Best graphics card to upgrade to?

[cyrax]

Been a little while since I've been keeping up with tech these days, so I thought I'd ask you fine folks here.

I built my PC around 2-3 years ago, and it's getting a little slow. At the moment I have around $200-300 NZD to spend, and I imagined that a new graphics card would help me get back up to speed. I'm currently looking at a Galaxy 9800GT (http://www.enetcomputers.co.nz/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=VGA109) for around $200.

Any other suggestions on different cards or a different upgrade would be appreciated, or recommendations for this card. Hit up PriceSpy - Compare prices for PC parts from New Zealand's online retailers if you could help me find something in my price range.

Thank-you.

 

[Muffin Man]

im gonna assume that you're talking about the pc in your sig.

the best that you could probably go with as far as a new gpu is:

Welcome to pcpacific Online

your psu should be able to handle that, but im not completely sure as that brand is ranked rather low in the tech-forum's power supply guide.

just a few things though.

it would help to get maybe 2 more gigs of ram and maybe upgrade your cpu.

 

[meat_helmet]

Enermax is a good brand. It could easily run that HD4870. It depends on what res your going to be gaming at. A HD4870 would be good, but your cpu is going to bottleneck so the performance gain might be less than expected.

 

[cyrax]

So would I be better off saving up more to upgrade my CPU aswell as my graphics card? I was hoping to be able to just throw something like that 9800GT without any bottlenecking happening, but if it is likely to happen then changing my CPU aswell would mean upgrading my mobo too wouldn't it? Seeing as s939 is obsolete now.

 

[Muffin Man]

id would make an improvement upgrading the cpu but not by much. and as you said, you might have to upgrade the mobo too.

you could get a new build and use some old parts such as the case, psu, and cd/dvd drive

 

[Thresh25]

Cpu upgrade not by much? In today's world I'd say you would want a pretty significant upgrade from that..

 

[Earlb]

Upgrade your CPU! If you want to make this work.

 

[tastegw]

new build theory:

keep these items:

ASUS 16x Dual Layer DVD Writer and 16x DVD Reader
Sony Silver 3.5\" Floppy Drive
Western Digital Caviar 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB SATA
Antec Super Lanboy Aluminium Case
Enermax Whisper II 535W

sell these items:
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D
AMD Athlon x2 4400+
2GB (2x1GB) G.Skill DDR400 Extreme Series
XFX nVidia Geforce 7600GT 256MB xXx Edition

with the money that you get from the sold items, add it to your funds.

then buy:

new motherboard
new cpu
new ram
new video card

and then you would be fully up to date

and you will have fun doing all of this (atleast i do)

 

[baron5]

yeah its not worth spending the cash when you have only got a 4400+ to back it up. It wont get you far at all, save your cash for a bit, do what you can with the old parts. It seems your prices in NZ are bad like in aust. we usually have bad prices for graphics cards too.

 

[Tenenbaum]

Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-G41M-ES2L LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards
Newegg.com - G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL4D-4GBPI-B - Desktop Memory

Get those where you can find them, 293$ NZD.

Sell your existing parts (Motherboard, CPU, RAM) and all together you should get at least 70$ for the 3 parts, at least I'd imagine so.

Once that is done, throw in a extra 10$ or so and get this
Newegg.com - MSI R4830-T2D512 Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards