Heavy Gamer budget graphics card

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Flakes

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 10, 2009
Messages
185
Hi all,

My trusty 8800GTX has just bit the dust and although it has served me well and never struggled with a single game to date(including recent games like skyrim). I am now in need of finding a graphics card and for the first time i have a budget of about 100pound, coupled with the fact i havnt looked at the graphics card market for a couple of years, i am unsure which card to go for, although Nvidia has served me well im willing to switch for more bang for the buck.

My first time picking a graphics card on a budget tbh, normally just pick the top range one, im not even sure whether to go for the 600 series or 500 series?

at the moment the games i play are:

Diablo 3
Skyrim
Counter Strike Source (i know pretty much anything will play this)
Crysis
Supreme Commander
 
not great lol...


AMD X3 435
Corsair XMS2 2GB RAM
Gigabyte M68M-S2P Motherboard
4 Seagate 300GB Drives split into 2 RAID 0 Arrays
 
100 pounds is about 200 bucks right?

That's tough for a replacement of a legendary card like the 8800 GTX.

If you can go 300, the 660 Ti is outrageous.:D
If you want more VRam the HD 7950 is the same price.
 
featsdontfailme said:
100 pounds is about 200 bucks right?

That's tough for a replacement of a legendary card like the 8800 GTX.

If you can go 300, the 660 Ti is outrageous.:D
If you want more VRam the HD 7950 is the same price.
Click to expand...

lol yep, just been looking at the 660Ti its around 250pound if i bought that the OH would snap my arm off...

The AMD cards look promising its just that im put off that they appear to have more shader and graphic problems in certain games(theres a recent review that pops to mind, ill have to see if i can find it). and again the 7950 is outta the price range.... This is gonna be tough lol.

what do you think of the 7770(http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-amd/radeon-hd-7770-pci-e)? or back a generation to 560 GTX or are they just not up to scratch( i cant find a recent review)
 
It's funny how people are suggesting cards 2-3x his budget :D Everything in the UK is inclusive of 20% VAT so £100 is actually £83/$130 before tax if you want to convert to US$ equivalent.

I think the 7770 is the best bet, although there's much better deals to be had on the used market like a GTX 470/480 for around that price.
 
A 7770 would probably just fine. I would look at a used 560 or 6870. Your CPU is going to be your bottleneck so a really powerful GPU won't improve your performance much.
 
Flakes said:
Hi all,

My trusty 8800GTX has just bit the dust and although it has served me well and never struggled with a single game to date(including recent games like skyrim). I am now in need of finding a graphics card and for the first time i have a budget of about 100pound, coupled with the fact i havnt looked at the graphics card market for a couple of years, i am unsure which card to go for, although Nvidia has served me well im willing to switch for more bang for the buck.

My first time picking a graphics card on a budget tbh, normally just pick the top range one, im not even sure whether to go for the 600 series or 500 series?

at the moment the games i play are:

Diablo 3
Skyrim
Counter Strike Source (i know pretty much anything will play this)
Crysis
Supreme Commander
Click to expand...


Syrim is a VRAM hog if you're using those high texture packs and such. But I would probably say HD 7950 ( I don't know what resolution you play ). But Diablo2, Counter Strike Source, Crysis and Supreme Commader will be fine with a 2GB card also.
 
Flakes said:
not great lol...


AMD X3 435
Corsair XMS2 2GB RAM
Gigabyte M68M-S2P Motherboard
4 Seagate 300GB Drives split into 2 RAID 0 Arrays
Click to expand...

I am not sure if you're going to CPU limited with that setup. 2GB of total RAM?
 
try to find people selling 6950/6970 560Ti/570GTX on hardforum or sales on sites. they are around just keep looking.I saw a 570GTX for 180$ the other day (where i dont remember)
 
I'd suggest the HD 7770 as well.

If you can, get the 7850 if you can find one at a decent price over there
 
spinejam said:
I'd get a nice 7950 and call it a day! :)
Click to expand...
I hope you are joking because that would be a huge waste on a system with modest Athlon cpu and 2gb of system ram.

OP, no matter what card you go with, you need more system ram for sure.
 
cannondale06 said:
I hope you are joking because that would be a huge waste on a system with modest Athlon cpu and 2gb of system ram.

OP, no matter what card you go with, you need more system ram for sure.
Click to expand...
Exactly, my Win 7 uses 2GB as soon as it boots up!

Remember, he said a budget of £100 which in the UK will only be something like a 6850 or 7770 (maybe a GTX 460 if he can find one). Obviously there'll be stuff on ebay too but that's very variable.
 
Love the hate on the 2GB of RAM and although i tend to agree i havnt got enough, i havnt played a game yet that eats it, Photoshop mabye, but my RAM usage is pretty constant, certaintly havnt seen my machine use the page file yet.

