New GFX Card for a Friend

[uk_viper]

Hi,

My friend is running on a HP wx8600 workstation, currently running a 5 year old gfx card, so he wants to upgrade and has a budget of £150, can anyone sujest a good card to go for?

Want to keep nvidia for this one and must be able to handle BFBC2 and BF3

 

[Subzero85]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-256-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1341

 

[pgi947]

A 6870 or GTX460 should fit the bill.

Just filter your GPU search by price. But it depends on what resolution your friend intends to game at, as those workstations don't usually have 2xPCIe x16/x8/x4 lanes crossfire or SLI in the future would become impossible.

Personally I'd recommend stumping up the extra cash and at least getting a single 560Ti or a 2gb 6950. (prices circa £170-£220)

 

[matthew31]

a 6870 will do just fine realy good preformace fo the cost and you can get one from around 130

 

[daveash]

I second the 460 or 6870, unless your friend can stretch to a 560Ti.

 

[Marine-RX179]

What CPU is in his workstation? BFBC2 and BF3 won't be playable with good frame rate if his CPU is too slow bottlenecking the card.

Also, check what PSU he got before getting a card.

 

[uk_viper]

Ah good point, I'm willing to bet it's a standard PSU that HP provide.

 

[RiseAgainst]

Chances are you will need a new better psu to run a 150 pounds card, plus that argument about the cpu bottleneck is sound.
download cpuz and run it if you can , that will let us know what we are dealing with

 

[uk_viper]

POWER
DPS-1050CB A HP-Compaq 1050 Watt Power Supply For Workstation 8600

CPU & Motherboard
Operating System new - server roles
Windows 7 Professional (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601)

System Model
Hewlett-Packard HP xw8600 Workstation

Processor a
2.67 gigahertz Intel Xeon
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
12288 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Not hyper-threaded

MEMORY

4096 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM01' has 2048 MB
Slot 'DIMM02' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM03' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM04' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM05' has 2048 MB
Slot 'DIMM06' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM07' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM08' is Empty

 

[marc1024]

560ti would be a sound purchase which will last a while.