It is black Friday and I am in the market for a new graphics card. My computer is like 5 or 6 years old (when purchased it was near top of the line and I tend to spend a lot up front and then drive computers into the ground), but I don't want to spend the money buying an entire new rig at this point, two months ago my hard drive failed so I replaced it. That being said I don't want to buy the highest end graphics card, but something that would get me through the next year of two before I finally do a full upgrade. I'm currently running an AMD Radeon HD 5800 series graphgic card. Does anyone have recommendations on a good midrange graphics card and/or know of black friday/cyber mondya sales where I could pick up a good card for a reasonable price? I am considering the following:
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 04G-P4-3975-KR 4GB SSC GAMING w/ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling Graphics Card
-This card runs around $350 on newegg and comes with a game, so the price of the card is around $300. The reviews seem solid, but I think this would be on the high end of what I would be willing to spend.
EVGA GeForce GTX 950 2GB GAMING, Silent Cooling Graphics Card 02G-P4-2951-KR
This card runs for around $160 and is a step down. The price here is reasonable for a graphics card, but I don't know if it would make sense to spend the additional money for the upgrade or how much of an upgrade this would be over my current card. SInce I have had my card for years I assume it would be significant.
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@eddie84 wrote:Are you running any graphic intensive programs or games? If you do go with the one with more memory since it can load and store more texture, details using them. Myself I stopped gaming for awhile now and still using nVidia GForce GTX670 in SLI.
Yea, I tend to play FFXIV, Fallout 4, and FSX. My current card is showing its age I think and its impacting the play on Fallout 4 causing drastically reduced framerates to the point where certain sections are unplayable unless I stand still for a minute to let the system catch up. Not really ideal mid-firefight. I'm just trying to extend the life of my computer since its an i7 quad core. Those stil seem a bit pricey even today.
@eddie84 wrote:Forgot to ask about the rest of your rig (CPU, HHD, RAM, etc) but yeah, I would get the one with more memory since the system requirements for Fallout 4 is 2GB for GPU and that's the bare minimum. I usually tend to overkill when it comes to GPU and PSU since those 2 are the most common causes of BSOD.
@Anonymous PC is old it is 64 bit and i7 920 @ 2.67ghz (think this is the default but its overclocked to like 3 something) & 6 gb ram
While I wanted to purchse via amazon it turns out amazon will hit me with a ton of sales tax (almost $30) and newegg will not. In addition, I get free 2 day shipping with shoprunner by using newegg and $25 amex statement credit vs amazon where I would have to wait a few more days for the free shipping. On top of that I get a free game with the card from newegg. .
@eddie84 wrote:For the most part you should be fine. It really depends on the game (some games are more CPU intensive thus you'd need a faster CPU). The 920 is a great CPU (I used to have one with D0 stepping and OC'd it to 4GHz).
My CPU is OC to 3.3 to 3.9. I bought an additional 12 ram as well so now I will have 18ram total (up from 6) with the new graphics card. This should result in a sigifnicant performance increase I hope. Ideally this will extend the life of my computer for another 1 to 2 years at which point I'll have to build a new system with a new CPU/mother card. Hopefully I will be able to just transfer the graphics card and new ram over. I can install ram and a graphics card but replacing the CPU is not something I have done before and it makes me a bit nervous.