Looking to upgrade Graphics Card

[Deleted]

Evening everyone, as the title suggests I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card as, essentially, I've just gotten into a 25 man raiding guild and only just remembered that my PC absolutely cannot handle raiding 25 man efficiently - it's reasonable on bosses like Shannox (even then not great), but bosses such as Alysrazor when she lands, give me sub 1 FPS. And I could really do upgrading.

My budget isn't huge unfortunately, I'm looking at spending up £150 max. if possible (246.270 USD according to current exchange rates, to help you guys). So I know that's not great, so I'm not expecting a top of the range, but I just need to be able to run Firelands 25 man well. It seems awfully odd that I can get 60 FPS flying around Hyjal, but then sup 1 FPS in the raid.

My current card is nVidia 8800 GT, and my motherboard supports SLI, but it's pretty old and apparently linking them is a bit dodgy now. So I'm prepared to entirely scrap the idea of linking them through SLI, as long as I can get a decent graphics card now. My processor isn't great either so I'm going to upgrade that too when I get a bit more cash, but this is my current want for now.

So if anyone can help me out, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.


P.S. My friend also wants to know what the difference between his AMD Phenom and the AMD Phenom II is? Cheers.

[BicycleMafioso]

I think you'd be far better off replacing your CPU than your video-card, as that is what determines 25-man performance.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the incredibly fast reply, I think you might definitely be right; I'm not at home and as such cannot get the exact spec, but it's pretty old and if I remember correctly, it's 2.6 Ghz Dual Core. Sounds pretty poor to me.

Is there any kind of decent CPU I can get for my Graphics budget? Or do I need a bit more to get something decent?

Thanks again.

[OhpUldum]

We would need to know the motherboard to give you a better idea. To find that out you take off the side panel and there should be a model name printed onto the motherboard.

[Deleted]

Managed to get in contact with someone at home and run a programme to get some system information, here's what I've got:

Motherboard:
Board: Asus GX9000 1.xx
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies LTD. Asus P59N2/SLI ACPI BIOS Revision 0501 4/3/2006

Processor:
3.20GHz Intel Pentium D
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Mutil-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Let me know if you need anything else.

[OhpUldum]

Intel Pentium D came on the socket 775 motherboards. You could upgrade to a dual core E series or a quad core Q series but you could be looking at $75 to $225 to just upgrade the processor. If you're looking for a quick fix for a year you could upgrade to an E5000 series Intel CPU for around that $75 to $100 mark and at least get adequate performance for a year.

But I guarantee come next year you will to upgrade the motherboard, memory, cpu, and GPU.

[Deleted]

A quick fix may be fine, since I'm starting Uni later this year and am pretty likely to get a job and fully upgrade my PC at some point in the future, but obviously it'd be nice if I could get something that'd last. My knowledge of hardware of PCs is pretty limited so I've no idea what the better CPUs to go for would be, if you could check out the site for 'PC World UK' (can't link things since I'm a relatively new poster) and give me an idea on what I should be looking at on there, I'd be grateful.

[mercutiouk]

Hmmm, personally i'd say avoid PC world like the plague. Any local computer shop will generally beat their price and anywhere decent online will beat that.

With the limited budget it's hard to say what will make the biggest difference but it would be nice to know the graphics card too.

What you COULD do is:

Biostar H61ML H61 Socket 1155 6 Channel HD Audio mATX Motherboard - £45.18
Intel Pentium G840 2.8GHz Socket 1155 3MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor - £60.74
Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1066MHz i5 Memory Kit 1.5V CL7 - £25

All from ebuyer and total is £131ish

The bonus here is you get a really heavilly feature restricted i3 (which smokes the core 2 duo upgrades being suggested) while buying board and ram that are i5/i7 sandybridge compatible. You simply need to drop a big processor and a better graphics card on this when you get your money and you are golden.
The boards a BIT basic but as you say your PC knowledge is limited playing with overclocking etc isn't needed (which is what better boards offer). The ram is also cheap n cheerful (but from a relatively decent brand at least) but again, unless you know how to tweak and push your hardware is fine for your needs.

Least I checked that chip smokes most of the core2duo's as well (it's basically a really feature trimmed i3). A pretty randomly googled review of the chips: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...40-g620_2.html

If you wanted the bottom end i3 chip is £20 more and JUST meets the top end of your budget There's not much in it though

[OhpUldum]

Merc makes a good suggestion, one that I hadn't thought of actually. The only thing I would do is change the motherboard to a P67 motherboard since then when you go to upgrade the CPU you could go with an unlocked i5 and overclock it. If you have no need or want to overclock then that H61 board is good to go.

[Deleted]

Hmmm, personally i'd say avoid PC world like the plague. Any local computer shop will generally beat their price and anywhere decent online will beat that.

With the limited budget it's hard to say what will make the biggest difference but it would be nice to know the graphics card too.

What you COULD do is:

<can't post links as a new poster>

All from ebuyer and total is £131ish

The bonus here is you get a really heavilly feature restricted i3 (which smokes the core 2 duo upgrades being suggested) while buying board and ram that are i5/i7 sandybridge compatible. You simply need to drop a big processor and a better graphics card on this when you get your money and you are golden.
The board a BIT basic but as you say your PC knowledge is limited playing with overclocking etc isn't needed (which is what better boards offer). The ram is also cheap n cheerful (but from a relatively decent brand at least) but again, unless you know how to tweak and push your hardware is fine for your needs.

Least I checked that chip smokes most of the core2duo's as well (it's basically a really feature trimmed i3). A pretty randomly googled review of the chips: <same again>

If you wanted the bottom end i3 chip is £20 more and JUST meets the top end of your budget There's not much in it though

Cheers for the heads up about PC World, there's not really any decent stores I can think of near me, but I'll search around, and if not, I'll use ebuyer as you mentioned (one of my friends is always on about getting good deals on there).

The RAM is definitely a welcome upgrade, and I can't really comment on whether it's a good motherboard, but I'll take your word for it :> Can you tell me a little more about that processor? Like, it says 2.8 GHz and my current is 3.20 Ghz Dual Core - maybe I'm just missing something obvious, or I'm just highlighting my lesser knowledge of PCs, but is that not worse than mine?

All I can tell you about my Graphics Card from here is that it's nVidia Geforce 8800 GT, I think 512mb. I know that's pretty outdated but I don't know if it's really detrimental to WoWs performance.

Thanks for all your help, I'd get nowhere on my own and end up buying some low end rubbish. :>

---------- Post added 2011-07-31 at 01:07 AM ----------

Also, (sorry to double post), let's say I did buy the motherboard, CPU and RAM in question; would I need to reformat my PC? I searched the net and the answer seems to be no - there's even a method to install a new motherboard without reformatting apparently - but can I get some confirmation?

Lastly, is it as simple as replacing the parts in my PC? Or do I need some software to get them running etc?

Thanks again.