what to buy to replace Nvidia 9400GT?

[maltesephil]

Hi, I've a budget of about £120 and want to replace my GFX card with something a bit quicker (crysis for instance is all but unplayable). I'm looking at either an ATI 5770 or Nvidia 250 but which would be best?

I could run 2 Nvidia cards in SLI but at only 8x not 16x

My mobo is an MSI P6N SLi Platinum (supports PCIe 1.0a)
C2D E6550 (not O/C)
6Gb ram (only 3 recognised in XP Pro)

Thanks in advance.

 

[andythelandy]

Out of the 5770 and the 250 the 5770 is quite a lot faster uses less energy and supports dx11 its abit of a no brainer really. You might also want to look at the 4890 for that price range its faster than both of those cards mentioned but uses more power and doesn't support dx11 unlike the 5770.

Hope this helps

 

[pastymuncher]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

The 9400 is a terrible card and really only suitable for media pc's so almost anything will be a big upgrade. As already stated though, the 5770 is a fantastic card.

32 bit operating systems can only use around 3.25Gb of ram so if you have 6Gb you need something like Windows 7 64bit to get the best out of your system.

 

[atmax1]

yeh i would go with the 5770, but you run windows xp so you wont be able to run dx 11

 

[maltesephil]

Thanks for the fast replies. So it looks like it will be a 5770.

I'd installed Win7 professional on a new HD but the 32bit version, should I start again with 64bit?

 

[pastymuncher]

Yes. You will be able to make use of all the 6Gb of ram then.

 

[maltesephil]

Yes. You will be able to make use of all the 6Gb of ram then.

Thanks, I looked up on the microsoft site too. My board goes up to 16GB supported but win7 pro can support 192GB

 

[Essexraptor]

64 bit version is the way to go

5770 gets my vote too!

 

[EpicCarnage]

second hand 8800gts 512mb cant go wrong even get two for like 80 thats is unbelievable bargain tbh