Looking to upgarade. Need help

[mxp12]

My girlfriend recently bought me a new pc. An Acer Aspire M5641 with a quadcore intel q8200, 2gb of ddr2, and a geforce 9300ge 256mb videocard. I'm thinking to upgrade the graphics because its not really that good. I wanted to build my own but she insisted that she didn't want me spnding too much time building it so i'm stuck with this acer. It has an 18.5" lcd with 1366x768 max resolution. I intend toplay games like mirror's edge, assassin's creed, gta4, sims 3, far cry2 and the like. what would you recommend for my video card upgrade. ny budget would be around 100-180$. Thanks

 

[jyjjy]

At that resolution an HD4770 should be more than enough and the best for the money.

 

[mxp12]

Thanks. I think my board has an nvidia chip on it, won't an nvidia chip be better?

 

[buzznut]

The hd4770 would be fine but if you really want nvidia I believe the geforce 250gts offers similar performnce

A word of warning, prebuilt systems are notorious for having underpowered power supplies, check your wattage before making any graphics upgrades.

Don't know aboout the aspire, but dell and gateway are notorious for this, manufacturers will only put a supply large enough for the original components to save costs.

 

[Dustpuppy]

The specs I'm reading on the acer website are different, but according to what I'm reading you have a 300w power supply.


That's psu's gotta go. I advise a Radeon 4850 for $85 including shipping and a new PSU, pick one that will last you through your next rig if you can. If you pick the top one that'll bring you to $194 before rebates & $159 after rebates.

eta: you'll want to pop your case open and make sure you have enough space/clearance near the PCI-E slot. Doing this may void your warranty.

 

[mxp12]

Thanks for the responses. Sorry I've been quite busy but I just found out about this "Hybrid SLI" thing. would that be possible on my rig since the warranty would be voided if something is removed? They will only allow me to add upgrades and not swap out parts and the service center would have to do it. Would that be ok?

 

[harodocore]

Nope, the motherboard only has 1 pci-e slot. You need two slots to do SLI and a bridge. I fitted a 4770 in my own m5641 (very tight fit) - works great! Way better than the built-in 9300 gt. I got the 4770 specifically for its low power consumption - the stock power supply only has about 300watts. I wanted the gtx 260 since its also nvidia but the power consumption was too high and it looked bigger. The warranty is void but the graphics looks great now ;-)

 

[mxp12]

Thanks. I upgraded mine to a 9600gt. i also got extra ram but it only runs in single channel mode even though i got the same speed and capacity of ram. is this a board issue? could you overclock yours? thamks again

 

[kernel_16]

just tell your gf she only gave you a huge problem by insisting and her suggestion sucks!