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reasonable card

S

skinnyck

n00b
Joined
Oct 17, 2011
Messages
58
Hi im looking to get a new card that will fit into an work with my rig i am on a budget an can only spend £100 or less i want to play bf3 im a million miles from top spec i know but with a new card ill be above minium requirements,overwhelmed with the choice can anyone give me a definate answer! On what you would put in if you was me :)

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™2 Quad Q6600 (4 X 2.40GHz) 1066MHz FSB/8MB L2 Cache
Motherboard ASUS® P5N-E SLI: Quad-core CPU Ready, NVIDIA® Dual X8 SLI
Memory (RAM) 4GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz (4x1GB)
Graphics Card 512MB GEFORCE 8800GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT
Memory - 160gb
RAID NONe
Power Supply 500W (Peak) Quiet Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling SUPER QUIET 19 dBA INTEL CPU COOLER
Firewire & Video Editing 2 x IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PORTS (1 onboard, 1 at back panel)
Operating System WINDOWS®7 64bit
 
You could do with saving up for a new CPU and motherboard at some point - normally I'd say overclock the CPU, but I'm amazed that P5N-E SLI hasn't gone up in flames already, mine only lasted 6 months.
A stock Q6600 is going to give you a fairly mediocre frame rate in Battlefield 3 (40fps minimum, 55fps average), but that may be enough for some.

You'll need to tell us what brand the PSU is, as I'd be wary of putting anything more power hungry than an 8800GT in a system with a budget power supply. The fact that the rating of 500W is peak only implies that it's a low quality basic unit, which will also need to be replaced before you fit a new graphics card.
If i'm honest, the entire PC needs to be replaced before too long if you want to play modern games like Battlefield 3.
 
I really wish i had the budget but at this moment to start from scratch im trying to squeeze what i can out of it this rig till THE time comes! well it has passed lol. my psu is FSP group inc thanks for your input
 
FSP units are normally fairly solid for OEMs - not a Packard Bell PC you're using is it? :p
 
cheers sam

min requirements

OS: Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) 32-bit
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics card (NVIDIA): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 or 500 series with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance)
Sound card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD Rom Drive
 
This would be the minimum requirements for Battlefield 3? I'm aware they exist, why are they being posted?
 
recommended requirements

OS: Windows 7 64-bit (got)
Processor: Quad-core CPU (got)
Memory: 4 GB (got)
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics Card: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

judging by this i thought i was fairly close
just the right card that will work with my gear
 
i just posted em to compare
no its not packard bell i had it built by pc specialist
couple of yrs ago
 
Ah ok, I only asked as it was listed like a typical off-the-shelf PC. I considered using PCSpecialist for one of my PCs 5 years ago, but ended up going with Aria instead.
Your CPU does pass the recommended specs (just, it's about the slowest quad core CPU out there, because it was the very first), but the graphics are miles off - the GTX560 is 160% faster than your 8800GT. I am going to guess, however, that the PSU in your system only has one PCIe connectors, which counts out cards like that - in any case, they cost far more than £100.
If you can afford it, get one of these:
http://www.ebuyer.com/284386-his-hd...dmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-card-h685fn1gd

Otherwise go with the 6770 I linked earlier. Neither will meet the recommended specs, but they are both considerable improvements on your 8800GT, and will run the game to a reasonable degree.
 
OK. I know you are on a budget.

I can recommend you the minimum specs I would go with for a video card. I'm not 100% certain what they cost over in the U.K, so that part I'll leave up to you. If all of my four options are too expensive, I'd just save a little bit longer rather than getting something that you will likely not be happy with.

Nvidia:
400 series: GeForce GTX460 1GB or higher
500 series: GeForce GTX560 or higher.

AMD:
HD5000 series: Radeon HD5830 or higher
HD6000 series: Radeon HD6850 or higher.


Shop around and see what deals you can find. Anything lower than one of the four options I have posted above is just not worth spending money on, as you just won't get the experience you are looking for.
 
samuelmorris said:
Otherwise go with the 6770 I linked earlier. Neither will meet the recommended specs, but they are both considerable improvements on your 8800GT, and will run the game to a reasonable degree.
Click to expand...

I can't recommend a 6770 even if you are budget conscious. Sufficient performance to enjoy modern games just isn't there. I consider the 6850 the minimum in the Radeon 6000 family for anyone who wants to play any games. Anything less is for casual desktop users.
 
skinnyck said:
Thank you chaps ive got a clearer view its good to have straight answers for once
Click to expand...

Any time.

For what its worth, it really doesn't look like the 6850 is far off your budget.

