[Solved] Budget Card for Dual Core Build

Hello all:

My brother just picked up a desktop for me that his office was getting rid of. I cant believe what people are throwing out these days! Its got an Intel E2200 dual core processor, 2 gigs of ram, and a 150 gig HD. Even has a nice looking cooler master case. I just installed WIN XP home edition since they wiped the HD before getting rid of it. I am probably going to up the RAM to 4 gigs since that always seems to be the easiest first upgrade. After that I am going to be looking to get a video card for it.

I am not sure what video card I want. There are so many out there and I've never really followed them that closely. My previous computer was limited to AGP, but this computer has a PCI Express x16 slot, which I expect will significantly expand my options. Can anyone recommend a solid budget ($50-75) card that will get me humming?

My computing consists mainly of non graphics-intensive stuff, but I do occasionally play games like BF2 and would like to play it on high graphics levels, something my old computer couldn't accomplish. Long term I will probably upgrade the processor to a quad core, since according to intel's website this motherboard is compatible with one. Until then I will see how this thing runs with some RAM and a video card.

Thanks for your help

Reply to eocoolj

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150576

With rebate it would be on our budget, just make sure you do a Motherboard driver update before you upgrade, since this card is a PCI-E 2.1

Also show me your Power Supply.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by refillable on 02-01-2012 at 04:20:44 AM

Reply to refillable

Best answer

refillable wrote :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150576

With rebate it would be on our budget, just make sure you do a Motherboard driver update before you upgrade, since this card is a PCI-E 2.1

Also show me your Power Supply.

In that price range the PSU doesn't matter, anything he buys will be powered by the motherboard's PCIe slots. The 6670 is a solid recomendation though as it beats the crap out of anything Nvidia sells in that price range (GTS 250>GT 440>GT 530 at around $80). I'd look at this one though, it's $100 before rebate, but $80 afterwards and it has GDDR5 memory over GDDR3 which will make a substantial difference at this performance level.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121442

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Message edited by 87ninefiveone on 02-01-2012 at 05:32:42 AM

Reply to 87ninefiveone

My power supply is an Ultra LS400. 400 watts.

$65 vs $80 isnt a big deal to me if its a noticeable difference. If we are talking 2 fps i'll just go the cheaper route though.

Reply to eocoolj

You're fine. The GDDR5 will help you because it's a faster memory.

Reply to refillable

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131454

should run fine on a 400w

DDR5 version for 84.99 after MiR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161379

Message edited by Derbixrace on 02-01-2012 at 02:09:47 PM

Reply to Derbixrace

So after i write 5 minutes with 1 hand (other is fractured) i get site unavailable. F#$% the net.

Short story:
Ok, check what CPU's your motherboard supports and based on that buy a video card(or at list based on that we can recommend a video card). Come back and post the options available.
Your CPU is very slow and will bottleneck any of the above video cards.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to ionut19

No, You don't have to worry of bottlenecking with 6670. Come on mate, it's just 6670!

Reply to refillable

No way bottle necking will be an issue with any of those cards and his CPU. I had a 3.4GHz P4 that was completely fine with a GT240 installed. My fps sucked, but there wasn't any bottle neck.

Also, OP the difference between GDDR3 and GDDR5 is substantial, probably on the order of 10-20% in the case of the GT240 I mentioned above. For the minimal price difference you'll regret it if you don't go GDDR5. Also, in the case of the GT240 the GDDR3 card is widely regarded as being slowed/choked for memory bandwidth which hinders performance. Being as the 6670 is an even faster card than the GT240 I would have to think it would be a problem there as well.

Reply to 87ninefiveone

refillable i know what you are saying but his CPU is at 2.2Ghz on a 800Mhz FSB with 1Mb of L2 cache. Probably with that card the bottleneck will be small(if there is one) , but still with a faster CPU he will get higher fps .

This is funny: "My fps sucked, but there wasn't any bottle neck." .

Reply to ionut19

ionut19 wrote :

Short story:
Ok, check what CPU's your motherboard supports and based on that buy a video card(or at list based on that we can recommend a video card). Come back and post the options available.
Your CPU is very slow and will bottleneck any of the above video cards.

I hate hearing that my CPU is very slow! This is an upgrade for me haha. My old computer is has an Athlon 3200+ (2200 mhz). I figure this at the very least is twice as fast since its a dual core, right? Here is a list of CPUs my motherboard will support. I was looking at some of the quad cores on ebay, but it seemed like every one I looked at was well over $100. I thinking of upgrading my video card and RAM and then in a year or whenever buy a new processor once prices come down.

Also, refillable mentioned upgrading the motherboard drivers. Is this something that will be more difficult than just downloading updates from the windows update website? I just downloaded all the new updates from there, including a PCI-E driver.

Message edited by eocoolj on 02-02-2012 at 05:06:44 AM

Reply to eocoolj

You go to the motherboard manufacturer website, download the drivers, uninstall the older drivers and reinstall these new ones. If windows already says you have the latest driver(verify that) leave it be.

Anyway if you can't find a second hand CPU the video card that refillable suggested will do. Try to find a PCI-E 2.0 card, also there is no guarantee that the card mentioned will have any issues because of PCI-E 2.1 standard, not all motherboards show issues.

