Upgrading a Dell XPS 8500 for gaming

[losseomis]

Hi there!
I have a Dell XPS 8500 with the following specs below. This is mostly for playing Fortnite and i'm wondering what I could upgrade for a better gaming experience without breaking the bank. I have to totally decrease the graphics resolution to get the least amount of lag in the game and not sure if the bottleneck is the RAM or the graphics card (both cheap upgrades for this computer but not sure if this will resolve the issue). Any advice would help... Further down are the "recommended) system requirements for the game.

Dell XPS 8500
Windows 7 Home Premium
x64
Processor Inteli5-3550 CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
8GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 620 1GB RAM 1920x1080 x 60 hertz Resolution


Fornite Recommended Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
Processor Core: i5 2.8 Ghz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Video Card: Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 equivalent DX11 GPU
Video Memory: 2 GB VRAM

 

[Eximo]

That is not a fast GPU, hardly suitable for games.

A GTX1050Ti would drop right in. Even a GTX1050 would be a huge improvement. You will have to tell me what breaking the bank means to you, though. If that is too much, even a GT1030 would be very far ahead of a GT620. Also the RX550 and RX560 to look at, however, they sometimes have issues with older hardware from what I have heard, though the same can be true of late model Nvidia cards, though not so much with Ivy Bridge based systems like yours.

 

[losseomis]

That is not a fast GPU, hardly suitable for games.

A GTX1050Ti would drop right in. Even a GTX1050 would be a huge improvement. You will have to tell me what breaking the bank means to you, though. If that is too much, even a GT1030 would be very far ahead of a GT620. Also the RX550 and RX560 to look at, however, they sometimes have issues with older hardware from what I have heard, though the same can be true of late model Nvidia cards, though not so much with Ivy Bridge based systems like yours.

Thanks Eximo! So you're saying the GTX1050 is compatible with the system I have? $200-$250 would be acceptable budget so I think this is good news.

So this has nothing to do with RAM? All the issues stem from the graphics card?

 

[Eximo]

Mostly. GT620 is barely a graphics card:

Best possible GT620 (There were multiple versions) would have 96 cores (Or two Shader Module units)
GTX660 (At worst, again multiple versions) would have 960 cores arranged in groups of 192 for 5 shader modules.

Though direct comparisons are difficult, GT620 was a re-branded Fermi and the GTX660 was built using the Kepler architecture. Suffice to say it was roughly 4 to 5 times faster.

More RAM won't hurt you if you can work that into the budget. But buying DDR3 memory at this point, eh, if you can hold off and save for a while it would be more suitable to buy a new DDR4 based CPU and Motherboard later on. (Though if you can find some on ebay cheap, go for it, should be lots of people selling off old DIMMs from many a DDR3 Dell system)

Unless you wanted to max out what you have by getting a 3rd gen i7-3770 and adding the 8GB of memory. That would let the computer last a few more years.

 

[losseomis]

Thanks again! I think I'll budget for just upgrading the graphics card to a GTX1050. Do you think I need to update the power supply unit? The current one is rated at 460w and I see from the specs on the card it only required 300w. Just not sure if a power unit "splits" the usage amongst other hardware on the system.

I'm also assuming the 3GB RAM version of the card would offer a slight advantage on my system?

 

[Eximo]

Yes, the unit powers the whole system. These cards get all of their power from the PCIe slot, so very low power. They say 300W to cover themselves. These cards all draw 75W or less. Your CPU is going to be 65W-77W, and those will be the two biggest power drains in the system.

GTX1050 3GB is essentially a GTX1050Ti with one of its memory channels missing. Technically has less memory bandwidth then the 2GB version, but it does have the faster GPU. If you can step up to the GTX1050Ti you can get the best of both worlds. 4GB of memory may come in handy in some titles.

These are entry level gaming graphics cards of today, so don't expect to be able to play all the latest games on high. Think medium at mid-level frame rates. You will be blown away by the improvement though.

 

[losseomis]

Thanks Eximo... Yes I understand the level of the upgrade. I've seen some pretty fancy graphics cards going for well over $1000 so I know this won't give me the best possible solution. I'm just looking to make the most of an older system without needing to fully upgrade.

I appreciate the time and effort in your response!

Carlos