New Graphics Card

lemon26

Hi! As the title says, I'm looking for a new graphics card and I'd like some idea / suggestions please. At present I've got a 256Mb Nvidia 8600 GTS which has been in for nearly 4 years now. The rest of my system is Core 2 E6600 (2.4GHz), 4Gb RAM and I have a Foxconn 946GZ7MA-1.1-8KRS2H motherboard which has a PCIe x16 slot for the graphics card.

I have about £100 to spend and have seen the following 1Gb cards:
Nvidia GTS 450
ATI 6790
ATI 6850

I mainly play CoD 5, CoD 4, flight simulators and FM 2011.

Thank you! :beer:

santer_2

I would ask in their forums if those cards are suitable

http://www.callofduty.com/board/viewforum.php?f=26&sid=6ierbep2rn2vft1o5i3u0upem2

gonzo127

what power supply have you got? (wattage and 'spare' connections)

- this will be your main limit on what graphics card you can get mainly because a PCI-E slot can only give 75w of power and the 8600GTS only draws 71w of power, going on this although the reference 8600GTS gives a extra connector to allow for overclocking it most likely isnt drawing any power from it, which means that any other graphics card you are looking at could strain your PSU too much if it has to draw from that connector, which both ths listed cards could as each card draws roughly 120-130w of power at maximum,

when this is added in with a average non overclocked system i would expect around a 280w peak draw, therefore would be fine on a quality PSU with a 80% effiecency with a 450w PSU to allow for slight wobbles in stability, however if its a generic PSU effcience is usualy much less ~65% and the stability is usualy not as good so you would probably need a 600w generic to be comfortable with running either of those cards (you could potentially get away with a 500w PSU but i personally would not be comfortable running my system with that, that being said i always spend a good amoutn on a good PSU)

(oh and also either of those cards would be fine for those games the 6850 is better in general but then is also generally more expensive)