Your new CPU is faster compared to the one you had.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr [...] Categories
or
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nk [...] m270.l1313
or
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nk [...] m270.l1313

But before you install it you need to update your bios to the latest one. On the page you give me there is a minimum bios version for each CPU so if you already have that you do not need to update anything.

Message edited by ionut19 on 02-02-2012 at 02:00:43 PM

Reply to ionut19

amds lower end cards smoke nvideas lowerend cards, the 6670 is a very good low end card and if your psu handles it id go for it heard good things about its performance with dualcores

Reply to robthatguyx

Yes the above post is true somewhat, Especially HD 6000 vs GT 500

Reply to refillable

If I end up buying a new CPU, I will end up buying a more expensive video card as well, correct? Add to that the 2 gigs of RAM I will be buying, plus a 500 gig or 1 terrabyte hard drive, and we are fast approaching $300. And then how much better will it be performing than the new $400-500 computers that I see in Best Buy ads? If its still worse than them, whats the point?

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to eocoolj

Can you show me the detail of what you exactly want?

Reply to refillable

eocoolj wrote :

If I end up buying a new CPU, I will end up buying a more expensive video card as well, correct? Add to that the 2 gigs of RAM I will be buying, plus a 500 gig or 1 terrabyte hard drive, and we are fast approaching $300. And then how much better will it be performing than the new $400-500 computers that I see in Best Buy ads? If its still worse than them, whats the point?

Not true. Buying a $400-500 system at Best Buy doesn't get you much further than you already are right now. All it would really get you is a faster CPU and RAM. You'll still be right where you're at now with video performance and a small power supply, so you can pretty quickly turn that $400-500 PC into an $800+ PC.

I was where you're at now about a year ago. I had an old 3.4GHz Pentium 4 machine from Dell, I decided to go the upgrade route at first and went to 4GB of memory, a Geforce GT 240, a new secondary HDD, and an upgrade to a 3.4GHz Pentium D (best my machine would take). All in I was around $300. Net result...a waste of money, it was still slow and useless for any sort of new software. The good news is I got my $300 back out of it by selling it on CL. So, my advice to you is ditch the old machine for $200-300 on CL and use that money and your planned upgrade money to buy/build yourself a new system. You'll be far happier.

Reply to 87ninefiveone

87ninefiveone wrote :

In that price range the PSU doesn't matter, anything he buys will be powered by the motherboard's PCIe slots. The 6670 is a solid recomendation though as it beats the crap out of anything Nvidia sells in that price range (GTS 250>GT 440>GT 530 at around $80). I'd look at this one though, it's $100 before rebate, but $80 afterwards and it has GDDR5 memory over GDDR3 which will make a substantial difference at this performance level.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121442

OK so I am probably going to go with the 6670 with DDR5 RAM. My final question is about the connections on this card. I do not currently have a DVI cable so I will have to buy one of them as well. If I eventually want to run dual monitors, am I going to run into any kind of problems with this card? I am not really familiar with the HDMI or Displayport.

Reply to eocoolj

why not go with 6750 with the same price tag? im stumped why no one has noticed that before me.

Reply to Derbixrace

Well, I am looking at this 6750 on newegg which looks like a deal after the mail in rebate. My questions on it would be is it going to outperform the 6670 and will it run on my computer, since I only have a 400W power supply. It is recommending a 500W supply.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to eocoolj

eocoolj wrote :

Well, I am looking at this 6750 on newegg which looks like a deal after the mail in rebate. My questions on it would be is it going to outperform the 6670 and will it run on my computer, since I only have a 400W power supply. It is recommending a 500W supply.

should run fine and give the 6670 a run for its money

Reply to Derbixrace

I believe the 6750 requires PCIe power cables where as the 6670 does not (it runs off the motherboard power). So, if your PSU has that extra PCIe power connections, or a couple of free molex 4-pin connections, then yes the 6750 makes more sense, if not, you'd need a new power supply too which adds another $75-100 to the purchase.

In regards to the monitor situation, yes it will run two monitors without any problems at all. All you have to do is hook them up and Windows will do the rest, the only thing you may have to do is choose whether to "duplicate display" or "extend desktop". I don't recall what the default is with two monitors, but it will be obvious. As for the DVI connectors, most cards come with a DVI to VGA adapter, but check the item description to make sure that's the case. If it doesn't they're around $5 online or at your local electronics store.

Message edited by 87ninefiveone on 02-05-2012 at 01:44:05 AM

Reply to 87ninefiveone

Best answer selected by eocoolj.

Reply to eocoolj

I ended up buying the 6670 with DDR5 memory that you recommended. It came in tonight and I just installed it. I was just playing BF2 on very high graphics settings and it runs very smoothly. I dont know if BF2 is really a benchmark anymore, but I am more than satisfied. Now I just gotta make sure I fill in the rebate!!

Thanks

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by eocoolj on 02-08-2012 at 05:24:43 AM

Reply to eocoolj

eocoolj wrote :

I ended up buying the 6670 with DDR5 memory that you recommended. It came in tonight and I just installed it. I was just playing BF2 on very high graphics settings and it runs very smoothly. I dont know if BF2 is really a benchmark anymore, but I am more than satisfied. Now I just gotta make sure I fill in the rebate!!

Thanks

Awesome, I'm glad it worked out for you. Enjoy!

Reply to 87ninefiveone

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey

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Reply to Mousemonkey

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