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Advice on a new graphics card.

mrcactus

mrcactus

mrcactus

Associate
Joined
30 May 2017
Posts
8
Hi everyone. New to this forum today, so please forgive me if I have posted this in the wrong place...I always end up doing the wrong thing on forums haha.

Basically, I have a custom built pc I bought of a friend about 7-8 years ago. Back then it was great and I could play the games I wanted to with no issues (graphics wise) at all.

Now I am having problems with the games these days. I like simulation games such as American Truck Simulator and the likes.

Up until a week ago ATS was playing fine as I had the games graphics settings set at medium, as I know if I turned them to high or ultra then my pc wouldn't be able to cope. Now I get some lagging but it's mostly jittery now and I haven't altered the graphics settings in the game so I don't know what's happened.

So, I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260...even saying it makes it sound old haha. I want a new card which is better but not too expensive (say £100) if that's possible. I've been looking around and can see some prices in the region of £500! I didn't know they cost that much for some of them, they must be great though.

If you need more info on my pc to help answer my question I can give it to you.

Thanks in advance :)
 
What's the rest of the specs of your machine?

Any preference to another nvidia card or would you consider AMD?
Going secondhand would also get you more for your money although you'll not have access to the members market on here for a while.
 
Robzere31 said:
What's the rest of the specs of your machine?
Click to expand...

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

RAM: 4.0 GB

OS: Windows 10 64-bit

Sorry, not very good at finding what specs I have...is there anything in particular I should mention in the specs?

Cheers.
 
Robzere31 said:
What's the rest of the specs of your machine?

Any preference to another nvidia card or would you consider AMD?
Going secondhand would also get you more for your money although you'll not have access to the members market on here for a while.
Click to expand...

Not really a preference to NVIDIA to be honest. Although I don't know an awful lot about them I would like to find either one that's say 'a few models up' from the one I have haha. I don't mind buying second hand and I've been on Ebay to look but again, I have no clue where to begin.
 
How do you mean bottleneck it? Does the processor have to be a certain standard depending on what graphics card is in? I'm getting confused now haha
 
Think I have space for extra RAM. Is this the same as you mentioned earlier:
MSI MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 2G OC PCI-Express Graphics Card

So, if I go with one of the suggestions mentioned here, with the extra RAM I buy then I should be good to go? I don't want to whack the graphic setting right up on my games but just want to make them run a bit smoother (especially FPS).

Thanks for your help though :)
 
Yes absolutely. Get a 1050 and another 4gigs of ram. Each component will plug straight in and off you go! Make sure to download and install the new drivers for the graphics card from nvidias website
 
If you can stretch, get the 4 GB 1050 Ti. Are you overclocking your CPU?

BTW to check for CPU bottlenecking, run Task Manager. If your CPU is running at 100% then you are CPU-limited
 
mrcactus said:
Just checked now, it's running between 1% and 11%...is this a good thing?
Click to expand...

When you get the faster card, check again. In most circumstances, CPU usage will then be higher in games. The faster card will be capable of more frames, giving the CPU more work to do.

1050Ti 4GB for £120-130 is best value, new, around that price-point, imo.
 
As you are running windows 10 , 64 bit version, i defiantly recommend adding more ram first, I have 16Gb in my PC, but you will not need that much until you change motherboard and CPU etc.
I would make sure you have 8Gb of RAM in there, and then get a graphics card like others have said

if you want to find out more information on your system, download a program called "CPUID"
 
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