I checked out Amazon.co.uk (the only UK retailer I could think of) and they have XFX 6850's for £116.95

They also have HD5830 for £87.00 (can that really be right?)

They have a GTX460 1GB for £131.47 and a GTX560 for £140.48

My list above of minimums for each family still stands. They will perform similarly in most games. That being said, the Radeon 5830 is not as good at tesseltion as the rest, so it may suffer more in newer games.

If you can swing it, I would go the £16.95 over budget and get the 6850 or the £31.47 over budget for the GTX460 1GB. Beware though, there is a GTX460 768Mb card for less money. I would recommend against this, as newer games use more and more VRAM, and this card may start to present a problem.

Personally, I like the GTX460 better than the Radeon 6850 (I have had both in the past). The GTX460 is edged out performance wise by the 6850, but it is very slight. (no more than 1-2fps in most circumstances). It does - however - have much more solid drivers than the 6850. I'm currently on two 6970's in crossfire, and I am starting to wish I'd gone with GTX580's instead, because of the limited drivers. RadeonPro solves most, but not all of the deficiencies.

Also worth noting. Nvidias design has not really changed between the 400 series and the 500 series. By going with a GTX460 you will be getting almost the exact same thing as the GTX560, but with tweaked SP count, and core and memory clocks.
 
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you didn't list the resolution you will be playing at. I run a 22 inch monitor and game at 1680 x 1050 and can max out all settings on almost all current games with a 5770. My father just upgraded to a similar setup as me but has a 19 inch monitor and I recommended that he wouldn't need to buy a graphics card until he upgraded to a 24 inch screen and by that time he would be able to get more bang for his buck. I can squeeze buy in Boarderlands on integrated with all settings turned down.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037893664 said:
I can't recommend a 6770 even if you are budget conscious. Sufficient performance to enjoy modern games just isn't there. I consider the 6850 the minimum in the Radeon 6000 family for anyone who wants to play any games. Anything less is for casual desktop users.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's strictly fair - I know loads of people who use HD5770s for games at 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 and they're fine for them. They aren't max-detail cards, but you have to remember, on 'high' instead of max without AA enabled, that's enough to run the majority of modern games at reasonable resolutions without too low a frame rate. Ultimately there is only about 35-40% separating the HD6770 and HD6850.

The HD5830 will be ex-RMA so that price will be right, but I wouldn't bother when HD6850s are £25 more.
 
silk186 said:
you didn't list the resolution you will be playing at. I run a 22 inch monitor and game at 1680 x 1050 and can max out all settings on almost all current games with a 5770. My father just upgraded to a similar setup as me but has a 19 inch monitor and I recommended that he wouldn't need to buy a graphics card until he upgraded to a 24 inch screen and by that time he would be able to get more bang for his buck. I can squeeze buy in Boarderlands on integrated with all settings turned down.
Click to expand...

Agreed. A 5770 is a pretty decent card. Almost as good as the 5830 I listed above.

Worth noting - however - is that AMD change their naming scheme from the 5000 series to the 6000 series, as they were planning on launching all of the APU integrated GPU's and needed more product number space lower in the range.

Based on this, the replacement for the 57xx was the 68xx, not the 67xx.

Likewise, the replacement for the 58xx was the 69xx, not the 68xx.

This confused a lot of people.

Therefore the 6770 is the successor to the 5670, which wasn't much to write home about. Naturally, being newer and a successor, the 6770 is a little faster than the 5670, but still not enough - IMHO to play modern games well.

Here's your radeon decoder ring:

The first digit is the generation of the card.

The second digit is the performance class within the generation of card.

For 5xxx cards, it is as follows:

HD59xx: highest performance dual GPU on one card.
HD58xx: highest performance single GPU
HD57xx: Gaming performance card
HD56xx: value, not serious gaming
HD55xx and below: Really desktop use only.


For 6xxx cards, it is as follows:

HD69xx: highest performance single or dual GPU
HD68xx: Gaming performance card
HD67xx: value, not serious gaming
HD66xx and below: Really desktop use only.

The third digit is the speed within that family, the last digit is always a 0.

So, a 6870 is faster than a 6850, but slower than a 6950.

A 6950 is slower than a 6970. The 6990 is the fastest, and only dual GPU card.

A 5870 is faster than a 6870, but slower than a 6970.

A 5770 is faster than a 6770, but slower than a 6870.

Does this make sense?


for Nvidia things are a little easier.

Geforce GTX xxx

First digit is the generation, the only ones still worth considering are 4xx and 5xx
Second digit is the performance within the generation.

SE means a slower version, TI means a faster version.

Ignore the letters. They define the class of the card, but they really aren't relevant.

