Which video card for my i5 sandy brigde Desktop for VR and 1080p gaming?

Wait for nvidia's pascal so you can get a card with HBM2 (likely the GTX 1070 or GTX 1080), or one of the lower end cards that will use GDDR5X (likely the GTX 1060 and GTX 1050), both memory technologies are better than the current GDDR5. Basically, wait for nvidia's next line of cards (Q2 2016). Right now is a time where GPU's are taking a big leap forward, this happens about every 3 or 4 years. Seriously, wait for next year's line of cards. You can wait for AMD's 400 series which will have the advanced memory as well.

You should also double your ram to 16GB

Your processor will be good for another 3 years at least. My little brother still has an i7 920, Intel's first generation of the i7, it runs stock at 2.66 ghz but I overclocked it to 3.8 ghz and it can handle any game that is thrown at it.

But if you really want to upgrade now, and it sounds like you have either an mATX or ITX build considering you said you only have one PCI-E slot, you can get the AMD Fury Nano, there isn't a better card out there with such a small form factor,
and just because it's small doesn't mean it isn't as good as say the full size Fury, it's just a bit thicker and the reason it is so small is because with HBM memory you can stack the vram chips. Next generation of GPU's are all going to be a lot smaller than the monster 980 ti, and run a lot faster, because of HBM and how it works.

Be patient and wait. I promise if you spend a ton of money on a 980 or 980 ti, you're going to regret it considering we're so close to the next gen cards. But in the meantime, double your ram, seriously. I promise games will run better, and you'll be future proofing.


I made a small mistake when I built my rig, if I'd have waited a couple of weeks I'd have the 4GB versions of the GTX 760, a z97 mobo instead of a z87 mobo, and a 4790K

For now you are fine with 8gb of ram. No need to upgrade that to more anytime soon. As for the graphics card, for 1080p gaming, the 960 2GB card is the best card for that. They have started going on sale for $150 to $160 lately. As for VR, Oculus recommends a minimum of a 970 for that. However, if you wait for the next evolution of cards from nvidia and amd, for example the 1060 (if that's what they end up calling it) will be just as capable of handling VR as the 970. That is what I am holding off my upgrade for.

Exactly what this guy said, hold out for the next generation of GPU's. However, I think it would be prudent to double your ram. When I'm in game in some games my ram usage (according to rivatuner via msi afterburner) is up to about 9500 GB, and I just reformatted my rig like 6 days ago, so there's nothing running in the background that shouldn't be. Just chrome for music, msi afterburner, and msi command center to control my fans, plus all the stuff that is required to run in the background. So I would definitely upgrade to 16GB, you're going to have to sometime and DDR3 modules are cheap right now, there will come a time when DDR3 is more expensive than DDR4, so right now is perfect to double your memory. Make sure to get sets that run 1866+ with a CAS latency of no higher than 9, you'll notice a difference when you run your extreme memory profile when you're gaming, and that's a promise. Right now when you're gaming your CPU is probably having to use your SSD for the extra space, which, well, at least it's an SSD and not a HDD, but still, double your ram my son, it shall not disappoint. I'd bet almost anything that a VR headset is going to work better with 16GB than 8GB of ram.

get two sets of these, you WILL NOT find a better DDR3 module than right here, 2133 mhz, 9 cas latency, these have the best timings for the frequency that you'll find anywhere
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231518&cm_re=ddr3-_-20-231-518-_-Product

here is if you want 16GB across two dimms instead of 4, which as most know, the less dimms to get to your desired capacity, the better (unless you're going single channel, dual, triple, and quad are always faster, but it sounds like you have a dual channel mobo.) These are the same as the snipers I showed you, just double the capacity and run at 1866mhz and not 2133mhz, with isn't an issue as once you pass the 1866mhz barrier you'll see no more improvement gaming, you'll only see improvement in RAM benchmarking programs. So you'd be saving money just getting this, not to mention they're optimized for 2nd and 3rd generation i7 and i5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231627&cm_re=ddr3-_-20-231-627-_-Product




these are good if you don't like G.Skill for some reason
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104510&cm_re=ddr3-_-20-104-510-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233536&cm_re=ddr3-_-20-233-536-_-Product


I myself have G.Skill Trident X 4x4GB 2400mhz with CAS 9 that work beautifully, but they're not available anymore unfortunately, If I were you, I'd go with the 2x8GB G.Skill Sniper set