long post warning
Ok, edited to fix it. I meant FPS AKA frames per second.
i figured that and tried to be funny in my reply but failed
I thought higher the number the higher the power. How do I judge a graphical cards power?
in general, you are right in saying that the higher a graphics card number is, the better it is. however, there is more to it than that because different brands have different naming systems
there are two main brands of graphics card: Nvidia and ATI.
for a few generations or 'series' of graphics card Nvidia have been using three digits. the first being the generation number, and the last two being how high up the graphics card food chain it is.
for example, the Nvidia GTX 470 is in the
400 series, is faster than the GTX4
60 but slower than the GTX4
80
ATI use a similar system, but with 4 digits instead of three. so the ATI 6950 is in the
6000 series, is faster than the 6
870 and slower than the 6
970
the 500 series from Nvidia is the same age as the 6000 series from ATI.
from there you can see two problems:
1. how do you know how much better the cards from the newest series are to their older equivalents
2. how do you know how much better the cards from one brand are than the other
the only solution to this problem is to go to websites which have tried them on lots of games to see which gets the best fps for the money. my favourite site is this one:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/188
Is the GBs how good it is?
the amount of VRAM (in MB or GB) is the amount of RAM the graphics card has all to itself. if your graphics card has enough you generally dont need to worry about it.
these days games are using more and more VRAM, so if your going for a mid range graphics card for about £125 then 1GB is the recommended amount. if you are going for a higher end graphics card then 1.5GB or more is recommended
if you have a very high resolution screen, or are using more than one screen for your game, then 2GB is recommended
What PC shall I buy instead for your suggested price? I have heard another series is good but they are quite expensive for me.
since i dont know an awful lot of the details of your computer i cant be specific, but if you want to play BF3 on medium settings i would suggest:
- new processor: probably a Phenom II X4 955BE
- new graphics card: ~£125 should be enough for this
- new power supply: fast graphics cards need a lot of power. your old one power supply is almost certainly not powerful enough for the bigger graphics cards
however, before i recommend you anything, could you download a program called CPUz. this free program tells you information about the computer. what i am after is the motherboard make and model (this should be in the mainboard tab. the manufacturer and model is what im after)
this will let me know what processors your motherboard can support if CPUz can identify the motherboard
also, if you are happy to, could you take the side panel off of the case (when the PC is off of course) and tell me roughly how much space there is between where the expansion slots are and the first thing a graphics card would hit at the other end.
this image helps show what i mean:
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/images/product_del/Big/704923/03.jpg
(no idea what case it is, i just found the picture on the internet)
some graphics cards are very long (up to 30cm) so i dont want to recommend something that wouldnt fit.
sometimes the hard drive 'cages' can be removed to make extra space for graphics cards
also, while i remember, can you also tell me how many slots there are where the left hand side of that arrow is, that will tell me how big a motherboard can fit in your current case if your motherboard is not good enough
I am also considering building own PC but don't know where I can get tutorials.
here are some great tutorials for building a PC:
(part one is choosing the components, so dont worry about that, thats what we're here to help with)
i hope this helps. as soon as you tell me your motherboard i can start recommending things
