what would you do?

[libraryguy]

This is a graphics card question.

I recently built for a friend a new online gaming pc. She only plays Wow & Star Wars Old Republic.

The system I put together for her is a

Gigabyte GA-A55M-DS2 FM1
APU is the A4-3400 2.5Ghz
The built in graphics is a AMD Radeon 6450, I've dedicated a 1Gb of RAM to graphics.
8Gb of Gskill RAM.
2Tb Hard drive, & Bluray burner/player
stand built in sound and so on.
Windows 7 64bit of course, & made sure all the latest drivers were installed.

Her complaint is that she can't max out all the settings in her 2 games. Which I can understand her wanting to do so.

Here's my delema. I can purchase another 6450 card which in turn will work with the existing built in chipset to increase performance by crossfire method according to the mobo manual. I'm just not sure if it'll give enough of a boost. I was thinking of this model.

MSI R6450-MD2GD3/LP Radeon HD 6450 Graphic Card - 625 MHz Core - 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM - PCI Express 2.1 x16Low-profile - R6450MD2GD3LP - Graphics Cards - MSI Graphics Cards - TheNerds.net

Or I can obviously just purchase a more powerful Nvidia/AMD graphics card and by pass the built in 1 entirely.

So, what would you do?

 

[DylanF]

I would probably go for the second option. Just less of an efford.

What I was wondering when I read this. I haven't seen those games in a while. But WoW being quite and older one I was wondering how she wouldn't be able to max out since it worked on much slower machines years ago?

 

[jmacavali]

^This (both statements)

 

[IAntDemo]

The built in graphics is a AMD Radeon 6450

That's why it's laggy..''Onbored'' isn't all that good

What would I do? Purchase a new graphics card.. heres a bench mark list of the best for performance:

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

 

[libraryguy]

Good point, I think I'll just purchase a AMD ATI 6670 1Gb DDR5 128bit most likely this 1.

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100326L Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

Then in the future if & when she wants to upgrade the APU. We can install the A8 series instead and be able to do crossfire at that time.

 

[Heater]

I would get her a sound card.

 

[libraryguy]

I would get her a sound card.

Why would you do that? Seem like a waste of money for her.

 

[jmacavali]

Sound cards seem like wastes of money on every computer, IMO.