New graphics card?

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nonsenze

nonsenze

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I'm looking into upgrading my current graphics card, an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640.
I'm searching for one that supports two monitors and that uses the same ports as my current monitor uses, an AOC E2250swdn which uses 1 DVI and 1 VGA (D-Sub)
Right now, my budget is about £200?

Any help?

CPU: Intel i5-3340 CPU @ 3.10GHz
CPU Speed: 3099.2 MHz
RAM: 16GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GT 640
Motherboard: Gigabyte - H61M-DS2 DVI
HDD: Cavier Blue - WD 1TB 3.5 inch
Monitor: AOC E2250swdn (1 DVI and 1 VGA (D-Sub))
 
Are parts really that much more expensive in the UK? Yeah, sorry. Your choices are save up for that or buy something drastically inferior, then.
 
Arzalis said:
Are parts really that much more expensive in the UK? Yeah, sorry. Your choices are save up for that or buy something drastically inferior, then.
Click to expand...

pretty much this
 
Don't bother buying a big card if you don't have a good machine to keep up with it. They are not miracle parts. A 970 will 'carry' your machine but still be bottlenecked like anything else. Do you see yourself running Crysis 3 twice and two other games with Photoshop open + uploading and downloading constantly, at 5K resolution? If you find yourself saying no to this question, you don't need a 2-3000 dollar splurge build card.

Save your money with a card in the 600 or 700 series, look for the number in the second place, that's been the dictator of the card's power for a long time. A 570 is better than a 640 on the performance and raw power plane, but it may lack in the technical plane since it's a bit older. The 8800 outperformed the 9600 unless it was overclocked, even if it missed out on a few technical superiorities. These things do not matter to a retail user, it doesn't matter what you're doing honestly, you won't even catch the difference.

tl;dr if you don't have an SSD, a 2K+ resolution monitor with 140Hz refresh rate that costs over a thousand bucks, and and a current-gen i7 (or whatever's newer than that?) overclocked? You probably don't need a 970.
 
On the contrary if you DO have a big build, don't let me sit here and tell you to hold back. Christmas is nearing. You should buy the 970 if you are running a monster rig, and Arzalis is right, save until you have the cash. It's going to be the best card until they bring out a 1000 series something or other. I'm not really up to date on the newest of the new because I've been shopping budget for the past few months but the 970 came up a few times as a 'possibility.' Funny how in a few generations it'll be 200 quid cheaper for you and 200 bucks cheaper for me, and still it'll be running these games we play nowadays at 4k resolution on 3 monitors with 70 processes open.
 
Right, thanks for the info. I'll look into the 600 and 700 series from nvidia, any suggestions from those series?
Also, my rig isn't a 'monster', it's practically budget. There's a bunch of space in the casing though, which is why I'm looking to upgrade, and I've got an HDD.
 
[1999]ShenPls;470003 said:
tl;dr if you don't have an SSD, a 2K+ resolution monitor with 140Hz refresh rate that costs over a thousand bucks, and and a current-gen i7 (or whatever's newer than that?) overclocked? You probably don't need a 970.
Click to expand...

But all of these are wrong, the thing that matters the most is what games/applications you plan to run. If you play a lot of last-gen stuff that runs on engines like CryEngine 3 and Unreal Engine 4 you'll always benefit from a more powerful card. If you just play gmod then yeah it doesn't matter at all because it'll always be a laggy piece of shit. And you're completely uninformed about CPU's, i7 does not describe generation, it describes function. All it offers over the i5 CPU's is hyperthreading pretty much, which is useless for gaming. You want to look at model names when researching CPU's, ie. a 2500k VS a 4690. As a rule of thumb you always want a i5 model when looking at a gaming build when you opt for Intel (for now).
 
Fair enough on the i5s but yeah like I said it's down to technicalities and different cards do different things differently... like I said. I didn't say a thing about the i7s though.
 
Seriously, if you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to computers, don't spread misinformation. Xari's right.

Unless you have a computer that was made over a decade ago, a GTX 970 will be the best bang for your buck atm.
 
Sure, misinformation, sure, know so little when I work around people in the field. Here was me just trying to suggest budget building because some people have things a little tight financially. And then in the post right after, praising the 970 on everything but its price.

Nonny's building budget, and thus shouldn't waste 300 bucks or so off-sale on the thing when it won't one man army his gaming rig. You have to have a well rounded rig unless you're just splurging and it's to the point where everything is top of the line, which is okay, but splurge and budget are basically the exact opposite.
 
To be fair a GTX970 is only 50 quid away from his budget, so it's not an entirely unreasonable suggestion. I agree with the idea of a well-rounded rig, but we can't really comment on that because he didn't share his other specs (which he should when asking advice like this). Anyways, another suggestion would be to wait for the inevitable price cuts on other nvidia cards and of course from AMD's side (I think they already did a few?) but right now the GTX970 is such a ridiculously good bang-for-buck card that it makes majority of other purchases a waste of money at this time. You get essentially the 3rd best commercial graphics card in the world for 360 dollaroos - really hard to beat that.
 
Alright so, should I go with the 970 or find something in the 600 or 700 series?
 
ì use a 660ti and it works fine for me, can run arma 3 on ultra at ~30-40 fps.
that was around <£150 minimum, i can't really remember.
 
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