I don't know what my pc can handle..

[GeriatricGinger]

I am not PC guru by any means. I have an older pc:
MB: M2N-VM DVI
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Dual Core Processor 4600+
RAM: 4GB (4x1GB) DDR2 (PC2-6400) Wintec Industries
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7050 PV / NVIDIA nForce 630a
HDD: ST3160812AS Seagate 160GB 7200rpm SATA
PS: 500w

I went to buy a gfx card todaym as the game World of Tanks gets me 2 fps!

I was lost at all the selections, and this was just at BestBuy. I don't want to sink a ton of $ into it, as I don't know if I'll like PC gaming yet.. Any suggestions/assistance from you all is greatly appreciated.

GeriatricGinger

 

[bob1033]

Humm, could you give me a price range to work buy?
Taking you don't want to spend alot of money, you should look into AMD rather than Nvidia, AMD will get more more power at a smaller price tag.

I also you buy another 4GB stick of RAM so you'll get dual channel bandwidth (it'll help your RAM performance some)

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Taking you don't want to spend alot of money, you should look into AMD rather than Nvidia, AMD will get more more power at a smaller price tag.

Not necessarily, have you read any of the recent 'Best Graphics cards for the Money'? Nvidia's now very competitive in the sub $200 market, often beating AMD on performance per dollar.

I also you buy another 4GB stick of RAM so you'll get dual channel bandwidth (it'll help your RAM performance some)

This is Socket 939 with DDR. There are no 4GB DIMMs, and even if there were they wouldn't be supported by this platform. Also he said (4x1GB) not (1x4GB), it's already dual channel.

 

[Random_Tactics]

Sorry Dude, your build isnt really capable of running any recent (3D) game... Your PC could handle strategy games, Indie games (with low HW req.) or older games.

If you you are ok with low settings, you could go for a Athlon 64 X2 6000+, additional Ram (already said), an maybe a Radeon HD 4850 GPU...

 

[mohit9206]

Get a radeon 7750.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

I wouldn't recommend anything above ~$100 price point. That's probably already overkill for that processor/platform, and anything more would just offer diminishing returns. The only Nvidia card around that price point worth considering is probably the GTX 650 Ti, if you can find one for ~$110 that might be a good option. The HD7750 is another good option, and they can easily be found for ~$80 at the moment.

Both of those options will probably be crazy bottlenecked by that processor, but if you're really committed to upgrading than go for it. Either way they'll achieve far more performance than a Geforce 7050.

 

[Maxime506]

Get a HD 7750 GDDR5 version and OC your CPU a little bit.

 

[Maxime506]

I wouldn't recommend anything above ~$100 price point. That's probably already overkill for that processor/platform, and anything more would just offer diminishing returns. The only Nvidia card around that price point worth considering is probably the GTX 650 Ti, if you can find one for ~$110 that might be a good option. The HD7750 is another good option, and they can easily be found for ~$80 at the moment.

Both of those options will probably be crazy bottlenecked by that processor, but if you're really committed to upgrading than go for it. Either way they'll achieve far more performance than a Geforce 7050.

Ovrclock this processor will squeeze a little bit. U could find some OC video in youtube. I know it's out of date but not as worse as u could imagine. I still use occasionally a Pentium III 800mhz laptop w/ 256M memory and I am fine with it.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Oops, got my names mixed up. 4600+ is an AM2 CPU, 4400+/4800+ are 939, but regardless I think that platform maxes out at 8GB of DDR2 (4x2GB), so 4GB DIMMs aren't supported either way.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

I wouldn't recommend anything above ~$100 price point. That's probably already overkill for that processor/platform, and anything more would just offer diminishing returns. The only Nvidia card around that price point worth considering is probably the GTX 650 Ti, if you can find one for ~$110 that might be a good option. The HD7750 is another good option, and they can easily be found for ~$80 at the moment.

Both of those options will probably be crazy bottlenecked by that processor, but if you're really committed to upgrading than go for it. Either way they'll achieve far more performance than a Geforce 7050.

Ovrclock this processor will squeeze a little bit. U could find some OC video in youtube. I know it's out of date but not as worse as u could imagine. I still use occasionally a Pentium III 800mhz laptop w/ 256M memory and I am fine with it.

A few years ago I decided to upgrade my 939 Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system (oc from 2.0 to 2.6 GHz) with a GTS250. It allowed me to get a few more years of life out of the system, but the processor was definitely the bottleneck in games. All I know is anything from the HD7000 or GTX600 series, even the HD7750, is much more powerful than a GTS250. It might be a worthwhile light-gaming upgrade over starting from scratch, but I just wanted to stress that while doing some moderate CPU overclocking couldn't hurt, the 4600+ will still be a significant bottleneck when paired with the suggested graphics cards.

 

[GeriatricGinger]

I picked up a GeForce 560 Ti from a friend to try out. On highest graphics for WoT, I get about 25fps. On middle settings, I get ~60. Slightly better fps than that with ETS2 game.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

I picked up a GeForce 560 Ti from a friend to try out. On highest graphics for WoT, I get about 25fps. On middle settings, I get ~60. Slightly better fps than that with ETS2 game.

The 560 Ti should be quite a bit faster than a 7750 or 7770. Although you'd probably see little to no performance advantage over those cards in your system. I went back to check some benchmarks, and apparently I overestimated the performance of the 7750. It looks like it actually isn't much faster than a GTS250, and tends to perform just below the 550 Ti.

Is the 560 Ti permanent or are you just trying it out temporarily? If it's just temporary I would still recommend a 7750, it seems like a good match for your system. It's not nearly as much of a performance overkill as I thought.