upgrading my old graphic card

[tmzy]

hi, i idearly want a gaming pc but as i cant afford one i have decided to upgrade me nvidia geforce 9500 GT with 1gb if i remember right. what would be best for me as i do alot of simulation games i.e shipsim/train sim/flight sim and so on. i have an amd athlon II X4 640 processor and 4 gb ram on windows 7 ultimate. want to try and get 6 or 8 gb ram but i thing at a time thanks in advance tommy

 

[nikoli707]

well there are quite a few video cards in the $50 to $80 range that would probably fit your needs. it really depends on the resolution that you are running but your old athlon cpu is going to become a limiting factor especially for video cards in the $80 range or higher. given that you are on a budget something like an nvidia gt640 or an amd r7-250 would be your best bet as they should be priced in the $70ish range, maybe a little under on deals.

 

[justcallmetom13]

The 750 Ti will probably suffice.

 

[justcallmetom13]

The 750 Ti will probably suffice.

 

[tmzy]

if i were to upgrade my motherboard what would be better for me as i will look up bundle deals and see what they go for and im using 1360x768 resolution as my tv is my monitor

 

[nikoli707]

you mean upgrade your motherboard and cpu? well it really depends on your budget.

if your really going to do that most will say that at the least you would want an amd fx6300 plus a motherboard to go with it. if you live near a microcenter, they have a deal going right now for an fx6300 plus an am3+ 970 chipset motherboard for $130 which is an amazing deal.

you would still need a video card but with the fx6300 you could buy any video you want. but if your not planning on playing any heavy graphical games like battlefield or crysis etc. , then you dont really need a powerful video card. many of the entry level video cards will run your sim games very well, especially at 1366x768(720p) resolution.

 

[tmzy]

you mean upgrade your motherboard and cpu? well it really depends on your budget.

if your really going to do that most will say that at the least you would want an amd fx6300 plus a motherboard to go with it. if you live near a microcenter, they have a deal going right now for an fx6300 plus an am3+ 970 chipset motherboard for $130 which is an amazing deal.

you would still need a video card but with the fx6300 you could buy any video you want. but if your not planning on playing any heavy graphical games like battlefield or crysis etc. , then you dont really need a powerful video card. many of the entry level video cards will run your sim games very well, especially at 1366x768(720p) resolution.

well i live in the uk and i just checked $130 dollars and that is only £77 pound acording to google so if that is the case i can definatly afford that. i dont play games like bf4 and cod ghosts on my pc as i have a ps3 but when ps3 games are no longer being made i will start playing more games on my pc as i am not willing to pay for online on ps4. so with that in mind i would like a graphic card that can handle it but at a reasonable price as i only have a part time job

 

[nikoli707]

oh well if your in the uk then there isn't a microcenter near you so you wouldn't be able to get that amazing deal.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£76.79 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£53.95 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £130.74
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-23 02:26 BST+0100)

other than that you cpu isn't horrible, its just you wouldn't want to spend too much on a video card unless you have a new system to go with it.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card (£66.20 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £66.20
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-23 02:28 BST+0100)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_7770/1.html
here is a review for the powercolor 7770 linked above and it has about 20+ pages of benchmarks across a range on games. your sim games would be closer to the less demanding games on the list. games like battlefield, crysis, skyrim are very demanding by comparison.

 

[tmzy]

thanks for your help. i will go with that. i can just about afford all prices you told me on the last post. thanks again