GTS450 < GTX460 SE < GTX460 < GTX470 < GTX480

GTS550 < GTX560 < GTX560 Ti < GTX570 < GTX580

If trying to compare 400 and 500 cards, a GTX460 is typically slower than a GTX560, but not by much.

This repeats across the range.

Hope this helps.
 
samuelmorris said:
I don't think that's strictly fair - I know loads of people who use HD5770s for games at 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 and they're fine for them. They aren't max-detail cards, but you have to remember, on 'high' instead of max without AA enabled, that's enough to run the majority of modern games at reasonable resolutions without too low a frame rate. Ultimately there is only about 35-40% separating the HD6770 and HD6850.

The HD5830 will be ex-RMA so that price will be right, but I wouldn't bother when HD6850s are £25 more.
Click to expand...

Again, the 5770 is a faster card than the 6770 due to the renumbering with the 6xxx generation of cards.

Actually, never mind, this is only the case for the higher end cards. Apparently the 6770 is just a rebadge of the 5770. I don't keep up with the budget cards very much.
 
I don't think you've read the right articles Zarathustra - the HD6770 is a carbon copy of the HD5770 that came before it. The 'successor' to the HD5670 is infact the HD6670 - which is faster, by about 15%.
 
silk186 said:
you didn't list the resolution you will be playing at. I run a 22 inch monitor and game at 1680 x 1050 and can max out all settings on almost all current games with a 5770. My father just upgraded to a similar setup as me but has a 19 inch monitor and I recommended that he wouldn't need to buy a graphics card until he upgraded to a 24 inch screen and by that time he would be able to get more bang for his buck. I can squeeze buy in Boarderlands on integrated with all settings turned down.
Click to expand...

This is a good point.

My recommendations were based on 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 as this is what everyone I know uses, so what I have seen the most comparisons at. If your resolution goes down, you can probably scale down the GPU a little bit too, but I don't have as much experience here. This may come at some eye candy settings penalties too.
 
At both of those resolutions, the HD6770 and HD5770 are identical.

PCAdvisor said:
Given the similarities, it&#8217;s not surprising that there&#8217;s little difference in speed either. Indeed, it&#8217;s notable when there&#8217;s as much as 3fps between them. In Heaven, the Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 produced 26.4fps (1280x800) and 19.2fps (1680x1050). That compares with 25.7fps and 18.7fps for the 5770 &#8211; no more than 0.7fps apart.

In Crysis, the figures of 28.6 and 19.3fps for the Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 compare with 26.8 and 17.7fps for the 5770. This time round the lead is as high as 1.8fps. For Stalker, the gap went up 2.4fps at 1680x1050.
Click to expand...
 
I have it plugged into a 26inch Tv 60hz 1024x768 at the moment runs bad company 2 resonable!(although this is prob all wrong)
I think im tempted with the gtx 460
choices choices
I know a little but im not as teched up as you fellas
the 460 will just pop in there an im up an running an will work in my rig
This card baffles though me at this price it is directx 11
an that is what bf3 demands
http://www.maplin.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gt520-2gb-graphics-card-591636
 
The GT520 is really, really slow. 2GB of memory doesn't mean squat when it can't play games like Bad Company 2 higher than 800x600 on minimum detail. (The 8800GT you have is much faster than this GT520).
 
samuelmorris said:
The GT520 is really, really slow. 2GB of memory doesn't mean squat when it can't play games like Bad Company 2 higher than 800x600 on minimum detail. (The 8800GT you have is much faster than this GT520).
Click to expand...

Second this. The GT520 only has about 17% of the power of a GTX460.

This will make it less than half the performance of your current 8800GT...
 
I'm not usually a fan of Tom's hardware, but these charts are usually helpful if you are not familiar with how different generations of video cards roughly compare.

On here, you can see that a GT520 is roughly equivalent to a 6800GT. Not a bad card in its day (I had one 7 years ago, back before PCI Express was the norm ) but it would be considered completely obsolete today.

The GT520 is for casual desktop use, as a spare video card in servers so they will post, or for a low end HTPC. It is not appropriate for games.
 
Last edited:
I generally try to avoid using THG since the collaboration with nvidia, hence trying to keep up my own list of comparative card performance. To give you a rough idea, I'll throw some of the scores out there:

8600GTS: 20
9500GT: 20
GT520: 20
GT220: 27
GT240: 54
HD5670: 55
8800GT: 60
HD6670: 63
GTS250: 80
HD5770: 95
HD6770: 97
GTX460SE: 113
GTX460 (768MB): 125
HD6850: 132
GTX460 (1GB): 135
 
Well, I would go in a totally different direction.

