New video card.

[sparkles]

So I want to upgrade my video card to make sim city play better. I have a budget of $100-150. Any ideas? I was going to go to newegg and just buy by price. Looks like I can get a GTX for like $110. Thoughts?

[Karate Kid]

Depending on the rest of your setup, a new GPU may not do anything to improve game play at all. On the other hand, it can greatly improve performance. You need to post the rest of you PC's hardware so I can help you out :)

-Karate Kid

[Axw_JD]

Also remember: most numbers (and letters) on a Graphics Card name mean close to nothing. Compliance with a newer version of DirectX (specially starting with DX 10) does.

[Blueeyes]

So I want to upgrade my video card to make sim city play better. I have a budget of $100-150. Any ideas? I was going to go to newegg and just buy by price. Looks like I can get a GTX for like $110. Thoughts?

For at that price range, dont bother going with Nvidia. I'm a huge fan of nvidia myself, but for anything lower than $250 or so... AMD takes the cake.

Assuming your computer is only a couple years old and the mobo has 2.0/3.0.

A nice 7770 will do the job quite nicely.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121632

[sparkles]

mobo does have pcie 2.0

Core 2 duo 2.13ghz
8gb RAM

[Dark_Desires]

I would have to agree and say a HD 7770 great card for 100$ and easy to find at that price.+ no point in buying a better card because other parts will bottleneck it a lot.But over all most games will run alot better good luck and Enjoy.

[Nellerin]

So I want to upgrade my video card to make sim city play better. I have a budget of $100-150. Any ideas? I was going to go to newegg and just buy by price. Looks like I can get a GTX for like $110. Thoughts?

If you are dead set on getting a new graphics card then go with the 7770.

However, you might be better off saving up for a new and better CPU such as the i3 2100 which only costs $120 on Newegg.

[Blueeyes]

mobo does have pcie 2.0

Core 2 duo 2.13ghz
8gb RAM

Ok go with the 7770 if you are sure you want a new video card.

If you are dead set on getting a new graphics card then go with the 7770.

However, you might be better off saving up for a new and better CPU such as the i3 2100 which only costs $120 on Newegg.

the 2100 is sandy bridge, old architecture... don't get me wrong, it doesn't make it worst then a ivy... but I rather have the newer Ivy chips, or save up for Haswell. The 2100 is also a LGA1155 socket, which is incompatible with LGA775 ... as far as I know... assuming he has a E6400.

To conclude here, you can't really upgrade your CPU... well you can to a E8600 (Core 2 duo 3.33ghz) but its like $300... you can build a new PC with a i3 for just a couple hundred bucks more. So, for now I'd say go for the 7770... then possibly build your own PC or buy a barebones later on. (Or now if you like!) ... then again, Haswell should be released soon (I think June-ish) but not a huge difference, rumored better integrated graphics (as far as I know) but nothing big.

[sparkles]

The point now is just to get enough oomph to be able to run sim city on my 1920x1200 monitor. I am planning on a more extensive i5 build later in the Spring when I have more money.

This came on sale today and so I bought it. Enough extra performance for a good price. http://dealnews.com/XFX-Radeon-HD-6450-1-GB-PCIe-Video-Card-for-20-after-rebate-free-shipping/677591.html

[Nellerin]

The point now is just to get enough oomph to be able to run sim city on my 1920x1200 monitor. I am planning on a more extensive i5 build later in the Spring when I have more money.

This came on sale today and so I bought it. Enough extra performance for a good price. http://dealnews.com/XFX-Radeon-HD-6450-1-GB-PCIe-Video-Card-for-20-after-rebate-free-shipping/677591.html

That video card has very low performance benchmarks, I wouldn't expect to get much out of it. You'll be lucky to run SimCity (when it actually gets its servers running lol) without some sort of lag.

[sparkles]

All I need out of it is the ability to play sim city lol. I know the performance isn't great, but it is already way better than the onboard graphics that I had been using.

[Blueeyes]

All I need out of it is the ability to play sim city lol. I know the performance isn't great, but it is already way better than the onboard graphics that I had been using.

Why not just get a sweet video card, and use it in your i5 system for when you do your build?

Pshh. It's not like technology advances over months :rolleyes:

But seriously, it may be worth it.

[Totality]

Ok go with the 7770 if you are sure you want a new video card.



the 2100 is sandy bridge, old architecture... don't get me wrong, it doesn't make it worst then a ivy... but I rather have the newer Ivy chips, or save up for Haswell. The 2100 is also a LGA1155 socket, which is incompatible with LGA775 ... as far as I know... assuming he has a E6400.

