Suggested Upgrade for Nvida 7600 GT

[iceblade2097]

Hello, I think my old Nvidia 7600 GT 256MB video card has died so was looking for a video card to upgrade the system a little but don't want to spend to much money on the card as I plan on building a new computer in a year or so as my current computer is going on five years old. Any advice from the community is greatly appreciated. Thanks.


APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: (this week (the closer the better))
BUDGET RANGE: (No More Than $150 After Rebates)

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: (Gaming) Games played: Star Craft 2, Street Fighter 4 (Being able to run games on Medium Settings is fine)

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: (BFG Tech Nvidia 7600 GT 256MB OC Edition GDDR 3 PCI Express 16X and Antec EarthWatts EA-650 GREEN 650W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: (
Motherboard: Nforce 570 SLIT-A v.5.1
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_Detail.aspx?DetailID=678&CategoryID=1&MenuID=16&LanID=0

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86Ghz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557e6300\or high-end cards, knowing your case/cooling setup may also be helpful)

Memory: 3 GB 240 Pin DDR2 SDRAM 533 (PC2 4200)

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Any Reputable Company
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: (USA)
PARTS PREFERENCES: None

OVERCLOCKING: No
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080

Additional Comments: My PCI Express slots are 1.0

 

[iam2thecrowe]

your motherboard may be too old to support newer cards. I would be looking for a PCIE 2.0 card, the 2.1 cards sometimes dont work in old motherboards. Something like a gt240/GTS250 would be significantly faster than the 7600gt and can be found pretty cheap. If you go for a much faster card than that your CPU will be limiting its performance. I would be looking at a cpu/motherboard/ram upgrade though. You have 533mhz ram wich is very slow and a slow cpu which will be limiting the performance of your system. You are running a fairly high res monitor so i would probably take the gts250 over the gt240.

 

[iceblade2097]

Just out of the curiosity, how bottle necked would my system be if I SLIed two Nvidia 250 GTS 1 Gb cards. My slots are PCI E 1.0a and says it down clocks to 8 x if using two cards or 16 x if only one card.

Also is it true that a 32 bit OS can only have 4 GB of memory total counting video memory?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

you will be severely cpu bottlenecked even with 1 gts250. Adding a second you will see no more performance. Just get 1 gts250 and a better CPU like an e6600 or similar 3ghz core 2. Then your whole system will be MUCH faster. And yes, 32 bit OS's will see just less than 4gb, usually 3.25-3.75 gb will be useable to the OS.