Which 'Budget' Graphics Card?

[Rameses]

I have a old(ish) AMD 3200 (2.0GHz) CPU & S939 Motherboard, coupled with 2GB of PC3200 RAM.

Obviously not the fastest personal computer going, but it runs well in a nice new box and a nice new psu and other bits (DVDRW / HDD).

At the moment I have a PCI-E 512Mb 8400GS which is a powerless card. Not very giving with the games I want to play.

Which of the budget cards available now, today at OcUK would be right for me?

I want to re-play Battlefield 2, and COD 1 and if the card can, continue playing COD2.

I don't expect to be playing at a resolution over 1440 or whatever, so which can offer the best performance for less than £100 ?

Thanks for any input!

 

[K@rl]

am also running a 8400GS and would like a little more power to help my machine along a bit. Even when I brought it I think I paid like £40 and that must have been some years back now.

just found this one..

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-002-OE&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=939

Seems interesting

 

[oweneades]

Something like a HD4650/HD4670 would be perfect for this computer. Quick enough to plow through the games you want to play, whilst not quick enough to make your CPU become a bottleneck.

You should be able to get one for around £50-60.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-184-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1274

There is also the HD4730/HD4770 for a little over £70 which would offer a decent performance boost over the HD4670 however I don't know how much your cpu would bottleneck it (this isn't a guess, I genuinely don't).

 

[Sgt_Pepper]

Hi fox just a quick question, how much power do you have in your power supply.

 

[Rameses]

Hi fox just a quick question, how much power do you have in your power supply.

A brand new 500w PSU, only have it in the mobo - hdd - dvdrw to power it, so plenty I would have thought?

Also, the A3200 is highly overclockable, being the RAM which will present the problem, but I recon I could get a lot more juice out of the CPU.

 

[mame]

I put a GT 240 512mb (£61 from here) in a PC the other day and I was very impressed with what it could do. It would play many new games at med-high settings at a good frame rate. No extra power connector. 3Dmark06 7700

 

[SMAndy]

What resolution is your monitor? some "budget" cards will only play games at decent settings at a low resolution due to a shortage of shader/stream/CUDA cores.

Something like a 4670 would be good. or on the other end of the spectrum, an nvidia 8800GT is one of the better value cards out there. (yes, i know. nvidia isn't good value at all any more, but the 8800GT is still up there!)