Graphics card for an old S775 system

[fobose]

I gave away my old s775 system to my brothers friend who couldn't afford to buy a new PC, the specs are:

Intel C2D e8400
4GB PC2 6400 RAM
Asus P5K-E Wifi
BFG 8800GT

He also bought himself a crucial 120gb SSD and a superflower 550W PSU.


The chap wants a new graphics card for the system. What would be the best option for him, without having a huge CPU bottle neck? Something like a GTX 750?

He wants to play games on it, he realises its a very old system and he will be limited but I do not think he is playing any higher than 1600x900 (although I gave him a monitor with a res of 1280x1024 so I think he will be playing at that res).

Any help appreciated.

 

[Gabbatek]

Whats the budget?

OC have some b-grade msi 970's

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-418-MS&groupid=595&catid=683

 

[Scougar]

270x would probably be good enough.

 

[arc@css]

260X / 750ti or thereabouts should be plenty for that kind of resolution.

 

[opethdisciple]

I wouldn't go overboard really as a dual core cpu is to be quite honest below spec these days. The minimum is a quad core.

Don't spend any more than about £100 on a gpu.

 

[Sumanji]

Hey,

So I just recently resurrected my old gaming rig, which is based around a C2D E8600 (full spec in sig).

Threw an R9 380 4GB in to replace a GTX 260 896MB, and it is now tearing through Alien Isolation, Ultra settings 2560 x 1080.

I think the whole "CPU bottleneck" thing is a story concocted by Intel to increase CPU sales, tbh

Cheers,

Su

P.S. The lolz now being that I have equal amounts of VRAM and system RAM (!!)

 

[Rroff]

^^ There is some CPU bottleneck aspect to it - but people massively under-estimate the older 775 chips (though dual core will also hold things back a bit compared to the quads).

Anything upto GTX680 type performance will be fine (so 380 is probably the sweet spot) - above that you are starting to enter territory where its not really worth spending the extra unless you plan on upgrading the rest of the system down the line.

A lot of newer games will suffer without atleast a quad though as opethdisciple said.

 

[arc@css]

Threw an R9 380 4GB in to replace a GTX 260 896MB, and it is now tearing through Alien Isolation, Ultra settings 2560 x 1080.

I expect your resolution helps.

 

[fobose]

Thanks for all the replies guys. I don't really know what his budget is, he will just want something as cheap as possible. I was thinking about buying something from the MM for him, but I don't know him that well so I don't want to pay out and then not get paid back.

The motherboard is PCI-E 1.0, will this have a limiting factor too?

When I was using the system, I upgraded to a 570 GTX and although there was improvement, there was lots of FPS drops (I was playing games like Red Fraction Guerilla and Mafia 2). Most games did not feel that smooth when playing.