hello me again so ive finally managed to save enough cash to upgrade my monitor. Im going from a cheap as possible 19" tft (1440x900) to a 24" (1920x1080) at the moment i have a xfx 9600 gso screeny below now my next upgrade will be a new gfx card, and i havnt a clue what card would be best so im calling on you fantastic bunch of tech savvy forumites to come to my rescue budget wise £150-200 obviously i would like to play all the newest games at the full resolution but i am willing to turn down the details in-game if the gfx card would struggle. The 1 game i would love to run fully maxed would be fallout 3, other than that the only other game i have that would strain a gfx card is GTA 4 i used cpu-z for info on the rest of my system (btw i have 2GB of ram) also i have a 500w power supply (Antec NeoPower) hopefully my rig is good enough for whichever gfx card you suggest. Feel free to ask any questions and ill do my best to answer. Thanks a million for your replies i really appreciate any help i get
How many PCI-Express connectors does it have? Wait 10 days to see what happens with Nvidia GTX460, otherwise see the prices of Radeon HD 5770, 5830 or 5850 (plus, you should still be able to oc that CPU from 266 to 333FSB easily) EDIT: Forget the 5850 - grab a cheaper GPU and buy yourself 2 more GB of DDR2!
Hi Bindibadgi thanks for the advice, looking in the mobo manual it has: 1x PCI Express x16 slot 3x PCI Express x1 slot 3x PCI slot i found a review of the motherboard here with good images of the board itself i was looking at the 5850 its just above my budget, but budgets tend to get blown out of the window in my house i only run windows 7 32bit so im limited to 3gb of ram if i remeber correctly? is the 5830 better than a 5770? i would look into getting a card with a custom cooler to minimise the noise as the one i have sounds like a friggin tornado lol oh one last thing, gigabye provides a utility for windows to overclock the cpu, is that any good/safer than going in the bios? because i did try when i first put this machine together but i never managed to actually get it to work oh and i only have a stock cooler anyway thanks for the input, im greatfull for any advice
Depends how long you're going to keep the motherboard? I'd say 3GB was still better than 2GB, especially for higher resolutions and newer games. 5830 is marginally better than 5770, but the GTX 460 from Nvidia is literally 2 weeks away and looks possibly quite good. At least on paper. The Windows util is pretty much the same as doing it in the BIOS, except the BIOS. Try Gigabyte's EasyTune software. Plus maybe budget a replacement heatsink if you are because if you start adding a bit of voltage the stock intel one might begin to sound like a tornado.
That gigabyte motherboard is a cracker for the money. Overclocks great, id just use bios. Id go for a 5770
hey mrbungle, i bought that mobo after reading reviews that it was a great board to overclock on, but after printing out 20 odd pages from different forums on how to do it i still couldnt get it to work, ill try the utility gigabyte provide and see how far i can go. Im planning a full system upgrade in roughly a year (hope to save £1,000) but thats only if i can keep the savings coz theres always somthing in this house breaking lol
I would certainly buy some more ram and then see what you can afford for your graphics card, GTX460 might be afordable, otherwise the 5770 or 5830 are very good for the money... As regards o/clocking, I would inclined to do it via BIOS and not EasyTune as it will give you a higher more stable o/c... ________ Avandia Lawsuits
easytune is a pretty safe way to overclock upgrade to 3gb of ram buy 5830 or 5770 then see what clocks you can get 333 fsb is the aim of the day
thank you jbloggs, at the moment ive managed 3ghz through easytune 6 which is a nice increase, ive been looking around and ive seen these two cards 5770 5830 that would leave me with enough for some extra ram which i can get a matching 2gb here rollo - in easytune i tried 333 but i got a blue screen, 300 is stable atm, any ideas why it would blue screen??
yeah i know bios overclocking is best, but i just couldnt get it to work, i followed this guide. at the moment heres a screeny of my overclock plus temps after running a few games and heres a full hardware list for my current pc
add a bit more core voltage - try 1.25V. Also, click on the memory tab and tell us what frequency you're running. Meme - the lady wants quiet and you want her to use a 4890? Yikes.
hi Bindibadgi, i took a screenshot of the memory tab for you i will mess around in the bios tommorow and see what happens need a new cooler tho just dont have any money atm as for the 4890 suggestion, yeah i kinda want a quiet as possible card, i know ill never get one unless i water cool (which is way beyond what i want to do) so thats a no-go at the moment, thanks for the suggestion. Im liking the look of this tho wayyy over budget but i think i could stretch, does anyone own one? would it run off my power supply?
It should run on it.The only problem is that you will be stressing the PSU which may cause it to become to loud for you liking
