Budget Graphics

[3lliot]

So my mate has £70 and a AMD athlon x2 4400+ (Old, I know) and he wants to spend his money on a graphics card for gaming with.

He currently uses ATi Radeon X800 and what would you guys think would be the best value graphics upgrade for him?

Just in case you need to know, his motherboard is the Asus 8AN-SLI deluxe and I think it's PCI Express x16 1.0? Not quite sure...

 

[3lliot]

Also he'll be running games at 1280x1024 res.

 

[Gav_881]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-270-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=

if he can scrape another tenner together there's a 550TI on offer this week far better than anything else i can see in that price range draws 116 wats.

 

[Gav_881]

actually thats a PCIe 2.0 card so not sure if it will work, anyone care to chime in??

 

[Surveyor]

PCI-E 2.0/2.1 cards should be backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0.

 

[Gav_881]

in that case grab another tenner and get a 550ti

 

[JonSmith]

For 4 pounds more he can a > 50% faster HD6850 which uses only 10W more power
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-163-MS

GTX550 is not worth the money.

 

[Gav_881]

Fair point but wre starting to move fast away from his budget

 

[SouthEastBlue]

For 4 pounds more he can a > 50% faster HD6850 which uses only 10W more power
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-163-MS

GTX550 is not worth the money.

6850 is not 50% faster than a GTX 550... It's better and worth the extra bit of money, but it's not hugely better.

Running with that CPU he could be using GTX550 or a GTX680 and it probably wouldn't make much difference as he'd be extremely CPU limited in most games.

Have a look for a second hand 5770/6770 or something, can probably get one for pretty cheap (£40 second hand).

 

[Orcvader]

Might be better to get a 7750? We don't know what PSU he has after all.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Get either a 2nd hand 8800GT/9800GT at £20~£30)

Please do not hint at competitor pricing (new).

For that res these two cards are plenty, and more so with the CPU being the bottleneck.

That's not much point spending £80 on a 6850 (as great a card at as it is at that price), when it doesn't perform any better than the 6670 due to the CPU bottleneck, and if your friend has no plan to upgrade the rest of his system in the near future.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is it a socket 939 CPU??

The OP should look for a secondhand HD5750/HD6750 or HD5770/HD6770,but even then the X2 4400+ might be a limiting factor.

Many of the HD6670 cards now use DDR3 which means they are much slower than the GDDR5 model.

I would probably look at an HD5670 GDDR5 TBH. They are not too expensive secondhand,are compact and are bus powered.

6850 is not 50% faster than a GTX 550... It's better and worth the extra bit of money, but it's not hugely better.

Running with that CPU he could be using GTX550 or a GTX680 and it probably wouldn't make much difference as he'd be extremely CPU limited in most games.

Have a look for a second hand 5770/6770 or something, can probably get one for pretty cheap (£40 second hand).

The GTX550TI has lower overall performance than an HD6850 1GB:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_550_Ti_Direct_Cu/23.html

The HD6850 1GB card is made by MSI too,who seem to have a better warranty:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18231329

 

[Marine-RX179]

Get either a 2nd hand 8800GT/9800GT at £20~£30)

Please do not hint at competitor pricing (new).

lol...my suggestion got removed despite the 6670 pricing I was refering to was based on OcUK's. Just checked the pricing is now back up to £60...