Graphics card or Monitor

jas72

jas72

jas72

Soldato
Joined
31 Jul 2006
Posts
10,276
Location
Belgium land of chocolate
I'm currently sitting with a 4870 512MB card from MSI and a Hanns G 19" 1440*900 monitor and fancy upgrading but can only afford one upgrade.

Both are working fine so this is more of an extravagant splurge than a necessity.

The rest of the rig is

2500K i5 with custom cooler
8 gig ram
on a A67 pro ASUS board.


Budget is around the 175 quid mark max.

At the moment most games play great with most settings high (although i noticed an FPS drop in large pvp playing GW2)

So if you were me what would you upgrade?
 
That's a tough one. On one hand your graphics card is way out of balance with the rest of your rig and holding it back. On the other, your monitor is very small. I would be tempted to change the graphics card now to something like a 7850 or 7950 and then as soon as possible change the monitor to a nice 24" one.
 
Yes ideally i want both but which first I could get two fairly cheap upgrades but worry that even at 175 I'm on the low side for a quality monitor...
 
wow didn't think i could get a sub 100 quid monitor... i think i'll go for it and start saving for a card.
 
And it's a Sammy!! Your current card might struggle with the res though because it only has 512mb of memory. That's why i said it's a tough one.
 
I would have said to go with a GPU first, simply because yours is out of date, and when you transition from a card like that to a nice high end 2gb one, it can really make a man giggle.

And size of your screen doesnt change gameplay anywhere near as much as the GPU will
 
Went for the screen first and then will go for GPU later this year, perhaps after christmas. I think the prices for the cards will prob drop after christmas (i hope). Decided to the the Ilyama screen instead but couldn't order from OCUK to Belgium as it's 30 quid delivery :(

Well I had to take Giantmidgets advice and so I got a 7850 card.

I got it as a birthday treat for myself. (Birthday isn't until Nov.) ;)
 
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Monitor first, which you'll appreciate most by itself, and then you'll have the impetus to buy a new gpu to power all the extra pixels.
 
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