GTS250 to what?

[tot brill]

One of my systems has a failing Nvidia GTS 250 graphics card.

I may have to replace the card fairly soon but am really strapped for cash at the moment.

I need some recommendations certainly no more than £100.

I would prefer NVidia if possible but would consider AMD.

As far as gaming is concerned its just used for UT3, L4Dead2, Minecraft, Black Ops, etc, relatively oldish games. But mainly used as a productivity PC.

Considering GT630 - 640 - 650??

Other specs are: E5300 @ 2.6ghz - 4mb RAM - Win7 64bit

Thanks

 

[Marine-RX179]

Nothing you buy new at under £100 would give to much performance over your GTS250.

In terms of old ish and even source games, I would think you would benefit more from higher CPU speed even with your existing graphic card.

I myself got a 9800GTX+ (which is actually GTS250 before rebrand) and have my E5200 overclocked to 4.2GHz.

 

[tot brill]

Thanks. I realise that I probably won't get anything faster but similar performance would be good.

Also overclocking processors for me usually ends up with having to reset due to cooling not being good enough or some other app related problems. So personally I prefer to remain stock or thereabouts.

 

[JonSmith]

The 7770 should certainly by faster, especially since they have the new GHz edition cards.

Or buy a £20 after market CPU cooler and push that CPU up. Even with cheapo motherboards the VRMs are fine for clocking dual core chips well over 3GHz.

 

[Marine-RX179]

The 7770 should certainly by faster, especially since they have the new GHz edition cards.

Or buy a £20 after market CPU cooler and push that CPU up. Even with cheapo motherboards the VRMs are fine for clocking dual core chips well over 3GHz.

Not much point going for 7770, considering the CPU would only allow the graphic card to perform up around 5770/6770/7750 level even when overclock.

He'd need a better CPU to benefit from the extra speed of the 7770. And to be honest for those games he plays the GTS250 should handle them fine...if there are frame rate dips, it would be more likely because of the CPU.

I even use my 9800GTX+ for playing on Guild Wars 2. I get quite reasonable playable frame rate on mix of medium and high graphic settings at 1920 res...but it is my CPU that's holding frame rate back the most (with my E5200 overclocked to 4.2GHz) with GPU usage always dipping.

 

[tot brill]

Thanks all,

I may swap the HD 5770 which is in a Q8400 system at the moment into the 450 PC and maybe buy a 650/650Ti to put into the Q8400. Its used for video editing and I need the CUDA support.

I know its more money, but might be the sensible solution in the long term.