Recommend a GFX card

[Carl the Llama]

Well I intend to upgrade my graphics card (again) so I can play FFXIV in style and have a budget of £125 and wanted to know what you guys think I should get, I am currently running:

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 1918MB RAM
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3

I really want to be able to run decent settings and was wondering what you guys would recommend, I can use AGP and PCI cards so if you guys can recommend something I would be grateful.

[Aerith's Knight]

Geforce 9800 GTX, it works fine on all of the high end games out now and is already 2 years old, so shouldn't be too costly.

[kotora]

Don't go with Nvidia, AMD offers you more frames for your buck. I'd recommend one of the mid-end cards in the latest 5000 series, like the 5770. You'd be wasting your money on the outdated yet still relatively expensive 9800GTX.

Though with that kinda outdated CPU and memory I don't know if the GPU is gonna be the bottleneck here. Then again I don't know much (nor do I care) about FFXIV and how much resources it requires.

[Mirage]

Radeon HD 5770 is probably the best you can get for 125 quid.

It's not true that AMD is unquestionably best on price:performance ratios though. The GTX 465 is very good, I'm thinking on getting one. That is however a card that costs a bit more, but might not be too much above £125.

-edit-
Nevermind, if you don't have PCI-express, you can pretty much forget about getting any sort of good FF14 performance.

There are very few good AGP cards on the market now, seeing as PCI-e has been the standard for more than 5 years.

Unless you meant that your PC can use both AGP and PCI-express. That sounds pretty unusual though.

[kotora]

According to some benchmarks I've read the 465 performs about the same as an overclocked 5830 which is a little bit cheaper. Might as well throw in a couple of extra tens and go for the 5850. Which would be way over budget anyway.

[Carl the Llama]

Sorry I was having a complete blond moment (as was the person who told me that my slot was AGP) in actual fact it is a PCI-e slot, and I was seriously considering the 5770, though I doubt it will fit into my LB here is a picture of it:

http://www.biostar.com.tw/upload/Motherboard/b20080620.jpg

Additionally it requires one 75w 6pin PCI-e power connector, now I have the connector but are there any different wattage PCI-e power connectors? if so how do I find out what the wattage of mine is?

With reguards to my memory I had intended to upgrade it after seeing how much the GPU will take up.

[Yrkoon]

why not save a bit more and get a am3 board with a 955 cpu a 4850 1 gig at least and when memory prices go cheap again get 4 gig ddr3

[Mirage]

Sorry I was having a complete blond moment (as was the person who told me that my slot was AGP) in actual fact it is a PCI-e slot, and I was seriously considering the 5770, though I doubt it will fit into my LB here is a picture of it:

http://www.biostar.com.tw/upload/Motherboard/b20080620.jpg

Additionally it requires one 75w 6pin PCI-e power connector, now I have the connector but are there any different wattage PCI-e power connectors? if so how do I find out what the wattage of mine is?

With reguards to my memory I had intended to upgrade it after seeing how much the GPU will take up.
It doesn't matter if the card sticks out more than the mainboard does, as long as it can fit inside your computer's chassis. As for power consumption, does your power supply have that 6-pin PCI-e power connector (http://www.techaddicts.net/reviews/st60f/st60f.13.jpg) natively, or are you using a converter and two regular white 4-pin molex connectors (http://images.ncix.com/forumimages/DD73B0B5-1171-102A-E6D08112CB35E05D.jpg)? If the latter, you might want to make sure that your PSU can deliver high enough amperage on the 12 volt rail for the card. If you don't know a lot about that stuff (I don't know what you know, so I'm just safing it :p), you could use your cell phone or something to take a picture of the label on your power supply, and upload that so we can see it.

It's likely to look something like this. (http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/power/Ultra/X3_600/images/label.jpg)

Different wattage PCI-e power connectors generally have different number of pins. You have some cards that require one 6-pin power connector, others that require one 8-pin, and even some that require two 6-pin or a 6-pin and an 8-pin connector :p


According to some benchmarks I've read the 465 performs about the same as an overclocked 5830 which is a little bit cheaper. Might as well throw in a couple of extra tens and go for the 5850. Which would be way over budget anyway.

Sure, but if I get an nVidia, I don't have to deal with that craphole that is Catalyst and its control panel :p.

-edit-
Now that i think about it, I might have been the GTX 460, not the 465 I had been looking at. It's supposedly better and cheaper than the 465.

