Which Graphics Card to get?

[llDemonll]

As sent to me by eddd

Hi there, could you please provide me some assistance with my problem?
I am wanting to install a graphics card in my computer so that i can play wow on the highest possible graphics settings capable for a graphics card within my budget, and was hoping that you could assist me in selecting a suitable graphics card, please?
I have basically 0 knowledge when it comes to computer components/compatibilities, so I will post a sort of spec below, and could you please advise on a graphics card that would allow me to acheive my aim?

Budget: £150 maximum.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad C8200 @ 2.33Ghz
Mainboard: Intel DG45ID
Chipset: Intel G45/43
Ram: DDr2 6144 Mbytes
Graphics: Integrated G45/43 graphics

If it helps at all, am also intending to buy a new monitor with roughly same £150 budget, such as Samsung-B2230H-widescreen-Monitor-70000 (from amazon UK, can't post links)

Thanks in advance for any help you could kindly give!

He would greatly appreciate your help, as he is having troubles posting this on his own!

[Deleted]

Thanks alot, told me I couldn't post as there was an (evidently invisible) image/link/video in my post!

[Xuvial]

GTX 460 1gb. You'll see the price differ between brands and overclocked versions, but all are mostly great.

[Illothe]

Look into the Nvidia GTS 450. Preferably a 128-bit model with 1 GB of dedicated DDR5 memory.

Great card for the money, running 2 of them in my guest rig.

[Deleted]

Thanks for both the suggestions, I found a "Palit SONIC nVIDIA GTX 460 Geforce 1GB Graphics Card", would you class this as "mostly great", xuvial?
Edit: This might sound silly to those more knowledgeable :P But will the graphics card definitely be compatible with whatever components it relies on?

[llDemonll]

Not necessarily. We need to know what brand / model your computer is or what size the PSU in the computer is to see if your computer will even support an external card.

[Moobious]

PSU is a big factor. High end graphics cards suck up lots of power.

[Trispec]

If you have atleast a 500W power supply grab a http://www.bestbuy.com/site/PNY+-+NV...&skuId=1234118, you may be able to get it somewhere else cheaper than bestbuy though, just posted the site for the link to the specs and such.

[yovmit98]

I run a Radeon 4850x and I duel box with max graphics (except shadows) easily. Not sure about your currency but I paid around $125(US) for mine 2-3 years ago?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102834

^ link to see stats, currently newegg appears to be out of stock.

[Xuvial]

Thanks for both the suggestions, I found a "Palit SONIC nVIDIA GTX 460 Geforce 1GB Graphics Card", would you class this as "mostly great", xuvial?

Mmm I wouldn't go for a Palit. For nVidia cards the brands that are more popular with better feedback are evga, asus, gigabyte and msi. I find the evga one rather sexy-looking <3

[DarkBlade6]

GTX 460 or GTS 450

[surfire117]

i have the GTX 460 1gb and i run WoW on full settings with no problem straight out of the box. you can overclock it to. i found it on nuegg really cheap. the were running a special on it. i think its the best bang for the buck.

[Deleted]

GTX460. awesome card

[Deleted]

I run a Radeon 4850x and I duel box with max graphics (except shadows) easily. Not sure about your currency but I paid around $125(US) for mine 2-3 years ago?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102834

^ link to see stats, currently newegg appears to be out of stock.

Point of offering to buy cards that aren't even manufactured now?..

[lethargik]

you will eliminate about half of your potential problems if you get a good brand of power supply... a lot of people just look at the max output and that really doesn't help if the brand is notorious for having shit components.

[treston323]

I just ordered a GTX 460. They are definitely the best cards for the money right now. It will definitely require at least 500W, but you do want some leeway.

[Deleted]

GTS450, GTX460 1GB or ati 5770 would be really good for WoW on that budget

[ThewF]

Here I go I'm going to probably piss a lot of people off with this post but they need to deal with it. I am basing this on your Quad-Core and the speed at which it's binned.


GTX 460 - Your CPU while a Quad-Core does not have the raw gigahertz to take advantage of this graphics card, Quad-Cores are generally not better then dual-cores for gaming because they have lower clock speeds, if a game however takes advantage of more then 1 - 2 threads (which many do not) this is untrue. World of Warcraft uses 1 thread with most other larger games using a maximum of two. Basically this will be bottnecked by your CPU.

