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New Graphics Card
Elthurinrod
Member Posts: 7
Hey everybody! I recently built a new system and I am looking to buy the best graphics card I can get for around $180. I'd rather not spend much more than that unless there is a significant difference in a card that's like $20 more. Here's what I was planning on buying, however I thought I should ask all you guys for the best bang for my buck. Thanks!
Specs:
Processor: AMD Phenom II 1055T x6
ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
PS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152036
8gb ram
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147153
P.s my current card is a Nvida GeForce 9400 GT which isn't so great. This card will be for games like SWTOR, GW2, Skryim ect..
Comments
Im not sure the 6950 would even fit in my case lol
A Radeon HD 6870 is probably the best you're going to find on that budget. If you happen to prefer Nvidia, you could try to find a GeForce GTX 560 and see if it fits the budget, but that's not really any faster than a Radeon HD 6870. And if you happen to prefer AMD, then definitely get the 6870 on our budget.
Your case should have plenty of airflow for a gaming system. Your power supply is a piece of junk, however. It's probably not bad enough to be in the "you absolutely must replace it right now" category. But I wouldn't be surprised if switching to a much higher power video card causes problems for it. It's not 80 PLUS certified, which is the bare minimum to have a chance of being good. The official specs don't even say what it's rated at on the +12 V rails in total.
If reliability matters to you, then you might want to pick up a better power supply, like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371047
I was hoping you'd respond quizzie, thanks for the advice, but are you sure about the power supply? It had 270 5 star reviews when I bought it so I figured it would be reliable.
you should never buy something on newegg just on the reviews. Because when it comes to newegg reviews you need to take it with a huge pile of sallt. Most people who review on newegg are the ones who had a problem with the item, or a complete moron who has no idea what there talking about. A lot of people usually buy there PSUs last in thier build and try to save money so they opt for the cheap PSU which is a TERRIBLE mistake because the PSU is the most important piece of the puzzle. Alot of companies will put the maximum spike Wattage as the Wattage for the PSU, but most crappy PSUs run at about 80% of what they say in the specs, if that.
But in your, as for handling the GPU, you should be fine. Its not that great of a PSU but you "should" be fine by exchanging in a new GPU. Just make sure you have the correct connectors and everything.
The trouble with New Egg reviews is that the overwhelming majority (> 99.9%) of people who buy a power supply don't have the hardware to test it properly and see how good it is. People who know something about power supplies will check review sites, but they wouldn't even consider that particular power supply, and wouldn't review it. So the New Egg reviews are almost exclusively from people who have no clue what they're talking about.
And what can they really say in a review? Do they praise its tight voltage regulation? Excellent ripple suppression? High energy efficiency? High quality internal components? Nope. Of course not. Because they have no clue about any of that stuff.
All they can say is, I plugged stuff in and it worked, so it gets five eggs. If pulling 400 W from a "730 W" power supply would have caused it to spontaneously combust, but they never pull more than 200 W from it, then they never find this out, and think the power supply is great. (That power supply probably isn't that bad, but I'd bet against it surviving if you tried to pull 730 W from it for an hour or so.) If it causes occasional blue screens, they won't trace that to the power supply and downrate it. Even if loose voltage regulation or high ripple ends up killing other hardware later on, they probably won't realize that the power supply was the problem, and will probably blame whoever made the video card or motherboard or whatever died. Only if the power supply dies outright do they realize that something is wrong and rate it down.
Seriously, read the five egg reviews. A lot of them talk about the pretty blue light, which is completely irrelevant.
Also, consider the price tag. $60 without rebates for a 730 W power supply? That not happen for good quality power supplies. Ever. I guess it could conceivably happen for a very short period of time as a shell shocker deal, or trying to get rid of a discontinued part. The power supply that I linked is 520 W for about the same price, and a pretty good deal at that price. Sometimes I can't find anything good over 500 W for under $70 on New Egg.
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If that's not convincing, then let's look at the specs of the Raidmax power supply. And let's grab another high quality, multi-rail power supply of around the same wattage to compare it to:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817194058
Click the pictures on the respective power supplies and one will be a label on the side of the power supply listing the specs. Look at the +12 V rails on the Enermax power supply. There are three of them, and they can do 25 A each. How much can you do on all three at the same time? Simple arithmetic says 75 A, but that's wrong. Enermax says it's 58 A. You usually can't max all the rails at once.
