Help me choose a GPU that fits the budget

[SMiles]

Ok guys, here's the situation:

My best friend just bought tf2 and he hopped in our dustbowl server to try and play. it was going good for a while and then he said it started to get extremely choppy during intense combat scenes. he just got a new computer from hp (I think) so I asked him what kind of GPU he had and he wasnt sure. After having him do some diagnostics we came to the conclusion that he has integrated graphics.

He has some extra money laying around so I told him I would help him pick out a decent card. His budget is $50-100, basically he just wants something that will get him a "playable" fps.

Im not sure what kind of pci slots/ PSU he has so try to keep it to a single slot solution.

Im gonna go over to his house tonight and crack open his case to see what he is working with. I will post some more information as soon as I get it.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Strike xX]

Maybe this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102822 Radeon HD 4830 512 MB. Fits his budget. He can get a Radeon HD 4850 little bit more but worth it.

 

[Ryken]

Asus 9600 GSO 384MB $55 - $20 MIR

Deadpool (=eG=, but not on the forums) has this in his rig and gets great framerates in TF2. When we got it for him it was $100-$50MIR, so at $35 you just can't go wrong!

Also, it comes with CoD:WaW, which sells for about $15 on ebay. So if he puts a little effort into it, he can probably get the whol deal at $20.

 

[yellowbadger52]

Why not check out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102835. its a beastly card for the price, also check out the radeon 4850s, and 4830s. they are all very solid cards for the money. youre friend will be better off with one of these.

Another important questions is what resolution is the monitor he is playing on?

 

[Lance]

I have a pretty small monitor resolution which helps, but my 4830 512 MB (exact same one posted iirc... I haven't had to work on this PC enough to remember all this stuff easily ) runs TF2 at max settings over 60 FPS constantly (including AA). Looks VERY smooth.

 

[Ratfire]

There's basically three tiers of cards he can go with.

For around $35-50 he could probably pick up a radeon 4650 or nvidia 9500gt, that would give him a basic playable level for TF2 at a decent resolution.

For around $70-85, he could pick up a radeon 4670 or nvidia 9600 GSO, that would give him slightly better frame rates and be adaquate for some modern gaming.

For closer to $100-130 he could pick up an nvidia 9800gt a radeon 4850 or 4850 1gig, which would give him playable framerates for pretty much all modern games and at least give him a decent amount of time before he needs another upgrade.

I've found newegg e-mail deals to be a good way to look for a cheap deal on various cards as long as you don't need to buy something right away, else just look for whatever card is in the range that he wants.

 

[Cut Chem!st]

Yeah, go with the 4830. Tf2 isn't really GPU intensive so you might not see the same numbers as everyone else. Depends a lot on the proccessor. But yeah, even with a awesome proccesor tf2 wont run well on a integrated card.

 

[Saeten]

DEFINATLEY go with the 9800gt. im getting killer frames at the higest everything will go and never goes below 40 fps.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=9800+gt&x=0&y=0

 

[-Jv-]

Why not check out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102835. its a beastly card for the price, also check out the radeon 4850s, and 4830s. they are all very solid cards for the money. youre friend will be better off with one of these.

Another important questions is what resolution is the monitor he is playing on?

I would go for this one, it performs better then an 4850, it's just between the 4850 and the 4870

DEFINATLEY go with the 9800gt. im getting killer frames at the higest everything will go and never goes below 40 fps.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=9800+gt&x=0&y=0

And then the 9800 meets crysis...

 

[SMiles]

Thanks everyone for all the great responses! In the end I showed him Ratfire's post and he decided that he would like to fall into the middle bracket.

After checking his power supply, I found out it was only 300W and only had 15A on the 12V rail. So we also upgraded his PSU to a 430W thermaltake which had about 30A across two 12V rails.

Considering all of the mail-in rebates, and the fact that we can hopefully sell WaW for 15 dollars then the grand total of this upgrade is: $43 I think that is a damn good price for getting a new PSU and a decent GPU.

Once again thanks for the help everyone!

P.S. I will let you know what kind of fps he is getting once everything arrives.

 

[Ryken]

which gpu did he get?

 

[SMiles]

The 9600 GSO.

Sorry about that I thought I said that in my last post, but apparently I didn't lol...

 

[Ryken]

you didn't, and the suspense was killing me! Glad to see he got what he needed without having to spend out the wahzoo!

 

[ColonelMcMeow]

This is a good video card for the price, I have heard good things about the msi brand, so you can check it out if you want, make sure the port is the same the video card fits though, otherwise its useless, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127434 is the video card, and you can check its benchmarks on http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?cpu=GeForce+9600GT, its highlighted, I have a Nvidia 8800 GT and I can run the games at max settings and this VC is only 1 rank below mine. Hope this helps. It comes with COD5 and it has 1GB of GDDR3. But Please make sure the connection of the video card fits the motherboard, otherwise it won't work.


EDIT:

Oops, he found one, well, glad I could help, lol.