Upgrading a graphics card

R

rgnr

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Hello, I'm planning to replace my old GeForce 7600GT with something new. Now... my PC specs are:
AMD Athlon 64 2000+ 4*1GB DDR-400 WD 500GB Caviar Blue on ASUS A8n32SLI-Deluxe (PCI-E *16). I'm not a kind of a hardcore gamer, so (1280*1024 is more than enough), neither an overcloaker (no dual GPUs), neither I'm a TV freak (gotta 17" BENQ FP737s). ATI GPUs are not welcome though. All I want is an upgrade to a next-gen GPU, that can provide an acceptable (mid-end) playability with modern games such as COD4, Crysis, Farcry2, Fallout 3, etc. Currently I have 3 choices : GF 9800GX2, GF GTS 250, GF GTX 460.
I can afford $200-$300, but I don't want to overpay for minor advantages I won't even mention. This is gonna be a core major upgrade, not a bugfixing sh*t. Regards.

UPDATE: My PSU is XION 2.0 Powereal 600W.
 
The 460 is awesome, but your system might be bottlenecking that kind of power (I don't know much about AMD CPUs, but I know that this one's not that new). I think that the best bet would be 250, since the 9800GX2 is kind of a freak and the raw power is not balanced out (driver glitches etc..., plus it's the older kind of architecture, etc.). The 250 might give better overall experience.
 
Yeah, kinda 7yo system I have. Just recently upgraded to 500G WDC and 4GB DDR-400 RAM. So GTX 460 is a bottleneck? What should I do then? Upgrade CPU and mobo?
 
If you want the 480, then that's the way to go. And you'll have to get new RAM, too, of course (DDR3)
 
If you change your motherboard to something modern, then no. They all will have DDR2 at the very least.
 
edijs said:
If you change your motherboard to something modern, then no. They all will have DDR2 at the very least.
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So, which would you advise me considering I'm not changing mobo and CPU? I'm not much of a gamer and will survive highest-end GFX :D Is there any good card for my current specs?
 
I still think that a geforce 250 could be the best video cards to take, all things considered. Anything above that would be bottlenecked, I think. I would advice to get a second opinion on that, of course, but all in all that's how I think it should go down.
 
edijs said:
I still think that a geforce 250 could be the best video cards to take, all things considered. Anything above that would be bottlenecked, I think. I would advice to get a second opinion on that, of course, but all in all that's how I think it should go down.
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Done and done! i'll follow your advice and go for GTS 250. Now tell me, of which brand to choose and how much VRAM to take?
 
Cool, I would do that if I was in your situation. Anyway, I like XFX very much, but you have to check out all the vendors. Sparkle isn't all that bad, consider also MSI (they sometimes have great cooling solutions). As for the VRAM, well GDDR5 and GDDR3 are quite fast, so anything between 512MB and 1GB will be good enough (anything bigger than that and the video card will simply not use the whole amount, like I had a Geforce 5500 with 256MB of DDR VRAM. I am sure as hell that it didn't need that much :D cause it was too slow to use all of that memory)
 
edijs said:
Cool, I would do that if I was in your situation. Anyway, I like XFX very much, but you have to check out all the vendors. Sparkle isn't all that bad, consider also MSI (they sometimes have great cooling solutions). As for the VRAM, well GDDR5 and GDDR3 are quite fast, so anything between 512MB and 1GB will be good enough (anything bigger than that and the video card will simply not use the whole amount, like I had a Geforce 5500 with 256MB of DDR VRAM. I am sure as hell that it didn't need that much :D cause it was too slow to use all of that memory)
Click to expand...

Last question (before last actually): will this gpu not kill my system?
 
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