Semi-future proof graphics card for around 100 euro?

[pockyrin]

Greetings.
I would rate my tech savvy ness around like a 5/10 , as in I have a computer, know which parts are which but have no idea what I'm looking for other than numbers I have been told. I only use my computer for watching movies and running wow, which it does very badly. This is the rest of my pc http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/708/captureno.png/ with a low score because of using a crap graphics card, lowest score apart from graphics is a 5.9

I just recently found this site and was delighted to see they have a review to the graphics card I was thinking of getting, Asus GeForce GTS 450 783Mhz 1GB GDDR5, I found a site where I can get it for 106 euro.

However, unless I missed it because I am dim, which may indeed be the case, theres no handy section about the best cheapie graphics cards with decent power. And indeed even though the review gave it a 9, it had a few bad points about the card.

So my question is if any kind person could help, is there a similar card to this for around the same price that performs better/has less issues? Also I have only around 400w power supply, if you suggest a card please include the minimum amount of power supply I would need to upgrade to, to run the card. No idea if it's possible but is there a card like this that doesn't need any more power, in which case I could up my budget and put the money from the new power supply to the card.

I'm not interested in overclocking yada yada I just want to play wow well with decent fps and leave the option open to play recent enough games in the future. I know wow doesn't require much but it's the same as buying a family car that can go up to 200 km p. hour, suitable for all occasions later so that u only need to buy the one every few years.

Any information at all would really make my day, I just worry if I go in with my limited knowledge I'll pay about 50 euros too much for something half as powerful than what I could get for that.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Whats your max budget? Because nothing for 100 Euro will be future proof.

 

[pockyrin]

Whats your max budget? Because nothing for 100 Euro will be future proof.

Perhaps future proof is the wrong term then, I'm looking for the best card I can get for a max of 120 ish euro, 160 if I don't need a new power supply for it.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Perhaps future proof is the wrong term then, I'm looking for the best card I can get for a max of 120 ish euro, 160 if I don't need a new power supply for it.

I know where you're coming from but this is the thing, its a waste of time. I used to be in the same boat as you years ago. I would jump from card to card every year when I realized the money I dump in low grade cards to keep up costs more then a small investment.

For example the 5850 in my specs has lasted me three years and I can still play most games MAXED OUT. Not minimum specs. It set me back 300 bones. That comes out to 300 a year for top of the line graphics. See my point?

My advise is to save your cash and get a GOOD card.

Now if you are hell bent on that price Ill help ya find a good one.

Edit: Just saw your CPU. Almost any modern card you get will be bottle necked by that thing.

 

[pockyrin]

I appreciate what you are saying but for the past few years I've always had a crap graphics card so I just played new releases on a console because they are like "fine tuned" or whatever to look nicer on there vs me trying to turn off shadows then ground textures etc. I've been used to playing wow with 6-12 fps for around 4 years and I just want a treat now, a card that makes me go like "omg visable difference" I just thought since I'm finally buying a card I want to see a nice instantaneous difference. If I can't play a recent game I will just buy it for the console as is my habit, I just want the best card I can get for 120 euro ish so that after 4 years I can bathe in awesome wow fps and feel great lol. Simple things make me happy haha

 

[TheMailMan78]

I appreciate what you are saying but for the past few years I've always had a crap graphics card so I just played new releases on a console because they are like "fine tuned" or whatever to look nicer on there vs me trying to turn off shadows then ground textures etc. I've been used to playing wow with 6-12 fps for around 4 years and I just want a treat now, a card that makes me go like "omg visable difference" I just thought since I'm finally buying a card I want to see a nice instantaneous difference. If I can't play a recent game I will just buy it for the console as is my habit, I just want the best card I can get for 120 euro ish so that after 4 years I can bathe in awesome wow fps and feel great lol. Simple things make me happy haha

Alright fair enough. But like I said any card you buy will be held back by your CPU. So......we need to know a few things. Please fill out your system specs in the user control panel so we have an idea what to look for.

 

[Crap Daddy]

What's the monitor resolution? 400W PSU, what brand and specs? What's your current card?
The card is just a part in a machine. If you are running an outdated dual core don't expect to see major improvements with a powerful card and forget about future proof.

 

[TheMailMan78]

What's the monitor resolution? 400W PSU, what brand and specs? What's your current card?
The card is just a part in a machine. If you are running an outdated dual core don't expect to see major improvements with a powerful card and forget about future proof.

Yeah we covered all that. Once he fills out his specs we will have a better idea.

 

[pockyrin]

Alright fair enough. But like I said any card you buy will be held back by your CPU. So......we need to know a few things. Please fill out your system specs in the user control panel so we have an idea what to look for.

gonna take me a few minutes I'm not great at actually finding the things... Filled in as much as I can, went from windows xp to 7 recently so getting used to where to find things. Perhaps I should clarify. I would like the best graphics card i can get for around 120 euro, which either works with 400w power supply or if not I'll need to know how large a power supply to buy. I forgot that people have insanely incredible gaming rigs, but what I am telling you is that if I can run wow on ultra with decent fps for my budget then to me, I will feel like I have the best gaming rig ever so that's all that really matters to me. It might be piss poor in comparison to others but I will be 100% happy playing wow and leaving new games to my console. I'm sorry I wrote future proof because it seemed subjective to me based on what I wanted to get out of the card, vs I suppose the term conjures up the most elite of rigs for you guys. Sorry about the poor word choice there really my bad.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Your initial idea of a GTS450 is not bad, it will get the job done many times better than your current card. Now, you said you have a 400W PSU which would theoretically be fine with the 450. A slightly better cardin the same price category is the AMD Radeon 5770/6770 but I'm not familiar with AMD so others might help there since that card apparently requires 450W supply.

 

[pockyrin]

considering my only needs are wow it seems the fps that the amd 6670 gives in the review
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_6670/17.html

is a lot lower than my original thought, a lot lower fps for the same price range. unless I miss another factor
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTS_450_TOP_DirectCU/21.html

 

[Crap Daddy]

It's the 5770/6770 not the 6670 so you missed there.

 

[qubit]

Unfortunately, to put anything reasonably powerful in there like a 5850, you're gonna have to upgrade almost the whole of the PC. You're looking at:

CPU
Mobo
RAM
PSU
System case (possibly)
and of course the graphics card.

All of this is of course, a considerable expense. You can keep the same hard discs and optical drives. The case you may have to change, depending on how well it accommodates long graphics cards.

For decent gaming, my old GTX 285 still does quite well. The modern equivalent of that is the GTX 460 1GB, which has now been superceded by the GTX 560 1GB, which is a fair bit more powerful, so you may want to look at that.

That 8400GS is completely useless for gaming as you've found out and I know too, as I've got one, so even if your CPU bottlenecks a modern graphics card, your framerate will still jump 3-4 times, giving you vastly better gameplay.

Finally, there's lots of graphics card choices out there (nvidia and AMD) so listen to the advice of other members on here, keeping in mind what you can afford.

Oh, welcome to TPU.