Best graphics card for my pc

[oakboy92]

I have a older Dell 400 Xps with a pentium D 3ghz Cpu and i have installed 3 gigs of memory and a nvida xfx 7600gt video card and I replaced the power supply with a 450w. My question is I dont want to buy a hole new computer yet so I was just going to add 1 mor gig of ram and replace my video card. I mostly play wow only and some times other games. How big of a card can i run om my system. I was looking at the Nvida 9800gt or the 220gt. Please help I dont want to buy some thing that my cpu cant use. Thanks Bill

 

[rolli59]

9800gt will work fine the gt220 is not considered gaming card you would have to go to GT240 but it looses out to 9800gt http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gt-240,2475.html

 

[oakboy92]

9800gt will work fine the gt220 is not considered gaming card you would have to go to GT240 but it looses out to 9800gt http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gt-240,2475.html

ok thanks for the advice so u think my cpu will not bottle neck the card

 

[rolli59]

I would not worry to much about that. You could get 9600gt as well but with the price difference being small you might as well go for the 9800GT since even with a bottleneck it is going to perform better than the other two.

 

[oakboy92]

I would not worry to much about that. You could get 9600gt as well but with the price difference being small you might as well go for the 9800GT since even with a bottleneck it is going to perform better than the other two.

ok cool thanks for the help looks like i will be buying the 9800gt

 

[vaughn2k]

Please also take a look at your power supply. Your machine has only a 375W of power, 9800GT might hold but I am not sure how long...

If you will change the power supply with a 450W or 500W, then it is better to get the 9800GT or HD4830.

Otherwise, settle for an HD4670, which is a better option than the 9600GT.

 

[jyjjy]

He said he upgraded his PSU to 450w which should be more than fine for one of the new 9800GTs. That's also about the best card you should be considering with a Pentium D as your processor.

 

[JofaMang]

For his CPU, anything above a 4770/9800GT would be wasted money.

 

[jyjjy]

Just because you got a bad card doesn't mean everyone else should avoid the 9800GT and the GTS 250 is based on tech just as old. It's an updated version but so are the new 9800GTs.

 

[deadlockedworld]

Its an older computer. The card tech is still newer than his computer and would be fine.

My vote is for a 9800GT--which is one of the lowest power and coolest cards of the last GPU generation.(although it doesnt compete with some brand new cards) Also, the argument about "older tech" is crap because the GTS 250 uses an updated version of the same G92 GPU thats in a 8800/9800GT/GTS250.

You can find a 9800GT for $79-89 on newegg, almost as cheap as the 9600GTs starting at $72.

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Also-- noone commented on the ram thing.

1. I dont know what OS you are running, but if its XP you dont need 4 gigs. Also if you have a 32bit OS it can only run a little more than three gigs of ram... so this might not be worth it.

2. You know to upgrade ram evenly right? Im not certain if you have three 1gb chips in there or what.. but noone commented on this and it might matter.

 

[jyjjy]

Yeah, if your Windows is 32-bit don't bother with another gig of ram. Less than half of it will be usable, possibly almost none of it.