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Monacle me a £300 quiet graphics card

Hades

Hades

Hades

Man of Honour
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
29,892
Location
Surrey
Well where to start...

I haven't upgraded anything in years as my gaming days seemed to be well and truly over. I'd never really found anything to entertain me since my old Quake days. However I've recently become just a touch enthrawled with Hawken and, surprise, surprise, my stone age PC is no longer up to the task. It is a miserable state of affairs to be in because when Quake took over my life then money was no object.

Nowadays however I have a family and am more restricted on budget.

I am looking for a graphics card up to £300. But it has to be fairly quiet as I also use the PC for work.

My Current System

Q9450 (stock speed - don't wan't to overclock much as stability is key for work)
8gb RAM
600w PSU
GTX 260
Dell 3007 30" with 2560x1600 max res


Is it worth upgrading only the graphics card or should I really consider a CPU upgrade first/soon after? Ideally I'd prefer not to as this will reduce the graphics card budget to some extent.

Will the PSU be sufficient?

What's a reasonable graphics card for £300 nowadays? Budget is not set in stone and is only a guide.

One last thing... I don't mind playing on lower texture settings as I find it usually makes a clearer display but would like to run Hawken at 2560x1600 if possible (1280x800 is a possibility).


Many thank you's :)
 
As you don't want to overclock the cpu much, I think you'd be best off buying a new cpu and mobo, - though personally I would give overclocking a try first. It wasn't long ago I was using an overclocked Q6600 coupled with an overclocked gtx480, which worked well. However, that said, even a highly overclocked Q9450 will hold back most modern cards to some degree.

What make is your psu?
 
Hawken favours NV cards iirc, so maybe a GTX670? Is in budget and might be worth the investment as you can bring it over to a new platform if/when you upgrade
 
arc@css said:
As you don't want to overclock the cpu much, I think you'd be best off buying a new cpu and mobo, - though personally I would give overclocking a try first. It wasn't long ago I was using an overclocked Q6600 coupled with an overclocked gtx480, which worked well. However, that said, even a highly overclocked Q9450 will hold back most modern cards to some degree.

What make is your psu?
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking - maybe time for a CPU too.

Old skool Seasonic PSU. So a good PSU although quite old.

I'm not averse to overclocking. Back in the days of Pentium 2's and AMD Thunderbirds with pencil mods I was overclocking. I've watercooled in the past and loved the silence and overclocking headroom. But my system is extremely quiet for an air cooled one now (CPU fan turned off and still able to be cooled by two slow case fans) so I think that overclocking would increase the noise unless I go watercooled again.


d_brennen said:
Hawken favours NV cards iirc, so maybe a GTX670? Is in budget and might be worth the investment as you can bring it over to a new platform if/when you upgrade
Click to expand...

Thanks. NV is preferred as I use Linux too (which favours NV). I would consider AMD for the right card though.
 
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straxusii said:
Given you've got a reasonable quad core, although a couple of generations old, I'd start with GPU and see if you need the CPU upgrade.

Given your spec I'd go for a 7950 with a decent custom cooler like the windforce, so something like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-098-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673

On this week only offer at £248, great bang for the buck.
Click to expand...

This is a great graphics card (and it would be the best bang-for-buck) but I think the OP had a preference for nVidia because of his Linux usage.
 
I don't know what Nvidia's Drivers are like in Linux. but i use Linux and AMD. no problems at all with their drivers for a while now, there pretty good. :)
 
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Thanks guys. AMD is still an option so I will take a look at that one. Any other suggestions?
 
I'd save some money and get an HD7950. The nVidia option is the GTX670, which is about £100 more.
 
I've guess something like a Nvidia GTX 660 would probably be the best bang for you buck as that handles just about any new game out there reasonably at 1920x1080 but I don't know how badly a Q9600 would bottleneck it. If you're contemplating spending £300 on a video card I'd be looking to upgrade your CPU as a GTX 670 will likely be wasted on your current rig.

I tried running my current NVidia GTX 470 a couple of years ago when I bought it on my old PC Core2Duo E6600 and there was barely any difference between that and my old GTX 8800. I only really started getting playable frame rates in game after I combined the GTX 470 with an i7-920 CPU. YMMV though but I suspect you're probably at the point where you'll need a new system to get a decent performance boost from a new vid card.

Might be worth posting in the Hawken thread in the gaming forum and seeing what everyone else is running hardware wise?
 
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Thanks guys. I guess there is no harm getting the graphics card now and looking for a deal on a new motherboard, CPU and ram as the next stage.

I will also bump the CPU speed slightly in the mean time.
 
Ahhh the quake days were some of the best years for gaming, More a quake 2 man myself but god did it take over my life.

Anyway, I would definately just get a graphics card for now as your mainly playing hawken, any decent graphics card will do you good. Hopefully you got yourself a gtx 680 :-)
 
d_brennen said:
Saw your post in the MM for the 680, good buy IMO!
Click to expand...

Yes I couldn't resist. But sadly gazaa had just sold the card to his cousin so the deal fell through. I'm still looking though :)

Ian Evey said:
Ahhh the quake days were some of the best years for gaming, More a quake 2 man myself but god did it take over my life.

Anyway, I would definately just get a graphics card for now as your mainly playing hawken, any decent graphics card will do you good. Hopefully you got yourself a gtx 680 :-)
Click to expand...

Q2 CTF was my main game, way back in the day. I haven't really found anything quite as engaging since. Q3 Classic CTF came close and then QuakeLive was entertaining for a while but I still miss the Q2 railgun and grapple :D

Still looking for a card as the sale didn't happen.
 
If nothing suits you on the MM , i have a 670 and cant fault it for all games recent or older. I like the 670 and at time of buying it, a 7950 was performing a little worse and cost roughly the same so a 670 was worth it.

Now if i was buying a card and watching the pennies i would deffo get a 7950 ( not an MSI TF III though there has been reported problems with a lot of those cards ) but for £230 to £250 quid the 7950 is well worth it.

Performance is about the same with 670 and 7950 cards so people say.
 
Thanks again. If nothing comes up on the MM soon then I'll go with either the 7950 or possibly the 670. The 7950 is looking the favourite at the moment.
 
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