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Best Video Card for my budget PC?
Tonious
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Howdy all! I just got a Compaq Presario, Model # SR5710F with the monitor for 100 bucks from a friend of mine. He originally paid 400 for it so I feel lucky. Plus it's only 6 months old. It has an AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor 4450e 2.3GHz, 3gigs Ram, Vista Home, and a built in Nvidia Geforce 6150SE Nforce 430 video card. I'm going to add 1 gig of Ram to max it out at 4 gigs, but I wanted to know what would be the best video card I could add to the system? I don't want to buy a really expensive card to have it go to waste with the system. It has PCIe x16, not sure if it's 2.0 or not. Tried looking online at the specs but they didn't say 2.0 so I'm guessing no? I have a spare PC I can gut for parts. Going to be taking the HD out of it and the PSU to add to the Compaq. So.... suggestions? Looking to spend around 100 bucks on the video card, if it's a little more that's okay. I just wanna know the best for the system without wasting a lot of money. Was looking at the Radeon HD series cards as I prefer them over nVidia. Thanks in advance!
Tonious on
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If you have the PSU for it, get the biggest numbers that you can handle. At worst, you bottleneck your game performance to the CPU, or it gets too hot in the case. I have another Compaq of the same age, and it has PCI-e 2.0, and it's working pretty well with my 9600GT, if bottlenecked due to it being the last computer everr made with a Pentium 4
Open up the computer and make sure you have the 6 pin power connector if so that is a great card.
If it's less than 380W or so then you might consider a 4770 (almost as powerful as 4850 but uses less juice) or a 4670 (still a decent video card and should work in just about any computer).
Also it's important to take your monitor's resolution into account. A 4870 could well be overkill for anything but playing Crysis (which will probably make your CPU cry anyway). With that computer I wouldn't bother about getting a 1GB card, your CPU will probably start to be a problem before then.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Tony do good? This card perfect for me or should I go higher/lower?
That's a very good card. I have this version installed in one of my PCs. It's quiet, doesn't use much power, and does a great job at video play back and hardware encodeing support. I put a HIS version in my sister's PC, needed a doulbe wide cooler, and it's running great for her. A few of us recommend the 4670 1gig as a low budget card for it's cheap price & low power use.
Like I said, we could give better advice if you told us about your PSU from your old computer and your monitor.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)