New Graphics Card help

[Andy the Lad]

Hi

I really need some help on a new graphics card as I've no clue with computers really.

My son is a big World of Warcraft player but is playing on a old computer (it's my old one and wasn't top of the range when I bought it a few years back). His birthdays coming up and he's asked for his present for me to optimise his computer for it, at the moment his spec is:

Athalon 64 X2 3.2Ghz 6000+
2GB RAM (will be upgraded to 4 as part of his present)
Geforce 8600GT
500W PSU

I did get a 9800GT for it a couple of years ago but the power supply didn't have enough juice for it. I was looking at a Geforce 630 but have no idea how that would stack up to what he's got, would that be good enough to play World of Warcraft on high/max settings?

My question is bearing in mind it's only used (gaming wise) for World of Warcraft and some old RTS games (which all run fine currently) what would be the best graphics card to go for? It doesn't have to run the latest games, he uses a console for that.

 

[Marine-RX179]

To be honest I would think the CPU would already be on balance with (or even lagging a little behind) the 9800GT. I myself got a E5200 overclocked to 3.75GHz on my secondary PC, and it is bottlenecking my 9800GTX+ in the mmos that I play which would use up to two cores. Consider WOW pretty much uses only one core, I wouldn't be surprised if the 9800GT is already getting bottlenecked. So short answer to your question is that "ideally" you should upgrade the platform along with the graphic card.

May be you wanna tell us your max budget and then we can work from there?

As for PSU, you can get a decent budget PSU such as this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-063-OC

While it is "also" a 500W, it is a decent quality one not a cheap nasty one that can't deliver what is printed on the label.

Also, GT630 would be SLOWER than the 9800GT. If you don't wanna upgrade the PSU, the fastest bus-powered card at the moment is a AMD HD7750, which is around as fast as 5770/550Ti (around 15% faster than a 9800GT) but only consume max 44W according to techpowerup's review.

 

[Andy the Lad]

Thanks for the quick response. The 9800 doesn't work though, the power supply isn't strong enough so he's currently using a 8600GT.

For budget I'm not sure what would be reasonable, I've not really set one because I'm not looking for the best I can afford, more what's good enough to run the game really well. I guess somewhere between £50-£100

 

[andybird123]

that CPU will be pretty limited in WoW and many old RTS games, I'm not sure you'd get much out of a graphics card upgrade anyway

a GT630 is a rebadged GT430 and it's not much better than integrated graphics on a modern CPU

a GTX260 would be cheaper and much better, though it uses 182watts so if the PSU complained about a 9800GT at only 105watts then you'd have the same problem

 

[Marine-RX179]

Thanks for the quick response. The 9800 doesn't work though, the power supply isn't strong enough so he's currently using a 8600GT.

For budget I'm not sure what would be reasonable, I've not really set one because I'm not looking for the best I can afford, more what's good enough to run the game really well. I guess somewhere between £50-£100

Then I think you got two choices:

i.) Get a better PSU and use your 9800GT that's lying around (cost: £30)

or

ii) Get a 7750 (max power consumption around 44W) with the benefit of playing WOW on dx11 (provided that you got Windows Vista or 7) (cost: £78).

The CPU would still be a weaklink, but you could consider upgrading the platform in the future.

 

[Andy the Lad]

Thanks again.

The computers running Windows XP so I'd need to buy Windows 7 as well which will push it up to more than I'm willing to spend to be honest. With it running on XP would the 7750 be much better than the 9800?

And last question, can you recomend a decent power supply?

 

[Marine-RX179]

Thanks again.

The computers running Windows XP so I'd need to buy Windows 7 as well which will push it up to more than I'm willing to spend to be honest. With it running on XP would the 7750 be much better than the 9800?

And last question, can you recomend a decent power supply?

For dx9, WOW generally prefer Nvidia more than AMD...so despite the AMD 7750 is supposed to be faster than the 9800GT, with WOW on dx9 it may hardly be any faster...so I think you'd probably be better off just get a PSU and use the 9800GT.

On the budget side, the OCZ CoreXtreme 500W should suffice:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-063-OC
...but if you don't mind spending a bit more on the PSU, you can get a better one such as the OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze':
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-055-OC&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1098

But if you don't mind spending more, you could probably consider this:

The B-grade board might not come with accessories, but if you have SATA cables from existing PC then shouldn't be a problem. Not sure about backplate though.