Help with card choice

[bulric]

Hey guys, I'm sure you get this all the time, but I'd reall appreciate the help.

I'm looking to buy a new graphics card and there's so much choice I don't know which one to buy, I have a budget of around £200, so can you suggest the best card for me.

I have:

A pentium D processor

2 Gigs of ram

400W power supply

Would any of these need upgrading for a new card to play top end games?

Cheers

 

[realitybytes]

Asus GeForce EN8800 GT TOP 512MB GDDR3 comes in about £200 flat

else

EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB SSC GDDR3 comes in closer to £230

 

[Luigi]

not sure what brand psu you have, but that might need upgrading also.

 

[bulric]

Isn't Asus GeForce EN8800 GT TOP 512MB GDDR3 just for vista? I'm running XP.

Cheers for replys by the way.

 

[realitybytes]

No there are XP drivers available, it is just the 8800 clocked at 700Mhz.

As above though a PSU might be needed.

 

[Hatman]

Could always go with a 3850 512MB and not need a new PSU. Would still offer top of the line gaming but for like half the price. Id expect a 8800GT to be seriously bottlenecked on your CPU too. A 3850 less so.

Could get a nice custom cooled version too.

 

[FarFarAway]

*almost* All cards will be bottlenecked but your still going to have a better performance with an 8800 GT

 

[ali_james]

Is your motherboard is pci-e compatible? If not you'll have to factor that into you budget

 

[Luigi]

also, whats the screen size/reso?

 

[SBB]

Judging by you have a Pentium D, i'd say your PSU isnt going to be up to much (even a high quality 400w I wouldn't really recommend to run a HD3850).

However, you can get a decent PSU and an ATI HD3850 and still be in budget

 

[jiffz]

Is your motherboard is pci-e compatible? If not you'll have to factor that into you budget

That's a pretty important point here tbh, if he goes through all the trouble of buying a PSU and card, then he tries to fit it in the slot "damn, won't fit"...

 

[bulric]

Cheers for all the advice guys, sorry for slow reply though, I've been away from home.

Stupid question, but how do I check if i have pci-e slots? I've tried Dxdiag, but that's about it...

+I now have a 600w power supply.

 

[Nick R]

Open the case and see if you have a slot that's bigger than the rest. Picture I found on google;

black one is a PCI-E slot.

 

[bulric]

I have one of those slots.

So what card would you guys reccomend me now, since the price drops. Or should I wait for the 9800 series?

Or go for a new processor first?

 

[Nick R]

ATI HD3850 or 8800 GT, a new processor wouldn't hurt hurt . I belive it's £110 for a C2D 2.4 GHz and the card would be £120 which pushed you over budget, after that you would also need a PSU. You could shave £40-60 of the GPU though.

 

[Pat123]

You also have to watch the CPU socket, see which pin it is and fsb.

 

[bulric]

Ok, I might buy new cpu as well then.

Is there a big differance between the GT and GTS series?

 

[Nick R]

Here's a good comparison;