Questions About How To Increase My Gaming Experience

[Fiddlestix]

Hey guys. I'm interested in building a custom gaming PC or (or preferably) upgrading my current old machine. I'm looking to play games (especially Skyrim) on High graphics running a smooth FPS. I enjoy modding Skyrim and would like a rig that could handle a few graphical mods. I don't play current-year games simply because my rig cannot handle them. My computer is a Gateway DX4300-03. Pretty old, I know.

I am wondering if I could upgrade this machine to run games smoothly or how I should go about building a new one. I've looked into graphics cards and I'm kinda leaning towards the Radeon R9 270x so far. I don't know if my current computer would be able to run it if I put in. If you help clarify that, I'd appreciate it.

I don't have a very high budget, but I want to have a nice gaming experience instead of being troubled with awful, unsteady FPS and low graphics. I'd really really prefer it if I could just put a new graphics card into my computer (like the R9 270x) and maybe a new power supply or something and be okay. If you can help and give me some tips: Thanks.

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

Yeah, R9 270X is pretty much the best you can do. Though I fear it might not fit inside that case. (can't find dimensions anywhere)
A card like R9 270X may be too long.

Alternatively you can get GTX960 ITX (may need some extra piece to fit in the peripheral slot. Not sure though) or GTX 750Ti

 

[1LiquidPC]

What kind of budget are you looking at for this project? Like mentioned above, I'm not sure if the 270X would physically fit in your case. Your system also seems to have a 300W PSU, which isn't going to run a 270X which is a ~170W TDP card itself vs. the card in it now which I believe is a 50W card. I also think your CPU would be slowing the card down a good bit as well. For the cost of this card + a new PSU, I'd think that money would be better spent towards a new system. One other thing worth mentioning is compatibility. These OEM machines can have trouble w/ newer GPUs. Even though the slots themselves and the PCI-E standards are designed w/ backwards compatibility in mind, it still may not function with a new card installed. The manufacturers sometimes have to supply BIOS updates for the cards to work. But, as you'd expect, they typically aren't going to go back and update older systems that are no longer made to support new cards. It's kind of a luck-of-the-draw from my gatherings w/ this problem when it comes to OEMs. I've installed newer cards in much older systems myself w/ no problems, but some quick searches on these forums will reveal people with troubles when trying to get a new card working. Typically, the system won't POST or just hangs w/ a blank screen with a new card, but works fine with the old one. Sometimes people have tried replacing the PSU thinking it was the problem, but it's typically not in these situations. You may have to scour Gateway's forums to see if others had success w/ GPU upgrades before making a purchase. Just some thoughts.