Video card

GreenBeret

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Jun 25, 2012
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Hey guys right now I have an Nvidia GeForce GT 520 and am looking to upgrade but at a reasonable price any suggestions would be helpful. It doesn't have to be top of the line but would love to be able to play BF4 and a few other newer games. Thanks for any help
 
The 760 or 770 are good cards. Not sure about your other hardware but the 760 should set you up with at least medium settings and good fps in BF4. The 770 will get you to ultra settings at decent fps. There is a price difference so that's up to you... Not sure if you wanted to go cheaper than that.

Not too sure about AMD cards
 
yea I was looking at those but thought the prices were too high but I may have to go that route anyways thanks for the help
 
Also check out classifieds ads if you've got them in your area if you're tight on cash. People sell GTX 570s 580s or 5800/6800 HDs for very reasonable prices, and they're all upper mid level cards. Even with order tech, not too many games use DX11 to its fullest. For brand new cards, try GTX X60Ti/OC and up will let you run BF4 on ultimate Do not go below a GTX X60 card though. Anything below will be "enthusiast" level. Same goes for Radeons, X750 is minimum, try to get X770 or higher. (where X is the generation number, i.e. 760Ti, 7750 HD).

Older generations are not necessarily bad. The top cards of the old generation are substantially better than the mid level cards of the current generation. For a quick reference, check out www.videocardbenchmark.net and see how they measure up. You want a card that scores an average of 3000+ for anything decent. As a gamer, try to stay away from cards that score under 3k.

Hope this helps :3
 
Also giving us a price range for a video card that you would like definitely helps us get an idea for both the AMD & nVidia areas when it comes to what kinda video card to suggest. We can suggest both top notch as well as mid range, but just telling us what your current video card is wont really help much.

Thank you in advance.
 
well I could go to the 2-300 dollar range if needed but would like something cheaper if possible
 
We should know your CPU too to make sure nothing gets bottlenecked in Battlefield.
 
I would not worry about the bottleneck since at some point in time you will be upgrading the cpu n mobo!!
 
sorry guys I don't usually as others for help but this is my info.
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)
Processor: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5400 @ 2.70GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.7GHz
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
User DPI Setting: 120 DPI (125 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
4 gig ram
hope that's what you need
 
No offense, but you wont be able to fully enjoy Battlefield 4 with your current setup. Even if you were to upgrade your video card, you will need to upgrade both your cpu, memory & possibly motherboard.

To give you an idea of where you need to be, the following information was taken from a Battlefield website stating the minimum requirements:

Battlefield 4 system requirements
The minimum PC system requirements for Battlefield 4 are expected to be:


Dual core CPU (Intel Core i5 or AMD ?Bulldozer?).
At least 4 GB main system memory
Graphics card with at least 512 MB of VRAM and support for DirectX 10
30+ GB of harddrive space
Windows Vista

Simply put, in order to enjoy the game (single player-wise) without any kind of video game based lag, I do agree that sometime in the future that your cpu will need to be upgraded.
 
You're going to see a bottleneck issue. Not a terribly bad one, but it will exist if you get a +$200 GPU. What's worse is that if you decide to upgrade the CPU, you will need to get a new motherboard AND RAM to go with it. Which will increase the cost from roughly $200 for a GPU up to about $450 total, assuming you get the lower-priced CPU and motherboards available.

On one user's list, the GT 520 ranks 154/216 GPUs so you know your card isn't that great. However, you do not want to spend over $200 on the GPU because the CPU won't be able to handle it. So we're trying to find a good card that you can 1) give you a large increase in performance, but 2) be within your price range of under $200-300, AND 3) Won't be an over-upgrade that'll be severely restricted by your CPU. The cards that come to my mind would be the GTX 560 or the 560 Ti series, 650 and 660 from nVidia, or the 6870, 7770, maybe th 7850, R7 250 and 260 from AMD. You have a lot of options available as any and all of those cards would be a good increase in performance for you while remaining under $200

The highest performing cards under $200 would be the 7790, 7850, 7870, R7 260X from AMD. For nVidia, they would be the GTX 650Ti, 660. I'm leaning towards recommending the R7 260X for around $140 or the GTX 650 Ti for about $150. Between the two on performance, the nod goes with the R7 260X for better performance at a lower cost. I'm seeing them in price, on average, between $130-140.

Edit: Darn you pillar for posting 1 minute before me. Yes, the current PC setup will limit you on BF4. To get it up to a good gaming level would require what I would recommend a quad core CPU, compatible motherboard, the above recommended GPU, and 8 GB DDR3 RAM (you're most likely using 4GB of DDR2 RAM).
 
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thanks guys that's what I kinda thought I will look into upgrading my entire pc but as it stands right now I guess ill have to put it off till sometime later in the year. thanks again for your help and input
 
Head on to eBay and look at some of the used motherboards and processors that were pulled from working machines. I have seen many Intel Core 2 Quads and even Core 2 Extremes for around $100, some with or without motherboards. These are used, but they are pulled from working systems so you shouldn't have any issues. Your power supply should be okay for one of these, but if not I bought my 750 Watt PSU for $50 which powers an i7-4770k and a 7870 GHz OC Edition, which brings me to my next verdict.

A cheap and reliable graphics card would be the Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz OC Edition. Mine cost me $150 after my $20 rebate. It runs Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 flawlessly maxed out. BF4 has some minor stuttering issues when Anti-Aliasing is turned on, but aside from that I average out at 60 FPS on BF4 and 74 FPS on BF3 (League of Legends runs maxed at 400 FPS lol).

I highly recommend that graphics card. It's a great deal, the cooling is fantastic, and overall the customer support from Sapphire is great. I have had no issues, and neither have those who also own a 7870. I used to be a computer salesman (and now I'm going into the realm of Magnolia Center TV sales. woo.), and that card is what I recommended to almost everyone who walked through those doors. We stopped carrying the 7870 and started carrying the 7970 (which is..... quite the card) instead, unfortunately.

As stated above, you'll have issues running Battlefield 4 maxed out with a Pentium processor. I would highly recommend upgrading to a Core 2 Quad or an Extreme. [ame=http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-2-Extreme-QX6850-3GHz-8M-1333-MHz-Socket-775-Processor-SLAFN-/251442255151?pt=CPUs&hash=item3a8b20552f]Here[/ame] is an Intel Core 2 Extreme quad core processor running at 3.0 GHz for $100 shipped. The nice thing about this processor is it uses the LGA 775 socket, which is the same socket your Pentium processor sits in on your motherboard. You can find many YouTube tutorials on how to replace processors; it isn't hard.

With a Core 2 Quad Extreme Edition and an AMD 7870 GHz OC Edition, I wouldn't see why you won't be able to play Battlefield 4! Oh, and to be safe you should pick up a couple more gigs of memory. 4GB is the bare minimum for BF4.

Cheers! ^_^
~flame
 

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