Think ill go for the 7770 and at a later date ill up the RAM, think im looking to upgrade to the other parts anyway, for 200pound i can get i5 with 4GB RAM and Motherboard, which would bring this rig upto modern midrange gaming machine coupled with a 7770. This will be the first build with me owning my own home so money is tight.
 
Flakes said:
Love the hate on the 2GB of RAM and although i tend to agree i havnt got enough, i havnt played a game yet that eats it, Photoshop mabye, but my RAM usage is pretty constant, certaintly havnt seen my machine use the page file yet.

Think ill go for the 7770 and at a later date ill up the RAM, think im looking to upgrade to the other parts anyway, for 200pound i can get i5 with 4GB RAM and Motherboard, which would bring this rig upto modern midrange gaming machine coupled with a 7770. This will be the first build with me owning my own home so money is tight.
Click to expand...
you have to be kidding if you are on Vista or 7. 2gb of ram was not even enough for some games a few years ago as they would hitch. I know this for fact as Warhead and Clear Sky required me to upgrade to more than 2gb of ram. Vista or 7 will use around 1gb doing nothing but sitting on the desktop and there are games that use over 1gb of ram so that means using the hard drive for virtual memory which will cause hitching.

and at this point it would be silly to go with only 4gb if getting a new setup as you will already be starting at the very minimum needed for a gaming pc. BF 3 and a couple of other games can already run and load better on 8gb than on 4gb even though the game itself does not use a ton of ram.
 
I feel like dejavu from 2009, this was discussed lots when Windows 7 came out, the memory usage is reported differently to XP.

In Windows 7 it reserves memory for programs and so reports that say 80% of RAM is in use when actually only 10% of RAM is in use, then when a program is loaded it releases the RAM to the program. BF 3 slowness is probably due to sloppy programming just look at the bugs in BF and BF2 :p
 
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Your in need of a card right now sense yours is dead so get what you can afford and live with it till you can build a new sys.

Why spend more than you can afford right now just get your game system going again so it can play the games you playing at this time.
 
mangyrat said:
Your in need of a card right now sense yours is dead so get what you can afford and live with it till you can build a new sys.

Why spend more than you can afford right now just get your game system going again so it can play the games you playing at this time.
Click to expand...

Basically this I mean, I'm sure hes not expecting the world, but he still can carry over this card with a new build when he has money, or sell it for something better.
 
I would go for an used 6850 or 6870 and 2Gb more of ram, I think you can get both for around £100.00

6850/70 are a little bit better than a 7770, but if you want something new the 7770 is the best option.
 
Flakes said:
I feel like dejavu from 2009, this was discussed lots when Windows 7 came out, the memory usage is reported differently to XP.

In Windows 7 it reserves memory for programs and so reports that say 80% of RAM is in use when actually only 10% of RAM is in use, then when a program is loaded it releases the RAM to the program. BF 3 slowness is probably due to sloppy programming just look at the bugs in BF and BF2 :p
Click to expand...
No, there's a marked difference in load times even switching from 4GB to 6GB (unless I shutdown everything else before launching).

RAM is so cheap these days it would be bonkers not to get at least 8GB.

But yeah, I would grab a 6850 or equivalent and an extra 2GB RAM. Shouldn't cost much more than your £100 budget.
 
Flakes said:
I feel like dejavu from 2009, this was discussed lots when Windows 7 came out, the memory usage is reported differently to XP.

In Windows 7 it reserves memory for programs and so reports that say 80% of RAM is in use when actually only 10% of RAM is in use, then when a program is loaded it releases the RAM to the program. BF 3 slowness is probably due to sloppy programming just look at the bugs in BF and BF2 :p
Click to expand...
I am talking about real world usage here. AGAIN I had to upgrade from 2gb of memory when Warhead and Clear Sky came out several years ago. there is NO way you are playing newer games on Windows 7 with only 2gb of ram and not experiencing some hitching.

basically the 2gb vs 4gb debate for a gaming pc ended several years ago and its clear that in 2012, 2gb is not enough. I guess are you going to debate 512mb vs 1gb of vram too? lol

EDIT: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...d-general-info-about-the-game/Reviews/?page=2

As our benchmarks reveal, a smooth gameplay with 2 GiByte memory is possible on XP only, on Vista the screen freezes up to one second in some situations.
 
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although I don't like the brand, I've heard nothing but good things about the 7950, in that range that sounds like a good choice.
 
You may be able to find a 560ti used for that price.

Otherwise, save up until you can get a 660ti.
 
A Geforce 640 is in that price range, but saving up is, indeed, a better bet.
 
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