Video Card Upgrade Help

[Vacuous Luddite]

Hello everyone,

I want to upgrade my graphics card and I am unsure if I need to upgrade the power supply. I am not even sure how to calculate the power usage of my hardware. Anyway I want to get either a Radeon R9 290X or a geforce 970. Which one would be a better card overall? If I need a PSU what is a good recommendation? What would be a good motherboard to upgrade to as well?

As far as power supply here is my current comp specs:
Pre built Gateway fx6860-ur20p
Mobo- acer ip isb-vr
RAM - 8 gig ddr3 1333
CPU - i7 2600 @ 3.4 gig
GPU - Radeon 6750
HDD - 1.2 TB and 500 GB
PSU - FSP Group - 450 watt (fsp450-60EP)

Thanks in advance.

 

[PP Mguire]

Your setup is fine. Get the GTX 970.

 

[Vacuous Luddite]

great. Thanks for the quick response.

 

[Vacuous Luddite]

Another question. With the RAM, the 1333 is speed right? can I use DDR3 1600 instead of 1333 and will it be faster?

 

[PP Mguire]

You won't notice a difference mate.

Edit:
To give you a bit more information.

The i7 2600 is plenty capable of running any game today and will be for quite a while. The difference between 1333 and 1600 RAM is rather small, and in games you won't see a difference at all. To put it into perspective, DDR4 running at 3000 makes zip for a difference in gaming too (and that's quad channel taboot).

2 reasons why the 970 is the better choice. It's faster, and consumes WAY less power. To use the 290x you would definitely need to spend almost 100 bucks on a new PSU because it uses upwards of 300w by itself. As indicated here the 970 uses less than 200w. With your CPU and a GTX 970 combo that FSP (although still cheap) should suffice easily unless it's been abused. Since this seems 100% untouched pre-built, I'd say it's fine.

If you want to upgrade anything else besides the GPU I'd say get yourself an SSD.

 

[Vacuous Luddite]

I also hear that going from 8 to 16 is a waste of time. Is this true also?

 

[PP Mguire]

I also hear that going from 8 to 16 is a waste of time. Is this true also?

Ehhhh that greatly depends on a lot of things. If all you're doing is gaming, yes. If you record and edit video for uploads or stream it could come in handy. Don't forget to see the edit above.

 

[Vacuous Luddite]

No just gaming/web and programming simple scripts for practice. So I guess just a video card and a Blu ray player is all I need to buy then. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Vacuous Luddite]

I just got the 970 in today. The problem is that it has the two power connectors on the card, one is six pin and one is eight. I already had the one six pin plugged into the old GPU so I reused this one. I plugged the 8 pin into the card but the other side has two 4 pin molex connectors. I only have one on my computer. I was unsure if both of these molex needed to be plugged in so I just used the one available. When I power I get just a screen that says plug in the power to the card. What can I do or what am I doing wrong?

 

[Dauntae]

Ha I just got my 970 in today also, Check through your connectors to make sure you don't have any more molex connectors, if you have extra newer power connectors (I forget the name of the plugs) but you can also get adapters to the molex connectors you need. Local electronics store or best buy should have them. But you'll need both plugged in to get the card working, Which one did you end up getting?

Dauntae