Help with PC upgrading..

superhyper · April 1, 2012

I'm being a tech noob again so I thought I'd ask here as I know many of you know stuff about PCs.

I'm looking into upgrading my PC, but only for a bit. I have a quad core PC (AMD Phenom II, clocking in 2,6GHz), 8GB of RAM and my graphics card is a nVidia Geforce GT 230 1.5GB. Now, I'm thinking that I should get a better graphics card, as I've heard this one is quite crap, but do you think I need to upgrade something else too? My PC can run most games quite well, but with games evolving all the time, I'm getting worse graphics and framerates all the time. I'm not wanting to spend too much money on this upgrade so I'm not gonna like change every part of my PC so I thought I would just get rid of my systems Achilles' heel. So do you have any suggestions for a pretty cheap but good graphics card or should I upgrade something else? :) Any suggestions are welcome.

And if you need to know anything else about my system, just ask.

MephistoRacing · April 1, 2012

You'd probably just need more graphics power for now, unless something breaks. What sort of budget do you have for a new card?

superhyper · April 1, 2012

Not 100% sure yet, depending on my money sources :lol: I'd say around 200€

Ryzza5 · April 1, 2012

nVidia 680 GTX looks good :)

Otherwise can you get a 480 or 580 for less? Just make sure you have a good PSU.

Get a new CPU one day too (although I'd save that for a new build so you can go Intel). :)

Camel · April 1, 2012

nVidia 680 GTX looks good :)

Otherwise can you get a 480 or 580 for less? Just make sure you have a good PSU.

Get a new CPU one day too (although I'd save that for a new build so you can go Intel). :)

680 for 200€? Lol

For now a new graphics card would suffice. I'd wait till the lower end nvidia GTX6 series cards come out.

pyrre · April 1, 2012

nVidia 680 GTX looks good :)

Otherwise can you get a 480 or 580 for less? Just make sure you have a good PSU.

Get a new CPU one day too (although I'd save that for a new build so you can go Intel). :)

680 and 580 are way out of his price range (and can't really find 480's here. Only one I found was used one for 300€).

I'd wait till the lower end nvidia GTX6 series cards come out.

Agree with this. The 650/660 (which would be around your price range) is supposedly coming out this "summer".

If you'd absolutely want a new gpu right now then the best option would be nVidia 560TI (which is a bit over 200€) or if you can go a bit higher the 560TI 448 version/ AMD 7850 would be around 240-250€ or if you need to go under 200€, the AMD 6870.

Whether you go for a new one now or wait, you need to make sure you have powerful enough power supply, so which make and model do you have?

Ozzmcom · April 1, 2012

I think upgrading is never a good option , maybe you should save up for another year or so and build a new one?

The cpu will really drag you down in the upcoming years and I believe you can't change that because you'd have to change the whole mother board and then you'll say what the hell I'll get a new pc. That's the way it works in my case :P

MephistoRacing · April 1, 2012

nVidia 560Ti

This. See if you can save a bit extra and get a 560Ti, or two if you can get them used

iLLGT3 · April 1, 2012

If you are going to upgrade your GPU, I'd recommend upgrading your CPU as well. You'll have bottleneck issues if you don't.

superhyper · April 1, 2012

Whether you go for a new one now or wait, you need to make sure you have powerful enough power supply, so which make and model do you have?

I'll check that one tomorrow.

If you are going to upgrade your GPU, I'd recommend upgrading your CPU as well. You'll have bottleneck issues if you don't.

Then it'd basically mean (at least) doubling the amount of money put into it, which would pretty much make it more wise to build a completely new PC, which on the other hand would be nice but cost way more than I'm willing to spend.