What card to buy

[kbarron72]

Hello,

I am interested in buying a new graphics card and do not know what to buy! Here are my thoughts and usage. Right now I have a Radeon 4850 that is the weak link in my rig. I am interested in spending $300-$350. I have a 24" acer monitor and have not been playing over 1900x1080 (because of card?). I am mainly playing Starcraft 2 and getting down to 30fps (running 85c on GPU, which feels too hot). Here is the rest of what I have...
CPU: AMD Phenom II 940 BE @ 3.7GHz
RAM: 8gb ddr2
(anything I am missing?)

 

[ubercake]

Depends on the PSU, though I'd suggest the following in that price range (given you have the PSU to support it):

GTX 570:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-570-gf110-performance,2806.html

Most 24" monitors top out at 1920x1080. Is yours capable of higher resolutions?

 

[simon12]

I suggest on that CPU to get a Radeon 6850-6950 or Nvidia 460 1Gb-560Ti your Phenom x4 at 3.7GHz should not bottleneck them at 1920x1080 or higher and they will be a massive improvement over the 4850. Lower cards though may be an upgrade might not be a huge noticeable improvement.