Which GPU should I (can I) run on my aging PC?

[Vukovic]

Thank you in advance to anyone willing to help a clueless console gamer.

I am not a PC gamer. I have been playing on consoles for the last 10 years. I have some PC gaming friends with which I would like to play Elder Scrolls Online. I think I might be able to get away with replacing only my GPU. I have no interest in building a gaming PC at this point. I'm hoping I can give the game a try without spending a ton of money.

This is my current PC:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5602487

According to this, my CPU should be adequate and I have plenty of RAM:
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=3734&game=The+Elder+Scrolls+Online&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i5-650+3.2GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+310+512MB&ram=8&checkSubmit=#systemRequirements

I know that online tool probably can't and shouldn't be trusted, but it's a place for me to start. I don't know much about graphics cards and I'm not sure what/where the best resource is to start learning, so I'm hoping one of you gurus can point me in the right direction. I could probably find something that would, according to its specs, get the job done. My fear is that I might end up buying one that for whatever reason won't work well with my relatively old (4 years) PC.

What would you do if you just wanted to play Elder Scrolls Online with this PC? Is that even a reasonable thing to expect to be able to do?

 

[OnkelCannabia]

Well the thing with pre-builts is that companies almost always cheap out on the PSU and often on the case. People who built there own PCs usually put in at least 500w if not more, yet those pre-builts sometimes use as little as 250w PSU. Your PC has a 300w PSU, which is slightly better suited for a gaming GPU than a hot potato.

You'll definitely need a new PSU. Anything 500w upwards. Better something around 600w to 700w, so you can just reuse it if you ever get a new PC. The other issue is space. Try to find out online or by measuring yourself how much space you have for a GPU.

Once you have a PSU and we know how much space you have, all we need to know is your budget. Your CPU is kinda old, but really not that bad. You'll still be able to max out almost every game out there provided you have a powerful enough GPU to accompany it.

Next time don't get a pre-built. They try to cheap out wherever they can. You almost never get a good deal here. It is capitalism at its best. Most people know much less about PCs than they think, so companies find a way to save costs and still manage to advertise their inferior product as the holy grail of deals.

 

[coozie7]

The system should run that game fairly well just bear in mind Elder Scrolls can push even quite strong cards if you turn the eye candy up!
The installed CPU is 'only' dual core (it is effectively half a i7 of that generation with two physical cores and 2 logical cores thanks to Hyperthreading) so you'll probably get glitches when there's a lot going on.
There's a lot of numbers and prices to look at when you start out and here's some to begin with: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32884-7.html In the chart at the end the higher up the faster the card is, and the more expensive.
Personally, I'd drop a HD7750 (GDDR5 version) into the system and be done, even a 300 Watt power supply will run that card (it only needs 75 Watts at full load) and it's enough at med/low settings, even on a full HD display.