Help with a new video card

[ChieF Calfin]

looking for some suggestions on a DECENT video card, enough to boost my fps from 20 to something resembling decent, for a decent price, any advice on a card that is decent enough for a reasonable price?

 

[I'm your huckleberry]

Well, there is a large price range for this stuff, so a budget is a must. The specs on the rest of your system would also be nice, especially the power supply model and wattage. Is counter strike (source?) the only thing you play? If that is the case, you will not need to spend much. However, if you play or plan to play newer games and you want decent image quality, you will have to shell out a bit more. Definitely need a bit more info though.

 

[a pet rock]

Basically what huck said. Need to find out how much you're willing to spend, but also what games you plan to use it for.

 

[IcKabodKraYne]

i have an EVGA 2.5gb gtx570 but i mean you dont really NEED anything like that..id say for around 250-300 youd have more than you need for what you want. I've had particularly good luck with MSI and EVGA just research what makes a good card and then look on newegg or tigerdirect and compare the brands and models..like everyone else said before.. you really need to know your price range, and what are the other specs of your pc as if youre looking for a beastly card you need to be able to support it..look at my other thread for a good example.

IcKabodKraYne

 

[DJ Rend]

FPS rarely has to do with your video card. If anything you should check if your RAM and CPU are both up to par. Video Cards usually are for if you can actually see certain shaders and lighting effects in a game.

 

[IDigitalDeadI]

FPS rarely has to do with your video card. If anything you should check if your RAM and CPU are both up to par. Video Cards usually are for if you can actually see certain shaders and lighting effects in a game.

Well your video card is still just as important :lol:. You could have an awesome CPU with a good amount of RAM and still have poor performance due to a video card lagging behind. Lets say you have an i7, and 8gb of ram, but you have an integrated 6150SE (its not possible at this point, but go along with it). Anyway, the 6150 will lag behind greatly, and you wouldn't be able to use the full power of the cpu/ram at all. Basically the video card will be the bottleneck, and unless that problem is fixed, you're stuck with poor performance.

Looking back on it, when I had a pre-build pc with the 6150SE in it, I hated the thing. Sure my CPU/Mem weren't the greatest, but they were enough to get me by in games. Even in CSS I got like 15-40 fps at low settings. Once I built my pc and got a HD4670 for christmas, my fps was much higher than before, on comparable parts. I don't have none of those parts anymore, but it was a blessing to buy them and to use them over the pre-built pc I had. I didn't know how bad I had it trying to play on such low settings with such low fps.

Note: the 6150SE is Nvidia branded...so you can tell its pretty old lmao.

 

[Muffs]

FPS rarely has to do with your video card. If anything you should check if your RAM and CPU are both up to par. Video Cards usually are for if you can actually see certain shaders and lighting effects in a game.

Not true, you can have a intel duo core, over clock it and then get lets say a gtx 460 or a 580 and play a game like bf3. While as a person that has a intel i7 2600k and integrated graphics has a hard time playing it.

 

[ChieF Calfin]

hoping to spend no more than 200 on a video card, and am going to spend some on upgrading RAM for sure, the power supply is maybe 300 watts , and my processor is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core BE-235 2.10 GHz, also i am running XP and using low settings

 

[ChieF Calfin]

also only play CSS and dont plan on any other games other than MAYBE CSGO when its out

 

[a pet rock]

Sounds good. With a $200 budget the best card you could probably get is a radeon 6870. However, you're running a 5 year old processor right now. What I would do is buy a cheaper card like a radeon 7770 that will still handle CS:GO easily, and then put the cash you save there towards a new CPU+mobo+RAM. That being said, a GPU is still the most important piece of hardware for gaming so you might still get the boost you're looking for out of a GPU upgrade. I'm just not sure how much that processor will limit you.

 

[I'm your huckleberry]

PSU could be a problem, especially if it is a generic 300W unit. Upgrading to a relatively cheap but trusted unit like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026&Tpk=cx430

would be wise.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2246/8

This review shows that while the cpu is a bottleneck (using an 8800 gtx), it still produces some decent frame rates in episode 1. Assuming you play 1080p, you should be able to swing more than the 20 you are now with a gpu upgrade (though spending $200 is probably not worth it if you do not upgrade the cpu as well or else you are limiting the performance of the card). I do like apr's suggestions of upgrading the rest of your fairly old system though. However, not sure it is completely necessary if those are the only games you plan to play.