[SOLVED] Upgrading an old Video card

[kenzieme55]

Hello all,

I have a really old video card in my pc currently and it recently died, so i'm looking to replace it with something newer that wont have any issue playing modern, demanding games.
The person i took it to says It's an AMD Radeon HD8870 2gb video card wnmhj, but when i look up the service tag for the pc that says its an ATI Radeon HD 5870. So i'm not sure which it is at this point.
My tech person seems to think i cant upgrade my pc's video card at all, just put the same thing back in it and i'm having a hard time accepting that. The pc is a dell studio xps 435T/9000. It has an Intel core i7-920 processor (8mb l3 Cache 2.66ghz).
I would really appreciate any information and/or suggestions regarding an upgrade for the video card or possibly just getting a new pc altogether.
Thanks!

 

[clutchc]

If you have the 475W stock PSU, I don't quite understand why the tech said you could not use a better card.
The power supply should be able to handle more gfx card than your aging i7-920 can keep up with. The GTX 1050 Ti, or (better) a RX 570 would be good choices. That would get you high settings at 1080p. I'd even go with a GTX 1060 or RX 580 and put up with some occasional CPU bottleneck if it were mine.

Btw, I assume you have a HD 5870, because I don't ever remember seeing a HD 8870. After the HD 7xxx cards, AMD changed their tagging to Rx-xxx

On the other hand, it is indeed about time for moving to a new modern platform, depending on your budget of course. You'd have to replace everything, tho. Even the RAM.