Best PCI-E card for £150 inc VAT

[WillLack]

Can any one give me an idea of the best PCI-E card for £150 inc VAT

Mainly playing flight and racing driving sims, and some strategy games, no shoot'em ups

What would you suggest?

Thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

I'd say the best card for £150 is the X850XT, it isn't the newest around but it is still a good powerful graphics card at a good price.

 

[WillLack]

Will my power supply be upto that, its only 300W?

It is an HP Pavilion a1210n that I picked up for a song, installed a further 1GB of memory, but nothing else so far....

 

[Raikiri]

Chances are no :/

 

[WillLack]

so what will work with it?

 

[Gibbo]

Hi there

If its a good quality 300W PSU then it will be fine. However if its some cheap rubbish it won't work.

 

[WillLack]

Its an HP supplied unit so what does that tell me?

 

[semi-pro waster]

I'd check the rails of the PSU, maybe try something like Motherboard Monitor or look in the bios possibly and see how stable they are. I don't know for certain but I'd suspect that HP aren't the highest quality units.

 

[smids]

Its an HP supplied unit so what does that tell me?

That tells you it is bad. My Fujitsu prebuilt came with the worst 300W PSU I've ever seen (Delta Electronics apparently). None of the OEM prebuilt computers come with good power supplies as they are profit driven consumer PC's. If they have included a good one, then I'd be very surprised.

 

[Gibbo]

Its an HP supplied unit so what does that tell me?

If its HP it should be fine as I doubt they would be using cheap trash.

 

[blackbull]

My PC is a Advent T9102 P4 3.4GHz And I have recently bought myself a X850XT and it works fine with my PSU which I believe is rated at 300w and I have no problems.

 

[ParadoX]

In reality the card manuafacturer will spec the psu for a worst case load. Eg you may have 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives and god knows what else plugged in. If you dont have a lot inside your PC you may be safe with a lower rated psu assuming its of good quality