Broken Graphics Card; Replacing, Need advice

[Wicko]

Hello community, been lurking for several years, but never posted until now, after seeing the abundance of knowledge thrown around in the computer forum.

My graphics card puttered out, losing display output while playing a 3d game (WoW), not to be confusing, I'm not playing it "in 3D", just specifying that I was not playing an emulated rom 'paper boy', or something.

Anyway, after discussion with my gm, our resident go-to geek, I've learned to pay attention to power connectors and compatibility, and that I'm spending more money than I should be, but he's not very sure where I should be putting my benchmark at.

I have a few games on my machine that I play:
WoW: MoP
GuildWars 2
Diablo 3

Any other games I play are non-consequential, meaning I might play them on a whim but if they couldn't/wouldn't play, or the experience was not optimal - it wouldn't break my heart.

I would, however, like to be able to play Mists of P- on Ultra settings, truly ultra settings, in addition to fraps (or xfire, or gamecam, what have you) recording. I've always wanted to tinker with video editing and compilation, but not with sloppy and skipping footage..

On to my specifications; this is a copy and paste from my old receipt, from ibuypower(dot)com

1 x Case ( NZXT Phantom 410 Gaming Case - Black )
0 x Case Lighting ( None )
1 x Processor ( AMD FX-4100 CPU (4x 3.60GHz/4MB L2 Cache) )
1 x Processor Cooling ( Certified CPU Fan and Heatsink )
1 x Memory ( 8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand )
1 x Video Card ( AMD Radeon HD 6750 - 1GB - Single Card )
1 x Video Card Brand ( Major Brand Powered by AMD or NVIDIA )
1 x Motherboard ( Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 -- AMD 970 )
1 x Motherboard USB / SATA Interface ( Motherboard default USB / SATA Interface )
1 x Power Supply ( 600 Watt -- Standard )
1 x Primary Hard Drive ( 120 GB ADATA S510 SSD - Single Drive )
0 x Data Hard Drive ( None )
1 x Optical Drive ( 24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Selected systems only! - FREE Upgrade to LG BLU-RAY Reader Combo Drive Black )
0 x 2nd Optical Drive ( None )
0 x Flash Media Reader / Writer ( None )
0 x Meter Display ( None )
0 x USB Expansion ( None )
1 x Sound Card ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
1 x Network Card ( Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100) )
1 x Operating System ( Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-Bit )

Ordered that 12/11/2011 at 10:00 p.m., for the record. Links are not available anymore, and I can not post links yet as it is.

One card I had been looking at, having confirmed I had the two 6pin connectors required for it, was this:

amazon.com/gp/product/B008UG2W20?ie=UTF8&tag=cursegaming0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B008UG2W20

My friend says I'm way over-paying for a card that will run wow on ultra and still have power to spare, never running hot, etc..

I'm coming here looking for some advice on a route to take, thanks for your time reading all this if you've made it this far. I tend to ramble!

-B

Oh, for the record.

I am running on a 22" Samsunc Syncmaster monitor, 1680x1050 resolution.

At the time of the card going bad, I also had it connected to a 36" Vizio, I believe 1920x1080, but I'm totally guesstimating that. I didn't really pay attention - I had only been running dual-screen for about a month, having acquired the desk space to do so, but I digress.

[googz]

First off... no warranty?

The card you linked is great, but if you're looking to just get by, you could go with a 560ti and save some money. With the 560 you will still be able to run wow with great frame rates.

If it were me and needing to save a little money, I'd just pick the non overclocked version of the one you have selected.

[Wicko]

The non-overclocked card is $20 cheaper, exactly.

If the performance is really that big of a difference (according to newegg's reviews), then the difference is something I can afford for an investment in the part.

I'm one of those kinds of shoppers, I'm appealing for reassurances that this component will give me what "I'm after" in the purchase; to run my listed games on their max (ultra) settings, and have very (very) high frame rights while doing so, in a raid (or "loaded") environment. I feel pretty good about the rest of my system, but I listed it to make sure nothing else needed to be addressed, but I'm concerned that the chosen graphics card I linked is incompatible, for a reason currently not known to me (?), or some driver flaw I'm unaware of.. call it consumer paranoia.

[Wicko]

The performance of an overclocked GPU is far outweighed by the performance of an overclocked CPU. Even in the best case scenario that you get a card that can overclock by massive amounts, it'll still only make a difference in the top end games and benchmarks. For everything else, it'll make little to no difference. You've then got to deal with more heat, potentially increasing the voltage, and instability.

I'm not sure about GW2, but the other 2 absolutely don't need a top end GPU. That said, the 660Ti is a great card in the midrange and would be the card i'd recommend for someone like you. I'd recommend it over anything from the 5 series (e.g. 560Ti) on the simple basis that they have improved the performance, stability, heat AND noise by an incredible amount with the 600 series cards. I personally switched from 2x 580's to a single 670 and everything became that much nicer. Performance was similar, but keeping temperatures in check wasn't a problem. Both the 580's were watercooled so comparing noise is difficult, but i'll say that even the stock cooler on my 670 was whisper quiet (and aftermarket ones tend to be even quieter), and it never went above 80C (in a case with very little ventilation, that's pretty good and well within it's safe range).

I wouldn't recommend a 670 if you just play those games, but i'll recommend a 6 series card over a 7 series any day. As a bonus, you can even get Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed 3 free with many of them (though check with the retailer you buy from -- bought mine within the NVIDIA promotion period, but unfortunately the store i bought from wasn't runnning that promo at the time and thus i didn't qualify, even contacting NVIDIA directly didn't help). It's not worth buying an overclocked card for the games you list there.

To clarify, in empty MoP zones, i managed 110 FPS no sweat at 1920x1080 with everything maxed out. D3 i sit at 90 FPS minimum in most areas (only the bridge in Act 3 gives issues, but that's known to be heavier than most areas), and that's at 2560x1440 resolution.

You just sold my on the card, thank you very much.

I'd definitely like to get my hands on a comp'd assasins creed 3, or otherwise, but I've tried looking for a retailer in the Austin, Texas area that would carry such a card, and I've had incredible failure. I recently moved to the area, but google search's are yielding no success at finding a location I could walk in to make the purchase, so I have reverted back to looking online. I definitely play other games, frequently, and usually if my system can handle it, I'll experiment with it. Raiding just takes up a lot of gaming energy..