I have a system very similar to yours, and what I would recommend you do is get a used 8800GT. Does not have to be same brand but it needs to be same amount of RAM.

8800GT SLI in your setup and resolution should extend the life of your rig for quite some time with minimal cash.
 
Man look, $50 Shipped

Get him to ship it to you in the UK prob for a bit more and you are still saving a bunble.

It is a XFX so you will still have lifetime waranty.

Cheers
 
Considering two 8800GTs in SLI are no faster than an HD6770 I don't see what the point of this is. Selling the 8800GT would make up most of the difference there. Dealing with the hassles of SLI on a platform long unsupported versus just slapping in a single card is more trouble than it's worth.

Also remember G92s only have about a 3 year shelf life, those $50 'bargains' are on borrowed time...
 
SpeedyVV said:
Well, I would go in a totally different direction.

I have a system very similar to yours, and what I would recommend you do is get a used 8800GT. Does not have to be same brand but it needs to be same amount of RAM.

8800GT SLI in your setup and resolution should extend the life of your rig for quite some time with minimal cash.
Click to expand...

I would not suggest this.

The system will still suffer from limited VRAM, and - especially in fast paced FPS games - SLI/Crossfire can be a little laggy and have inconsistent framerates that can be very bothersome.

With a GTX460, not only does he get something that's slightly faster than an 8800 GT SLI, but he'll be using less power, he will have DX11 (not important to some, but VERY important if you like Civ5). The GTX460 ought to be better in every regard.

IMHO, SLI/Crossfire or even multiGPU on the same board is almost always a negative. If you compare two systems that get the same frame rate. One has a multiGPU setup the other is single GPU, the single GPU will always be better. Less jerky, more playable and less compatibility issues or waiting for game profiles.

IMHO, the only time its a good idea to go multi-gpu is if one of the fastest GPU's available (GTX580 or HD6970) aren't fast enough for you. Otherwise a single GPU solution is always going to be a better experience.

I wouldn't expect an 8800GT SLI setup to be a great experience in BF3, which was mentioned as one of the reasons for this upgrade.

You are right on one thing though. You can get a used 8800GT for a lot less money than a new GTX460 :p
 
samuelmorris said:
Also remember G92s only have about a 3 year shelf life, those $50 'bargains' are on borrowed time...
Click to expand...

yeah, I still giggle to myself about the Civilization 5 launch and how people where trying to blame their burnt up 8800GT / 9800GT's on 2kGames :p

It was really funny.
 
It happened with Left 4 Dead 2 - hundreds of people are convinced it's Valve's fault their cards died - any game which fully utilises a GPU properly like that will expose hardware flaws, and the G92s were built to a terrible standard. Of all the people I know who had them, they've all but one since upgraded, and only in two cases out of at least a dozen was that for extra performance, and not because the old card failed. G80s weren't much better in that regard. Time will tell how Fermis fare.
 
samuelmorris said:
Time will tell how Fermis fare.
Click to expand...

Seeing how Nvidia essentially hired an army of Thermal/Reliability Engineers after that fiasco, It's not unreasonable to expect them to be a little better.

I also haven't seen as many GTS 250's fail as I have 8800's and 9800's, so maybe they wen't in and tweaked the G92 process after that issue as well.

I just find it hilarious that some people would suggest that its the software's fault for burning up their card. :p

samuelmorris said:
Of all the people I know who had them, they've all but one since upgraded, and only in two cases out of at least a dozen was that for extra performance, and not because the old card failed.
Click to expand...



I also find this a little surprising considering how old they are now. I usually find myself being disappointed in a video cards performance before a year is up, and start looking at replacements.

In fact, since summer 2009, this has been my transition:
1.) 9400GT (I don't play games anymore)
2.) HD5750 (turns out games were fun, I had forgotten about that)
3.) GTX470 (hate the Radeon drivers under linux, and I'd like a little more performance as well)
4.) GTX580 (want m0ar performance)
5.) GTX460 1GB (psu failure + I really only play older games anyway, so I don't need the very high end)
6.) 2x Radeon 6970 in crossfire (actually, they released some fun new games and now that I have a 2560x1600 monitor I need more power)

The 8800GT came out in January 2008 as a mid level part. I can't imagine being satisfied with a video card for that long.
 
October 2007 actually, the 8800GT is four years old at the end of next week!
Also, it wasn't a mid-level part, it was an A-1 product, one off the top end. Back then all you could get was the 8800GTX, the original G80 8800GTS, and the 8800GT, which was faster than the old GTS. The GT became A-2 when the 512MB GTS came out, which performed almost identically to the GTX for less cost.
 
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