[Carl the Llama]

why not save a bit more and get a am3 board with a 955 cpu a 4850 1 gig at least and when memory prices go cheap again get 4 gig ddr3
Unfortunately my LB does not support DDR3:

This is a link to my LB and what it can and can't use Linkage (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/content.php?S_ID=370)



Sorry I was having a complete blond moment (as was the person who told me that my slot was AGP) in actual fact it is a PCI-e slot, and I was seriously considering the 5770, though I doubt it will fit into my LB here is a picture of it:

http://www.biostar.com.tw/upload/Motherboard/b20080620.jpg

Additionally it requires one 75w 6pin PCI-e power connector, now I have the connector but are there any different wattage PCI-e power connectors? if so how do I find out what the wattage of mine is?

With reguards to my memory I had intended to upgrade it after seeing how much the GPU will take up.
It doesn't matter if the card sticks out more than the mainboard does, as long as it can fit inside your computer's chassis. As for power consumption, does your power supply have that 6-pin PCI-e power connector (http://www.techaddicts.net/reviews/st60f/st60f.13.jpg) natively, or are you using a converter and two regular white 4-pin molex connectors (http://images.ncix.com/forumimages/DD73B0B5-1171-102A-E6D08112CB35E05D.jpg)? If the latter, you might want to make sure that your PSU can deliver high enough amperage on the 12 volt rail for the card. If you don't know a lot about that stuff (I don't know what you know, so I'm just safing it :p), you could use your cell phone or something to take a picture of the label on your power supply, and upload that so we can see it.

It's likely to look something like this. (http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/power/Ultra/X3_600/images/label.jpg)

Different wattage PCI-e power connectors generally have different number of pins. You have some cards that require one 6-pin power connector, others that require one 8-pin, and even some that require two 6-pin or a 6-pin and an 8-pin connector :p


According to some benchmarks I've read the 465 performs about the same as an overclocked 5830 which is a little bit cheaper. Might as well throw in a couple of extra tens and go for the 5850. Which would be way over budget anyway.

Sure, but if I get an nVidia, I don't have to deal with that craphole that is Catalyst and its control panel :p.

-edit-
Now that i think about it, I might have been the GTX 460, not the 465 I had been looking at. It's supposedly better and cheaper than the 465.

Here are some pictures for your consideration:
http://a.imageshack.us/img833/3443/17082010228.th.jpg (http://img833.imageshack.us/i/17082010228.jpg/)http://a.imageshack.us/img299/2663/17082010229.th.jpg (http://img299.imageshack.us/i/17082010229.jpg/)http://a.imageshack.us/img21/3664/17082010233.th.jpg (http://img21.imageshack.us/i/17082010233.jpg/)

My worry with the GPU is that its width not its length as you can see from the first picture, its not a very wide space and seeing as it's very close to the PCI slot and the PCI slot is higher then the PCI-e slot my concern is that if it overlaps the GPU wont fit properly into the board.

[kotora]

The card being too big may be a problem on some motherboards. My 9800GTX+ barely fits in, with the two power connectors touching a memory stick.

But why does the PCI slot matter? It's empty right? The PCI-E slot is the green one, so that shouldn't be a problem.

[Carl the Llama]

My problem is that the PCI slot is 15mm off of the LB and the PCI-e slot is just 10mm so if the width of the GPU overlaps the PCI slot will the 5mm make a difference as to how it fits into the LB?

The distance between the 2 is about 17mm, how much is the width of the GPU?

Seeing as it slots into 2 case slots and given that the width of the GPU is the same as the 2 slots of the case I can only surmise that it is indeed to thick and if the space between the connectors and the body of the GPU is less then 5mm that I would not fin snugly into my LB.

EDIT: after extensive research I have concluded that the 5670 is prolly the card I'm going to have to choose given the space between the 2 slots, if you guys can find anything more powerful, I can stretch my budget to £150 maybe even £160 for the right card but consider that it must only slot into 1 case slot otherwise I don't think it would fit.

Much appreciation to you guys for looking into this for me.

[kotora]

It would help if I knew what an 'LB' is.

[Carl the Llama]

Logicboard, aka Motherboard... my uncle uses the expression all the time and I guess its catching.

[kotora]

The 5770 is going to fit. You might have to remove the plastic or metal shroud if it comes with one, but it'll fit.

Also tell your uncle the 1980s called, they want their term back.

[Carl the Llama]

Remove the cover of the GPU? can that be done and the warranty still be valid?

[Mirage]

Just do it without breaking anything, then you can put it back on if you need to send it in and no one will notice.

[Renmiri]

AMD is a memory hog. Unless you have 8gb go with nvidia. My laptop has 4 gb and I'm dying with an AMD and their Catalyst software.

[Mirage]

I'd rather put my money on something being wrong with your laptop in that case.