Upgrade 9400 GT without other upgrades?

[Gizmo221]

Looking to upgrade my 9400 GT without upgrading the whole system, is it possible? Worth it? I mostly play games like Command & Conquer the main game I play is World of Warcraft and raid so I am looking to get the best graphics on WoW and get better frame rates while in 25 man raids. The expansion is coming up the 25th.

The reason I want to see if this is possible is because money is tight so only upgrading the GPU would be ideal.
Here are my computer specs.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual
3800+ 2.01 GHZ 3.00GB of RAM
XP Pro SP3.

Let me know if you need more information and thank you ahead of time for the help, suggestions.

 

[Supernova1138]

25 man raids will choke just about any system, even ones much more powerful than yours. You have a very slow CPU, so higher end cards aren't really worth considering. What power supply do you have?

I'd say the best card you can get that would not be held back horribly by your CPU would be the Radeon HD 7750. It will run on a 300 Watt power supply. It's a decent step up from the 9400GT. Expect performance to remain poor in 25 man raids though. Your old and slow CPU won't help you in those scenarios.

 

[Gizmo221]

Thermaltake
TR2
430 W

Dam I was afraid of the CPU issue.
So not worth the GPU upgrade with out doing the CPU first? At least for look wise outside of 25 mans?

 

[Supernova1138]

The 7750 will definitely improve your performance outside of 25 man raids by a large margin. Depending on your resolution it should let you pull off high graphics settings, maybe ultra even if you are happy with 30FPS and your resolution is low enough.

It's just when you get lots of players in the same area, your CPU has to do a lot more work, and that old Athlon 64 X2 will struggle to keep up, hence the bad performance in 25 man raids.

 

[Supernova1138]

When switching between graphics card vendors, you may want to use a program called driversweeper to fully remove the nvidia drivers, then install the AMD drivers. Not doing this can cause problems, such as very poor performance.

The 6670 is also a decent choice if you are looking to save some money. A new build would definitely be beneficial, but you'll need to save a lot more money for that.

 

[Gizmo221]

Ive only had Nvidia GPUS, is it a lot of work to switch to a Radeon?

 

[Deemo13]

I mean, you can go for a Radeon 6670. Its pretty cheap and wouldn't result in you dumping money into that older computer.

I have a computer with an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ with an 8600GT, and it runs great. I mainly play LoL on it.

The 6670 is what I would side with. When it comes time to sell the computer, it increases resale value when you can say "It has a graphics card that can play games"

 

[Gizmo221]

Thanks a ton guys, I will go with the 6670 unless I find a good deal on the 7750. I know I need a new rig, it runs great but was just seeing if I could squeeze some more out of it for now until I can get a new one.

Again thanks, this was very helpful!

 

[Deemo13]

Sure thing! Make sure to select a "Best Answer" to close the thread. I already have a gold badge, so give it to Supernova1138.

 

[Gizmo221]

Best answer selected by Gizmo221.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey