Graphics Card Upgrade for 7 year old PC?

[aN0rthernSoul]

So my graphics card has broke and the PC repair man said I need another.

I was hoping a few of you who know about this sort of thing could steer me in the right direction as to which one to buy.

Now these the specs of my comp

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor(2.4GHz,8MB Cache,1066MHz)

MESH Midi-Tower ATX Case + 550W PSU - 190mm(W) x 420mm(H) x 480mm(D) I've just ordered a 850W PSU which I'm fitting tomorrow as I realise 550W isn't brilliant for modern graphics cards

ASUS P5K SE Mainboard - Intel P35 - Intel Core™ 2 Duo/ Quad/ Extreme - ATX

8192MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM - (4 x 2GB)

750GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive with 32MB Buffer

512MB nVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX+ - Dual DVI, HDTV, TV-Out - Which is now broke

So I'm looking to buy a new card, nothing ridiculously high end as I'll be playing most new games on PS4, although I won't rule out future PC purchases, in which case I still want something fairly decent.

In terms of budget I wasn't really looking to spend more than £200, unless something offers great value for a little bit higher.

My only worry is, with my PC being 7 years old, I don't want to buy a graphics card that I won't reap the full benefits from if it's being bottlenecked by my processor, etc. I don't want to spend £200 on a card if I'll get the exact same result from a £100 card. I'll look into overclocking my processor if that helps? I've never done it before so I don't know what difference it will make.

I'm not really clued up on all this, so any advice or recommendations are welcome.

In terms of a new PC though it's out of the question, I can't justify buying a new rig for the amount of new games I'll be playing on it, and the fact that I recently bought a PS4. So it's only the GPU which I can upgrade.

Thanks!

 

[Or Nah]

Damn bro, your 9800GTX is bringing back hella memorries..

Honestly you're gonna have to replace most of your stuff, you're still on a old CPU, DDR2 RAM..

I'd recommend going to a Z87/Z97 board, an i5 4460/4690k, 8GB DDR3, GTX 750ti

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Or you could literally just throw a PCIe x16 card on there and call it a day

 

[iballew]

First of all, you shouldn't have spent the money on the new psu. Graphics cards have gotten more powerful and more efficient at the same time. Nvidia recommends 500 watts of power for their top of the line gtx 980 so that 850 watt is a bit overkill. Your motherboard does support the 45nm core 2 quads. I would upgrade to a q9550 (performs like a modern core i3) and a gtx 750 ti/960 depending on the deals you find and how much you want to stretch your budget.