Best Graphic Cards for 400W & 450W PSU

[boxmanboxman]

Hello everyone, I'm in the market to upgrade my PC to run Starcraft 2 on either ultra or high settings. But first I need to upgrade my PSU because it's a piece of junk at only 300W, leaving me with virtually no option but to upgrade to only to a budget graphics card that will only deliver medium graphics. I'm looking to narrow down my choice of graphics cards under two types of narrowed searches. One search is a few potential graphics that require at least a 400W PSU and can run the game on Ultra or High Settings, preferably the GPU should have at least 1GB of built in RAM so I won't have to update my the RAM of PC from 2GB to 4GB to handle the increased load from rendering more graphics, and on a final note the GPU should deliver a average framerate of at least 35 FPS during play, and should only dip below 30FPS during the most extreme battles such as epic battles on mounds of 'creep'.

And the other search is the exact same thing except the required GPU requires 450W.

I'm going to come forward and disclose that the only modifications I have ever made to a PC was a graphics card installation years ago from an older PC. Is there anything else I should lookout while trying to get my rig ready to play SC2 on ultra or high settings? Am I correct in thinking that as long as the GPU I buy has 1GB of built in RAM I'm fine? Also I don't think my processor is going to be problem because I have a 2.9GHz Athlon AMD II X3 (it's a quad core with one of the cores disabled).

 

[Niklas_13]

Well if it will play on high or max ( We need to know your monitors rez )

But if your looking for a good GPU that will play most games on mid to high setting and will run on a nice say Corsair 450W PSU look into a HD 5770 for about 149

PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003

GPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102873

 

[Niklas_13]

Another card to look at would be the GTX 460 @ 200 would run off a 450W PSU like the corsair http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130562 ( but it only has 768 ram

 

[Niklas_13]

These cards should be able to run SC2 at Ultra no matter what the resolution. If your card isn’t included it doesn’t mean it won’t handle SC2 at resolution X, it just means based off of the information I have gotten so far, I don’t have rock solid confidence that it will run SC2 at every resolution up to 1900x1200. It is very possible that there are many cards like the GTX 260 1st Gen or the 9800 GTX+ that I didn’t mention which are perfectly capable, but if there is even a shred of doubt in my mind I don’t feel comfortable putting it on this kind of list.

Give me more data and this list will be updated.
Nvidia GTX 260 (Core 192 and Core 216)
Nvidia GTX 465
Nvidia GTX 460 768MB
ATi HD 3870X2
ATi HD 4870
ATi HD 4890
ATi HD 5770
ATi HD 5830

Conclusion: These cards are all going to be above $160 so be prepared to make a fairly large investment if you want to be able to play SC2 at Ultra at higher resolutions!

Got this off the web http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=113094 ( not sure if its up to date )

 

[boxmanboxman]

Well if it will play on high or max ( We need to know your monitors rez )

Well the native resolution on my monitors is 1680 x 1050. And at the moment I got a dual monitor setup.