Posts by Zachary Gomez3

I picked up this GPU a long while ago, right after a lightning strike fried my old 9800GT.

So, I just tried firing up Tomb Raider. It’s barely hitting 25 FPS even on the absolute lowest settings. 😁

Look, even if the card was better, I haven't had a single second to actually go out and buy a new monitor, so I'm still stuck staring at this 1280x1024 screen. Honestly, any cheap, low-end card could probably handle it, but the real issue is that I need to upgrade the whole setup, monitor included.

There’s barely any $133 difference between the 7870 and the 7850. You could argue there’s a performance gap, sure, but I can't help feeling like the 7870 is just marketing overkill. 😁 Honestly, the 7850 seems more than capable enough to handle whatever you throw at it. What do you guys think?

It’s like Americans just don't have a thing for Nvidia, right? Or am I crazy?

I haven't settled on a specific budget yet. I'm basically just trying to figure out what kind of damage I'll have to do to my bank account to actually land a decent graphics card.

Yeah, but that’s my absolute last resort. I was just asking for the sake of knowing. Is there anything actually affordable out there that can still pull its weight? My goal is high graphics settings, obviously—if there's anything cheaper that won't choke immediately, let me know.

Alright, here’s the current rundown (at least the parts that actually matter):

AMD A8-3870 APU Quad-Core 3.00 GHz
4GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450

The processor is doing its job well enough, I guess. But now, I’m looking to swap out this graphics card because it’s seriously lagging behind. Any suggestions? Would a GTX 660 be able to handle things properly?

Benjamin King2 said:Or you could just grab this one: http://www.newegg.com/p/product_info.php?c...oducts_id=7623

That thing is way more powerful than the 9800 GT.

Thanks.

Benjamin King2 said:Or you could just grab something like this:

Is it even worth looking at the cheaper stuff?

I picked up this rig about a year ago, maybe a little longer, and honestly, I’ve been pretty happy with it. Sure, the absolute latest AAA titles are starting to struggle a bit, but it's fine. ^^ The real headache is that my graphics card just kicked the bucket, I think. I'm getting these weird blue and yellow lines streaking all over my screen. Time to go shopping for a replacement. Here’s what I’m running right now:

CPU: DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2900 MHz (14.5 x 200) 5600+
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 (4 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 9800 gt
Is this the RAM?: DIMM1: Kingmax KLDE88F-B8NU5 2 GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM (5-5-5-18 @ 400 MHz) (4-4-4-12 @ 266 MHz) (3-3-3-9 @ 200 MHz) though I have 4GB total
And I have zero clue how to check my power supply specs. ^^

Let me know if I missed anything important.

I want a card that can actually handle modern games—something that isn't going to be obsolete by next Tuesday. Price-wise, I don't know, depends on what's out there, but if I can find something for under $333, that would be great. I don't even remember what I paid for this one. :$ Since I live in a small town, my local shop options are basically non-existent. Ever since that local tech shop closed down, I haven't really kept up with the market. I'm totally lost when it comes to buying stuff. ^^ Might have to order something from a big retailer in Washington, D.C.