards I randomly picked out in your price range

Low range
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176604
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179472

Mid range
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/237671
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179657
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/242834
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/155597

High range
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238443
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/235116

For future reference, it's "Watt"

 

[danibabe572]

just to ask another thing, to use this graphics card http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238443 do i need to buy a new power suply?

 

[Reefsmoka]

I would say you need at least a 500w power supply to run a seperate grpahics card, as the graphics card alone can drain around 200watt on its own, with the Processor drawing 100+ watt theres your 300watt gone already and you've not started powering the memory, hard drive, motherboard or optical drives yet.

This is the cheapest decent Power supply/PSU i could find: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/204355

If you havent budgeted for PSU and graphics card together you wont get much graphics card for £50 im afraid.

This is probably the best at £60: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/198821 , You would definatly be better off saving abit more and getting a GTX 460, that will eat up games no problem and last you a good few years as its a very powerful gaphics card for the money.

 

[Reefsmoka]

On second thoughts, i think you would be alright using the Radeon HD 5570 with the current power supply you have. Your processor is pretty good for gaming really and has low power usage, the 5570 has very low power usage aswell.

The Radeon 5570 is a nice card for the money, it not only has a low power rating but runs very cool aswell, you will definatly notice a huge difference going from onboard graphics to a dedicated graphics card because your system will not be using its own ram/memory to power the onboard graphics card anymore and instead use it to make the system faster.

You need to make sure your motherboard has a PCI-E slot for it though. Here is an example of a PCI-E slot (the White slot is one, the red one is one too but you only need one)

Here is the power usage of the HD 5570 on a graph:
Idle

In Use

 

[floppybootstomp]

"AMD athlon(tm) II X4 635 processor"

Not really old I think flopps has misread mate

Bugger

Too much Christmas Pud & Brandy

 

[TriplexDread]

Bugger

Too much Christmas Pud & Brandy

PMSL no worries mate