To conclude here, you can't really upgrade your CPU... well you can to a E8600 (Core 2 duo 3.33ghz) but its like $300... you can build a new PC with a i3 for just a couple hundred bucks more. So, for now I'd say go for the 7770... then possibly build your own PC or buy a barebones later on. (Or now if you like!) ... then again, Haswell should be released soon (I think June-ish) but not a huge difference, rumored better integrated graphics (as far as I know) but nothing big.

I'd rather have an old Sandy Chip to be quite honest. They overclock so much better than the current Ivy builds. I have an Ivy at the moment, and upgraded from a Sandy. I'd much rather have kept the sandy, they so much better in terms of overclocking and heat dissipation. The ivy comes with a better cGPU, intergrated pci-e 3.0 support and is 22nm. Not much on the Sandy architecture that's all that big, mainly the PCI-E 3.0 Support is the main feature for me.

I'd rather of preferred to upgrade to a Sandy i7 than an Ivy i5. I only upgraded from Sandy as the new CPU came bundled with my new motherboard.

I've been thinking of selling my Ivy chip and buying another Sandy one.

I'll be buying Haswell and the new Mobo when they come out. Obviously I'm looking at around £350 for a decent board + cpu + waterblock. But I think it'll be worth it, although I'll wait and see for the results of the OCing capabilities.

But your right, presuming he has a LGA775, which he should be if he has a LGA775 chip, he can't upgrade to Sandy or Ivy anyway.

Sorry for going offtrack slightly.

[Blueeyes]

I'd rather have an old Sandy Chip to be quite honest. They overclock so much better than the current Ivy builds. I have an Ivy at the moment, and upgraded from a Sandy. I'd much rather have kept the sandy, they so much better in terms of overclocking and heat dissipation. The ivy comes with a better cGPU, intergrated pci-e 3.0 support and is 22nm. Not much on the Sandy architecture that's all that big, mainly the PCI-E 3.0 Support is the main feature for me.

I'd rather of preferred to upgrade to a Sandy i7 than an Ivy i5. I only upgraded from Sandy as the new CPU came bundled with my new motherboard.

I've been thinking of selling my Ivy chip and buying another Sandy one.

I'll be buying Haswell and the new Mobo when they come out. Obviously I'm looking at around £350 for a decent board + cpu + waterblock. But I think it'll be worth it, although I'll wait and see for the results of the OCing capabilities.

But your right, presuming he has a LGA775, which he should be if he has a LGA775 chip, he can't upgrade to Sandy or Ivy anyway.

Sorry for going offtrack slightly.

I can agree Sandy bridge had some good OC chips, the 2600k was one of my favorite. But, Ivy bridge enabled full PCIe 3.0 and run more efficiently.

I've done a few AIO and mini PC builds, and having an efficient cpu is important... especially if you want a i series under 65W. Ivy bridge's integrated graphics are also better compared to Sandy.

But, for a gaming build most of that is irrelevant (except for pcie 3.0 support).

[sparkles]

are there any mainstream video cards that even push the limits of PCIe 2.1? My understanding was 3.0 was really more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.

[Blueeyes]

are there any mainstream video cards that even push the limits of PCIe 2.1? My understanding was 3.0 was really more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.

No really a market gimmick but more rather there is differences in the bandwidths of a 2.0 slot vs a 3.0. Note, that a low end 3.0 card (like a 7770) won't be near the bandwidth limits of a 2.0 so you have nothing to worry about that.

Mathematically, the 3.0 allows double the bandwidth of a 2.0.

PCI Express 3.0 uses an 8 GT/s bit rate, enabling a bandwidth capacity of 1 GB/s per lane. Accordingly, a 16-lane graphics card slot will have a bandwidth capacity of up to 16 GB/s.

On the surface, the increase from 5 GT/s to 8 GT/s doesn’t quite sound like a doubling of speed. However, PCI Express 2.0 uses an 8b/10b encoding scheme, where 8 bits of data are mapped to 10-bit symbols to achieve DC balance. The result is 20% overhead, cutting effective bit rate.

PCI Express 3.0 moves to a much more efficient 128b/130b encoding scheme, eliminating the 20% overhead. So, the 8 GT/s won’t be a “theoretical” speed; it will be the actual bit rate, comparable in performance to 10 GT/s signaling with 8b/10b.

[Telkanis]

Glad you found a card sparkles! Just about anything is better than on board graphics. Upgrading memory can also help a lot and it's pretty cheap. I just built an ivy bridge computer and I'm totally happy with it. I've tried to OC it a bit but there is no noticeable gameplay difference on highest graphics settings at 1080p either with skyrim or dishonored. So yeah, don't see what the point is of a CPU that "overclocks" better when it makes no difference. Pus it's no longer really about clock cycles and more about how efficiently the CPU can process stuff. A lot of AMD processors have higher clock cycles than Intel but still underperform in bench tests.