GPU Buying Guide - (Read first post)

Look, I'd say go for the 6670—ideally with DDR5 memory. If you really want to step things up a bit, maybe look at a 6770 or a 7750. Honestly, anything more than that probably isn't worth your time.

Alexander Moore67 said:That's basically a Best Buy deal for your setup at just $180.

Those haven't been in stock for ages. You won't find them in any local retail shop.

Anyway, I need some quick advice on upgrading an old PC—
(running an Athlon 3500+) which of these two used options would be better?
SAPPHIRE HD 4650 512MB HM DDR2 - for $50
or the sapphire HD 2600 Pro 128bit 256mb - for $33

In other words, how do both of those stack up against the cheapest modern cards (like an ATI 5450, 6450, GeForce 210, or 520gt) that go for about $100 +/-
?

Greetings.
I am looking to upgrade my current PC setup.

Right now, I have
an Athlon 64 X2 5200 dual core,
two sticks of 2GB RAM at 800 MHz,
an ATI Radeon 5570,
and a Chieftec 450W power supply.

I was thinking about picking up a new graphics card—maybe a 6770 or perhaps a Radeon HD 7770—and then, down the road, maybe swapping out the processor... I suppose you could say I'm wondering if I'm headed in the right direction? Or, I guess, would I even really need a better processor at all?

edit: I forgot to mention that the processor is running at 2.7 GHz.

Thank you.

You’re gonna need a new CPU since this one is pretty ancient. I guess you could grab a new GPU for now, but the processor will probably bottleneck it a bit. What motherboard are you running?

Someone is looking at

It seems like a pretty decent card for the price... I'm somewhat torn between picking this up or just going all in on a 6950 in Crossfire...
My only issue is that I can't seem to find a single review for the Zotac 670 unless it's for the JetStream version (which costs me about $267 more).

Actually, scratch that... they pulled the product entirely... and now it’s listed at +$1133.. it was roughly $950
before.http://www.bestbuy.com/product_info.php?c...ducts_id=11552

I guess I don't understand how prices can just fluctuate like this from one minute to the next. -.-

fadedorca66 said:You really need a new processor since this one is getting pretty old. I suppose you could pick up a new graphics card for now, but the CPU might end up "bottlenecking" it—if that's the right term. What kind of motherboard are we looking at here?

The box says this
ASRock aliveNF5-eSATA2

I assume I should be able to install a new processor in there, right?

The only way you're making this work is if you stumble upon a used Phenom X4 9850 or an Athlon X2 6000 somewhere—since, obviously, nobody is actually manufacturing those anymore. But honestly? In my humble opinion, I’d rather just grind for another 1500-$667 and pull the trigger on a whole new setup—motherboard, CPU, RAM, and GPU included. The platform you're running right now is basically a fossil at this point. It's dead.

Look, I’m basically asking you all to point me toward some kind of absolute beast of a graphics card that can actually handle $400...right now I'm stuck with this motherboard , plus I've got this monitor in advance for any help

does this one look like a better bet to you...

Hang in there just a little longer

Availability: Arriving in 2 days

The Radeon HD 7770 definitely isn't some beast.

Taylor Brown said:http://www.newegg.com/p/graphics-card/msi-radeon-hd-7770-1gb-gddr5/58520

Signature

Jeremy Moore75 said:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/gra/radeon-hd-7770-1gb-oc, looks better to you?

MSI’s got an extra year of warranty, decent cooling since you can pick between one or two fans, and the clock speeds are pretty aggressive, I guess.

Hey everyone!

So, my buddy’s internet is totally down right now, so I'm jumping in to try and explain his graphics card dilemma for him.

A few days back, he picked up this old Dell desktop machine
Processor: Intel Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz
Memory: 1GB
Hard drive: 80 GB
Graphics are integrated
GPU Name: Intel 82915G

Intel LGA775 Motherboard

Specs here:

LGA775 Socket Intel® Celeron / Pentium® 4
Intel® i915 Chipset
800MHz FSB
4 DIMM Slots (DDRAM)
18V, DDR 533
Max memory 4GB
No ECC Support
Integrated Intel 82915G Video Controller (Intel? GMA900)
Integrated AD1986 AC97 Audio Codec
1 x Line In
1 x Line Out
1 x Microphone
2 x SATA Controller (no IDE support for hard drives)
1 x IDE controller for Optical drives only
1 x PCI Express (16x) - replaces the AGP port
1 x PCI Express (1x)
2 x PCI Slots (32bit)
4 x USB 2.0 external ports (4 x internal)
Integrated Broadcom NetXtreme GbE LAN Controller (BCM5751)
WOL Support

He’s looking at grabbing a low profile 256MB PCI x16 GDDR1 card,
but what I really wanna know is—could he just get something like a 256MB GDDR2 PCI x16 instead? I've seen people chatting about this on some forums, but I want to be 100% sure before we pull the trigger. I definitely don't want my friend wasting his cash on something that won't even work!
Anyway, hope you guys get what I'm asking. Honestly, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to PC stuff, so sorry if I'm rambling or making zero sense!😁

He can pick up just about any PCI Express card he wants. But honestly, what’s the point of him grabbing some low-profile graphics card? It’s barely an upgrade over integrated graphics—hardly worth the effort. He’d be much better off just putting that money toward more RAM instead.

Benjamin King2 said:He can grab basically any PCI express card he wants. But honestly, what's the point of a low profile card? It's barely an upgrade over integrated graphics anyway. If I were him, I'd just dump that cash into more RAM instead.

Oh man, totally blanked on mentioning that he actually picked up another 1GB of RAM! So he's sitting at 2GB now, which is a win. As for the graphics situation—his current setup is just rocking 64MB, so he's eyeing a 256MB low profile card. He's stuck with the low profile stuff because he's running one of those tiny mini-ITX style cases, so a standard-sized card just won't fit in there!

Maybe they should just grab something like this:

Or perhaps this instead:

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me--it helps a lot, I guess

I'm thinking about picking up this Sapphire Radeon HD3650 512 mb AGP

Motherboard Asus P4S8X-MX
Power supply MSI Platinum x MS-400ATX P4 Intel Processor
Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.66Ghz, 2.66Ghz
2.00GB RAM
My current card is basically junk—just a Radeon 9600 128 plus some freebies

What do you guys think?

I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice on picking out a graphics card that would be compatible with my current setup 🙂

AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ dual core processor

4 GB of RAM

500W power supply

Asus M4A77 motherboard

I'm not sure if there's anything else I should consider, but I'm basically just looking for a slightly better graphics card. If anyone has any solid suggestions, I'd really appreciate the help 🙂)))

It’s a solid move—that Sapphire Radeon HD3650 512 mb AGP Motherboard Asus P4S8X-MX is a massive step up from whatever you're running right now. Honestly, don't even bother looking at anything stronger than a 3650; there's zero point in spending the extra cash since your processor is a bit of a bottleneck for anything more powerful.