HD4850 - Any model, these are dead technology I don't even know why someone would recommend these, he has a budget of roughly $125 American and the 4850's all go for max $65. The 4850 however will not be bottlenecked by the CPU as it's not as powerful of a card, it will however get the job done. I do not recommend this Graphic Card as I said it is old Technology, it has horrible power management, it is lacking DirectX 11 support and that's all I have to say.

GTS 450 - Overpriced piece of crap - This performs AS well as an HD 5770 and performs worse then a 5770 in titles like STALKER: Call of Pripyat, Crysis (which for years has been known to favor Nvidia GPU's), Bad Company 2. I'm basing these on the standard model, when we add overclocking it does become better then the 5770 BUT you can then argue that the 5770 also is overclockable (by a large amount I might add) so it again surpasses the GTS 450.

HD5770 - This is something I can agree with, the 5770 is a wonderful card - it's generally on sale on a lot of retailers for $100 USD, if it's any more expensive then this your best bet is to wait and get it on sale or deal with the normal street price of $125 (which still prices it under the normal non-crap branded GTS 450 price). This is the graphics card that I would recommend for your system as it doesn't have the raw power of a GTX 460 but it still has enough power to push a lot of frames per second out. (You will need to disable filtering in a few titles to stay above 60FPS). Recommended

Power Supply - I read a comment someone had posted, they claimed that "PSU is a big factor. High end graphics cards suck up lots of power". While this is true people tend to overestimate the amount of power systems draw from the wall. As an example a system with two GTX 580's and a Core i7 980x extreme which would be overclocked, and everything else that's needed (some fan's, a few drives, etc) you're looking at around 738 watt's being pulled from the wall at load. This would mean that you could either buy a 1k Watt PSU with a lower efficiency or like myself and many other System Builders do buy a good power supple, something that's in the 80 PLUS Gold area that's in the 800 - 850 watt range would work perfectly for this. For a single GTX 460 system you can get away with the lowest as a 300w Power Supply but this is really stretching it, I'd recommend minimum 450w for it.


And there's my post.

PS: GTX 460's are a great choice, if you're planning on upgrading your CPU, Motherboard and RAM in the future I'd recommend this but at your price point, with the system you currently have it will be bottlenecked horribly.

[Parietis]

World of Warcraft uses 1 thread with most other larger games using a maximum of two.

This is absolutely completely untrue. WoW will utilize (to some degree) every core your processor has. The OP's processor, being older, is probably seeing even higher utilization of all four cores due to the fact that its being pushed harder than a newer CPU would be.

HD4850 - Any model, these are dead technology I don't even know why someone would recommend these, he has a budget of roughly $125 American and the 4850's all go for max $65.

The HD4850 and 4870 are frequently referenced because they put out extremely respectable performance for the price they go for these days, particularly in Crossfire where they can still rival much newer cards (albeit lacking DX11 support). I wouldn't personally recommend one for this budget and this game, but its certainly a viable option. Its no more "dead technology" than the OP's C8200 processor, both being from around 2007-2008.

Edit: It doesn't really change my opinion, but Newegg actually lists the HD4850 for around $100, the 4870 around $120, and the 5770 around $150-160.

HD5770 - This is something I can agree with, the 5770 is a wonderful card - it's generally on sale on a lot of retailers for $100 USD, if it's any more expensive then this your best bet is to wait and get it on sale or deal with the normal street price of $125 (which still prices it under the normal non-crap branded GTS 450 price). This is the graphics card that I would recommend for your system as it doesn't have the raw power of a GTX 460 but it still has enough power to push a lot of frames per second out. (You will need to disable filtering in a few titles to stay above 60FPS).

This is where I agree. The HD 5770 is cheap, better than a single HD 48xx, and one of the only DX11 cards I could justify purchasing for a machine of that age.

[Deleted]

Hd5770 the rest is overkill for your kind of pc you wont be using 40% of those bigger Nvidia cards

Ati > Nvidia lowbudget big bang.