Recommend me a card for a budget system

[SpiderScripts]

I built my machine a long while back, and this week the graphics card decided to give up so needs replacing.

I only occasionally game now, but do want my computer to be able to cope with a bit of play, and I want to spend as little money as possible, but I'm hopelessly out of touch with current computer components.

The system at the moment is:
Intel Core2Quad Q6600
AMD Radeon HD 4800 series
4GB RAM

I stuck a decent SSD drive in a few months ago which made a big difference, and now I need to replace the GPU.

My aim is to get something which is essentially the same of slightly better, but for minimal cost. I know there are plenty of cards under £100, but it proved difficult to find benchmark comparisons against any of the cards nearer the £50 mark so I have no idea what is the same and what is cheap tack!

 

[Freddie1980]

I'm not sure what 2nd hand prices are like but a gtx670 would work well with those specs. Wit lower end CPU's I would avoid AMD GNC based cards due to their CPU overhead.

If a 670 is to expensive keep an eye out for a 2nd hand 750Ti.

 

[easyrider]

I would upgrade to 8gb ram....

If you overclocked that Q6600 to 3.6 ghz you could drop in a gtx 780 (£100) in MM and it would fly

 

[SpiderScripts]

I'm not sure what 2nd hand prices are like but a gtx670 would work well with those specs. Wit lower end CPU's I would avoid
AMD GNC based cards due to their CPU overhead.

If a 670 is to expensive keep an eye out for a 2nd hand 750Ti.

I'll have a browse for those second hand. I had read that about the new AMD cards, so thanks for the advice.

Is eBay a safe bet, or is there a better place to hunt for second hand components.

I would upgrade to 8gb ram....

If you overclocked that Q6600 to 3.6 ghz you could drop in a gtx 780 (£100) in MM and it would fly

New RAM is on my to-do list as well at some point. No plans to OC the processor at the moment, the space for the tower doesn't have enough airflow to manage the cooling properly. I'm pretty happy with the gaming power to be honest as I don't play much any more (and I certainly don't have any of the newer high spec games), just want it to work nicely!

 

[theforce]

If you are buying new the Radeon 460 is released on the 4th of August. It should perform better than the 4800 series and cost below 100. It also won't need any PCI-E cables to be powered so it is one card to consider.

 

[Freddie1980]

I would upgrade to 8gb ram....

If you overclocked that Q6600 to 3.6 ghz you could drop in a gtx 780 (£100) in MM and it would fly

Defo get 8gb of ram i should hve spotted this. I tried playing Spce Engineers with 4Gb asome time ago and it was a stuttering mess.

Ebay is your bet, we also have a members market but you haven't been a member long enough to access it yet (read the faq for terms).

 

[Panos]

I built my machine a long while back, and this week the graphics card decided to give up so needs replacing.

I only occasionally game now, but do want my computer to be able to cope with a bit of play, and I want to spend as little money as possible, but I'm hopelessly out of touch with current computer components.

The system at the moment is:
Intel Core2Quad Q6600
AMD Radeon HD 4800 series
4GB RAM

I stuck a decent SSD drive in a few months ago which made a big difference, and now I need to replace the GPU.

My aim is to get something which is essentially the same of slightly better, but for minimal cost. I know there are plenty of cards under £100, but it proved difficult to find benchmark comparisons against any of the cards nearer the £50 mark so I have no idea what is the same and what is cheap tack!

AMD RX 460 coming out end of this week. Going to be less than £100 and is the bottom end of worthy graphic cards.

Anything cheaper cannot be compared to AMD APUs, which are faster.

 

[Poneros]

AMD RX 460 coming out end of this week. Going to be less than £100 and is the bottom end of worthy graphic cards.

Anything cheaper cannot be compared to AMD APUs, which are faster.

Not true, plenty of lower end GPUs which are better than the APUs. Not even taking into account second-hand deals.

My recommendation is for a 750ti. Good, cheap, power efficient and will work well with your older CPU.

 

[SpiderScripts]

So does something like this look good?
MSI NVidia GeForce GTX 750Ti 2GD5 OC 2GB GDDR5 PCI-E 3.0 Graphics Card HDMI DVI
£85
(edit: link removed for reasons...)

Or could I do better for value?

 

[Poneros]

Yeah, that's alright, unlikely to find better deals that aren't second-hand. I'd remove the link though, it isn't allowed on the forum afaik.

 

[justwondering]

Consider a fleabay gtx 570, I picked up a oc palit sonic card for 32 delivered, boxed, in good condition too, works okay even with new games, in particular with well optimised games like fallout 4, metal gear, mad max, great for my 2nd system, which I mainly play dota, neverwinter MMO, world of tanks at my desk, beefy system is hooked upto the TV for controller gaming.

But consider gtx 570 around 30ish, a extra 4gb of ram, should breath new life into your PC for fairly little outlay, but do ensure you have a suitable PSU for any graphics card you buy.

Use this site for figuring out a graphics cards pecking order, especially if you going for a look on ebay, just tap the model number in

http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GTX+570/review

 

[AllBodies]

Go for an Nvidia card, because they've been shown to do better with weaker CPUs (their drivers are more CPU-optimised than AMDs).

Also, as others have said, upgrade to 8GB of system RAM.

I wouldn't go for a 750 Ti for £85, that seems too expensive for the performance.

Look for second hand GTX 780's. If you're really lucky you might find a GTX 970 at a good price. You likely won't find anything faster than a GTX 970 in that price range.