Looking to get into some light gaming

[ArsalanK]

Recently I purchased a PC for $420, The specs are listed below.

AMD A10-6700 APU with a Radeon HD 8670 HD
3.7 GHZ
8GB ram
1TB hard drive

This is all on windows 8.1, 64 bit. My screen resolution is 1680 x 1050. I'm not sure what the power supply is like though, nor do I know how to check it. I am unfortunately on a budget and can't spend more than $100 on a GPU. I plan on playing games like tomb raider, COD, and a few MMO's. I also play games on emulators quite often. With what I have right now I can run Gamecube games on the dolphin emulator at 30FPS consistently but wii games will lag quite a bit and go down to about 15FPS at times.

The gamecube games on the emulator are Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos. The wii games are Xenoblade chronicles and The last story.

I am looking for a graphic card that would let me run at least these games a smooth frame rate without being choppy. Currently I am browsing best buy, futureshop, and a few other sites online for cards.

So far these have caught my attention, but i am not aware whether or not they would be suitable.
Radeon HD 7750 1GB : $99
GeForce GT 610 1GB DDR3 : $46.98
Sapphire AMD Radeon HD6450 2GB DDR3: $67.90

Any feedback is appreciated!

 

[WhiteSnake91]

save your money for a better cpu, mobo, and power supply(the built in graphics of intel are decent now) it's not the graphics card holding you back, it's your cpu. Probably not what you wanted to hear, and absolutely nothing wrong with AMD. But for what you're trying to do, you're going to need an intel chip, or a hell of an overclocked AMD one to match an intel at stock. Which you can't do seeing as it's not an unlocked cpu, nor is your PSU up to the task I'd imagine. I'm guessing it's like a bestbuy prebuilt?


The AMD apu's can play any pc game pretty much on low at 720p which is good but some emulators require a stout cpu

 

[rhys smith]

personally i bought a Radeon HD 7770 1GB and it plays games like battlefield 3 on ultra to high settings on 1080p on a worser quality pc than your so i think you would be fine with this if you want to future proof your pc for about a year or 2
years but im not sure about emulaters because they are something i have never used

 

[ArsalanK]

save your money for a better cpu, mobo, and power supply(the built in graphics of intel are decent now) it's not the graphics card holding you back, it's your cpu. Probably not what you wanted to hear, and absolutely nothing wrong with AMD. But for what you're trying to do, you're going to need an intel chip, or a hell of an overclocked AMD one to match an intel at stock. Which you can't do seeing as it's not an unlocked cpu, nor is your PSU up to the task I'd imagine. I'm guessing it's like a bestbuy prebuilt?


The AMD apu's can play any pc game pretty much on low at 720p which is good but some emulators require a stout cpu

Since I purchased this about a week ago i am still eligable to return it. In about the same price range is this PC
http://
Would you reccomend that i return and buy this one and also get a GPU as well, or would it not be required to get a GPU?

 

[WhiteSnake91]

yes I would definitely 100% return it for that i5 4400 desktop you linked. I looked up that cpu and it has the HD4600 which should be more than good enough for gaming until you can buy a gpu, and it's more than enough for emulators. I played everything on 720p medium on the older intel 4000 graphics until I could buy my gpu and it served me well. And most importantly of all, it will do emulators MUCH better. Just due to the architecture the Intels now have. When you can afford it an HD7770ghz edition for cheap or the HD7790 will probably play stuff on high fine. Not 60fps constantly at 1080p ultra, but then again those are ~$100 gpu's and what can you really expect at that price lol.

 

[ArsalanK]

Prefect, thanks again. I'm going to head out today to get a external hard drive for storage (Been putting that off for a long time). I'll update once I return, re-buy, and test.