Graphics card upgrade question

[beedubaya]

I am ashamed to admit I have somewhat fallen out of the loop concerning today's high-end gaming hardware. Here is my existing system.

-Asus P7P55 LX Motherboard
-Intel i5 650 Processor
-Nvidia GTX 460 SE
-8GB RAM
-EVGA 600W PSU

I would like to upgrade it to be able to play today's games max settings at 1600x900 resolution (not a big deal by today's standards). I would prefer not to have to build from scratch but just upgrade my graphics card if I could do it. Would a modern graphics card be compatible with my system and if so, what should I buy? Would the GTX 760 be a good fit? My concern is CPU bottleneck because I have an old CPU. Would that be an issue?

Thanks for any responses.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well what's your budget? A 760 would be fine. I'm assuming 650 is a typo or do you really have the dual core i5 650? You could even put a 770 in there and be fine.

 

[Wherewolf?]

Hi!

Agree. Also a Radeon R7 265 or a R9 270 ( non X version ). 2 gb would work well. Great value, midrange gaming cards. One from Asus, Gigabyte or MSI will give you good and silent cooling too.

I have the R9 270 myself running on a rig with an AMD FX 6300 at stock speed. Plays a modded Skyrim for example at very high settings with a nice frame rate.

 

[beedubaya]

Well what's your budget? A 760 would be fine. I'm assuming 650 is a typo or do you really have the dual core i5 650? You could even put a 770 in there and be fine.

I do have the dual-core i5 650. I built my current machine on a budget back in late 2010 and haven't done any upgrades since. Can I get by with this processor or will I need an upgrade? I would rather just upgrade my GPU if I can get away with it.

I would prefer to spend between $200-$300 on a graphics card.

 

[PP Mguire]

Yea like I said it would be fine. The 650 actually has a much higher stock clock compared to the 750. If you had decent cooling a mild OC would alleviate any mild bottleneck you may experience.

Your options are the R9 285 for team red or GTX760 for team green. Whichever you prefer. If you want to maximize your budget you could probably find a 280x for less than 300.

 

[beedubaya]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Being the Nvidia loyalist that I am, I went ahead and went with the eVGA GTX 760.

 

[PP Mguire]

I guess it would not be a good idea to mention Nvidia announced a price cut for the 770 to $275 right?