Need help choosing Budget Video Card

[Finzz]

The 9500 GT is fine with a 250W to 300W PSU. I've ran it before with one and I've had no problems actually. The 9600 GT though may need a little bit more power, possibly a 300-400W PSU would be good. In alternative you can go with an ATI Radeon 4650 and 4670 1GB. I tried running a 4650 1GB on a 250W? I believe or 300W, I forgot and it ran fine as long as you didn't overclock it. The 4670 wouldn't need a significant amount of more power too.

 

By the way. Cards like the ATI Radeon 4870 are considered "Low End Cards" and you can probably grab one on the street for about 150 bucks. You just need a powerful enough power supply to run it.

 

TCP is also right considering other things on your PC. I'm pretty sure if you're running a nForce 790i with a X-fi Titanium, Three DDR2 1GB Ram Sticks, a 7.1 Speaker System, i7-975, with a 30 inch monitor--250W won't cut it. But if you're running low end things that consume little to no power a 250W to 300W would be good for a 9500 GT.

 

Correct me if I;m wrong, but isnt the 790i DDR3? and it has the 775 socket doesn't it? Why are you talking about i7? And I havent even seen an i7-975, just the 965, unless it just came out.

[Coffee Crisp]

 

Back to the OP, nobody really said which card was the best lol but the 9600 for sure needs something higher than a 350 Watt PSU?

 

9600 can run on a 350W probably. But I personally wouldn't get one. A 4670 1GB would probably be feasible enough. The power consumption kind of balances out with the price and the performance.

 

Correct me if I;m wrong, but isnt the 790i DDR3? and it has the 775 socket doesn't it? Why are you talking about i7? And I havent even seen an i7-975, just the 965, unless it just came out.

 

I was exaggerating regarding power consumption. And yes there is an i7-975 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115212

 

Regarding the DDR3 Motherboard, I should of said 780i or 9400 and with the i7 the X58 :-)

[Finzz]

ok, it's in a package tho, cant buy it individually?

 

So should I get the 9600 then or the ATX card you suggested?

[Coffee Crisp]

ok, it's in a package tho, cant buy it individually?

 

So should I get the 9600 then or the ATX card you suggested?

 

Edited the link

 

At this point it should be based on preference and how much money you're willing to spend. Personally I would probably get a 4670 1GB seeing how I'm already running it on one of my PCs. A lot of people would say otherwise though. Just choose the one you feel is best and is worth while for the long run. What I mean is that if you've been using Nvidia products for a long time, familiar with the costumer support, products, and know how everything works then switching to ATI-AMD wouldn't be the best thing.

[Shadowex3]

Is anything he can get in the $60 range even better than the 6800 he's already got? The 6800 was at least a real gaming card in it's day, most of these suggestions aren't.

[Akaru]

Given your 3 choices, I would pick the 9600 GT.

 

First, it has a 256-bit memory interface vs 9500 GT's 128-bit. I can't really explain what that is, but the bigger the better because having a smaller memory interface will bottleneck your performance.

It has a 650MHz core clock vs 550MHz. This core clock is the GPU's clock speed and again, the higher, the better.

The 9600 GT has a 1800 MHz shader clock vs 9500 GT's 100 MHz. Faster clocked shader is always better, in fact, the 9600 GT's shaders are nearly 2x the clock of the 9500 GT.

The 9600 GT has higher memory clock; 1625MHz vs 1400MHz. A higher memory clock is better than a lower.

It has 64 stream processors vs 9500 GT's 32 stream processors. Higher is better, again.

 

The only way the 9500 GT is better than the 9600 GT is that one has 1GB of VRAM, which is pretty much useless for a mid range card.

 

 

Taken off Yahoo! Answers:

The simplest rule of thumb is that larger numbers are better. Larger clock numbers mean it's running at a faster speed. Larger stream processor numbers mean more things can be processed at once, larger memory bandwidth means more information can be moved around at once. Larger memory interface numbers means (theoretically) more capacity for detail.

 

I would like to add that as long as you have 512 MB of VRAM on the graphics card, that is enough. You won't have to worry about memory being larger than that. Now you have to worry about the other things being a higher number.

[Silverman]

I might sound like a crazed lunatic... but you can get your hands on a pair of 8800GT in SLI for CHEAP nowadays. Yet, they take up more juice. Depending on your bottlenecks, I would get the best card that won't be slowed down by your other parts, regardless of how much it costs... it will be sweet in the long run.

[Nighthawk]

Ok first of all, I know that card sucks, thats why I said budget. I'm not going to be playing crysis on high settings or anything, I just want to run my games at higher settings and actually be able to play call of duty 4.

 

Guess what I'm running right now? an Nvidia 6800GTX (Yes laugh at me all you want) so for me it's a significant upgrade, I'm not looking to spend $100 here although I do know it would be more beneficial to spend money on a waay better card, I;m just trying to upgrad an old shitty computer so it's a little more playable, once I'm out of the house I'm gonna build my own rig and I most certainly won't use these cards.

 

Back to the OP, nobody really said which card was the best lol but the 9600 for sure needs something higher than a 350 Watt PSU?

 

 

A 6800 is one of the best cards in the world. It revolutionized the world of gaming. You should be find with a 6800. I could play Call of duty 4 with mine at 30 fps fine.

 

Of course, now I use a GTX 260 .