Hi,
I'm considering upgrading my 5 year old NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240. This is fine for most things as I'm not a hard-core gamer, but I have started playing Elite Dangerous and need to turn all the graphics settings to low. I'm thinking that a mid-range card would be fine for this as even that would offer a significant improvement on my current card. (If anyone familiar with ED would recommend a higher-spec card, please let me know)
My computer is a Dell Studio XPS 8100, which according to the spec here has a 350W PSU. (I've not opened it up to verify this yet, but I have no reason to doubt this.)
Looking at the latest best cards guide, the GeForce GTX 750 Ti seems ideal as it doesn't need extra power. However, when I actually start looking at prices, some of them seem to indicate that they do need a power connection, so I'm not sure I'm looking at the right cards. Do the ones that need to extra power offer anything more for it?
Is it worth beefing up the PSU at the same time? (I assume that this is straightforward? I've never done this before) If I'm upgrading PSU, are there better cards in the same price range?
Also, I'm not familar with the PCI-Express versions. How do I tell if I have PCI-Express 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0? The spec mentions "Gen2" - is this PCI-Express 2.0? What difference does it make? I don't really want to upgrade my motherboard!
Budget-wise I'm looking at around £100. Ease of upgrade is my main concern, rather than absolute power.
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: No particular hurry. Could wait for 'Black Friday'
BUDGET RANGE: £100 ish
USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming - Elite Dangerous
CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240, 350W PSU
OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: Dell Studio XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860, Windows 7 Home Premium, 8GB Memory
PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Any decent UK site (Amazon, Dabs, Ebuyer etc)
PARTS PREFERENCES: Nvidia (Simply because that's what I have at the moment and I assume it would be less likely to cause issues sticking with the same make. Not religiously tied to it.)
OVERCLOCKING: Maybe
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe
MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080
Looked at:
Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card (2GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0)
EVGA NVIDIA GTX 750 SC 1215MHz (Boost 1294MHz) 5012MHz 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 HDMI DVI-I DP PCI-E Graphics Card
Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX 750Ti 2GB PCI-E Graphics Card
MSI NVIDIA GTX 750Ti Gaming 1085MHz (Boost 1163MHz) 5400MHz 2GB 128-bit DDR5 DL-DVI-D HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card
I'm considering upgrading my 5 year old NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240. This is fine for most things as I'm not a hard-core gamer, but I have started playing Elite Dangerous and need to turn all the graphics settings to low. I'm thinking that a mid-range card would be fine for this as even that would offer a significant improvement on my current card. (If anyone familiar with ED would recommend a higher-spec card, please let me know)
My computer is a Dell Studio XPS 8100, which according to the spec here has a 350W PSU. (I've not opened it up to verify this yet, but I have no reason to doubt this.)
Looking at the latest best cards guide, the GeForce GTX 750 Ti seems ideal as it doesn't need extra power. However, when I actually start looking at prices, some of them seem to indicate that they do need a power connection, so I'm not sure I'm looking at the right cards. Do the ones that need to extra power offer anything more for it?
Is it worth beefing up the PSU at the same time? (I assume that this is straightforward? I've never done this before) If I'm upgrading PSU, are there better cards in the same price range?
Also, I'm not familar with the PCI-Express versions. How do I tell if I have PCI-Express 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0? The spec mentions "Gen2" - is this PCI-Express 2.0? What difference does it make? I don't really want to upgrade my motherboard!
Budget-wise I'm looking at around £100. Ease of upgrade is my main concern, rather than absolute power.
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: No particular hurry. Could wait for 'Black Friday'
BUDGET RANGE: £100 ish
USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming - Elite Dangerous
CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240, 350W PSU
OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: Dell Studio XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860, Windows 7 Home Premium, 8GB Memory
PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Any decent UK site (Amazon, Dabs, Ebuyer etc)
PARTS PREFERENCES: Nvidia (Simply because that's what I have at the moment and I assume it would be less likely to cause issues sticking with the same make. Not religiously tied to it.)
OVERCLOCKING: Maybe
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe
MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080
Looked at:
Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card (2GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0)
EVGA NVIDIA GTX 750 SC 1215MHz (Boost 1294MHz) 5012MHz 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 HDMI DVI-I DP PCI-E Graphics Card
Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX 750Ti 2GB PCI-E Graphics Card
MSI NVIDIA GTX 750Ti Gaming 1085MHz (Boost 1163MHz) 5400MHz 2GB 128-bit DDR5 DL-DVI-D HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card
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