Now look at the Raidmax. It says two +12 V rails at 24 A each. How much can it do on both at once? It doesn't say. They might want you to assume that it can do 48 A on +12 V rails, but that's probably wrong. Maybe it can do 40 A. Maybe it can only do 30 A. Raidmax isn't saying.
Now consider that nearly all of the power that a computer draws is on the +12 V rails. In particular, the CPU and GPU use the +12 V rails exclusively, and those are the two big power consumers in a gaming system. If you try to pull 700 W from a power supply in a real computer, then most of that 700 W (maybe 600 W or 650 W or something like that) is going to come on +12 V rails.
So how much of that 700 W does the Enermax power supply offer on the +12 V rails? 696 W. If you pull 700 W from it, you're not going to pull more than 696 W on the +12 V rails. Hard drives, USB devices, and some other minor things use other rails instead.
Now look at the Raidmax power supply. How much can it do on the +12 V rails? Raidmax won't say. Even if we assume that it's 48 A on the +12 V rails, that only comes to 48*12 = 576 W on the +12 V rails. 576 W on the +12 V rails is fine for a 600 W power supply. Maybe even 650 W, though that's pushing it. But no way is that a 730 W power supply. And that's if it can even do 48 A safely on the +12 V rails, which it probably can't.
The reason that power supplies aren't purely +12 V is that a bit of stuff uses +5 V or +3.3 V rails. The -12 V rail is technically part of the ATX12V specification, but nothing uses that anymore. So how much can the Raidmax deliver on the +12 V, +5 V, and +3.3 V rails added together? That is, on all of the rails that actually get used while running the computer? Only 714 W, says Raidmax. That's not a 730 W power supply.
Now, you might think, okay, so it's not a 730 W power supply. Maybe it's still a pretty good 500 W power supply. But if a company has a pretty good 500 W power supply, they try to sell it as a pretty good 500 W power supply. If Antec tried to claim that the 520 W power supply I linked earlier was 1000 W, review sites would be scathing about how it's such a failure because it can't do 1000 W. At best, the Raidmax might be a kind of all right 500-600 W power supply. But it might not even be that.
A quick way to weed out weak power supplies is check the manufacturer's product page and see what temperatures the power supply is able to deliver its rated power at. If the number isn't mentioned, they're hiding it because it's a cheap PSU. Any half decent PSU will have its rated power at temperature listed, and should be listed for the 45C - 50C range.
Well, not a perfect method but it should work in most cases. Another problem is that some PSUs just don't deliver what they should no matter of the temperature.
The best is getting one from a competent company, like Corsair, coolermaster or Amtek. Even their products vary a bit depending on model but even their worst is far better than the usual no name junk you get with the case.
Still, I think OP can try the old one PSU and see if it handles the new GFX card before upgrading, I never heard of any computer that broke because the power supply couldn't deliver, it just wont boot.
A lot of Cooler Master's power supplies are junk, so I wouldn't recommend them as a "good" brand for power supplies.
If the worry is that a mediocre power supply might crash your system or fry hardware, then "try it and find out" is a significant risk to take. If you find out that a year from now, it has fried the video card, then at that point, you don't have to replace only the power supply.
Would the Raidmax power supply do that? More likely than not, no it wouldn't. But it is a real risk.
I currently have the GTX 550 ti which I upgraded from the GTX 275 for DX11 and I can safely say that the change was great for online gaming as I now play games like Bad Company 2 on max with no problem, but I did build my own custom PC for online gaming so the high specs of that play a good part in the performance of my online gaming needs. I also run some monitors from www.kme.co.uk on nvidia for work and they all perform at top level. So IMHO nvidia are the top g-cards on the market still to this today
That would be a downgrade in performance, not an upgrade.
If heat and power are significant restrictions--as they will be for a Dell case and power supply--then there is no reason to look at Nvidia anything until they move to 28 nm.
yah:D i was like what? my 275 is weaker then a 550Ti?:D was about to check the review sites on that one:D
If your worried about the size of the card, MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC Radeon HD 6850 might be what your looking for. Performance is up there also.