Upgrade: Graphics Card

[Riddle78]

Alright,I'm a gamer. And as such,I want a gaming card for my rig. Preferably two,but,baby steps. My PC is old. But,I love it. And so,I upgrade it piece by piece. Next on the block is the video cards,which are a pair of nVIDIA GeForce GTS 250's that I installed right around Oblivion's release. Yeah,they're old,but,wanna know what? They work. I can run PlanetSide 2 on medium graphics with only minor slowdown during hugeass open-air conflicts at things like Tech Labs,and can run damn near any other modern game on medium settings. Ones that I've played,anyways.

However,I don't want to jump straight to a Titan. My power supply probably won't be able to handle it. Instead,I want something middle of the road. Nothing too big,nothing too expensive. Besides,I get comparable performance of something bigger for less if I run a pair of lesser cards in tandem.

So,does anyone here know of any GeForce cards,designed expressly for gaming,that fit the requirements above? For now,I only want one so I can replace one of my 250's and run the other alongside the new card.

 

[AWAR]

-snip

First off we need a budget. Other than that it will be nice to know the rest of the system, particularly the power supply. A good card in terms of gaming performance and price is the GTX 760. Also as far as I'm concerned you can't run different nvidia cards in SLI.

 

[Albino Boo]

You can only run cards of the same series and same model name with sli, so the reality is that you can only run another GTS from the 200 series with your GTS 250. Personally I would go for the best card performance that I could afford rather than 2 mid price cards in a sli setup. A GTX 760 is better than 2 GTX 650s.

 

[Hazy992]

Well first of all we need specs and a budget. Can't really recommend anything otherwise.

Secondly, you can't run SLI with anything other than another GTS 250. SLI is more trouble than it's worth anyway, you're best off getting the best single card you can afford.

 

[kaioshade]

Well first of all we need specs and a budget. Can't really recommend anything otherwise.

Secondly, you can't run SLI with anything other than another GTS 250. SLI is more trouble than it's worth anyway, you're best off getting the best single card you can afford.

I do not entirely agree with this. SLI can cause minor issues if the game does not work at all with it, but even without profiles for games, i have had very little trouble with my SLI setup.

Although i do agree that a budget is highly recommended.

 

[Riddle78]

Well first of all we need specs and a budget. Can't really recommend anything otherwise.

Secondly, you can't run SLI with anything other than another GTS 250. SLI is more trouble than it's worth anyway, you're best off getting the best single card you can afford.

I see. Oh,well. Single card it is. I guess I'll get a duplicate of the new card down the line,then. As an aside,SLI never gave me issues. So,what problems exist with SLI?

Budget isn't a concern for me,so long as I stay within the "Middle of the road" level of cards,so,suggest away. I already did a bit of research,and found the 520 to be poor for games.

 

[Hazy992]

Well first of all we need specs and a budget. Can't really recommend anything otherwise.

Secondly, you can't run SLI with anything other than another GTS 250. SLI is more trouble than it's worth anyway, you're best off getting the best single card you can afford.

I see. Oh,well. Single card it is. I guess I'll get a duplicate of the new card down the line,then. As an aside,SLI never gave me issues. So,what problems exist with SLI?

Budget isn't a concern for me,so long as I stay within the "Middle of the road" level of cards,so,suggest away. I already did a bit of research,and found the 520 to be poor for games.

Again, what do you consider "middle of the road"? $100? $200? More?

And it really would help if you gave a full spec list

 

[Albino Boo]

Well first of all we need specs and a budget. Can't really recommend anything otherwise.

Secondly, you can't run SLI with anything other than another GTS 250. SLI is more trouble than it's worth anyway, you're best off getting the best single card you can afford.

I see. Oh,well. Single card it is. I guess I'll get a duplicate of the new card down the line,then. As an aside,SLI never gave me issues. So,what problems exist with SLI?

Budget isn't a concern for me,so long as I stay within the "Middle of the road" level of cards,so,suggest away. I already did a bit of research,and found the 520 to be poor for games.

SLI can have problems with microstutter. Its rather unpredictable, 2 people with the same setup and playing the same game can lead to one person having microstutter and the other not. The other issue is power, two gtx 650s are going to need ~800w psu as opposed to a gtx 760 will need a 550-600w psu. The cost of two GTX 650s is about the same as the cost of one gtx 760. So paying for two graphics cards with cost you more money in buying a psu and more money to run.

 

[Riddle78]

Well first of all we need specs and a budget. Can't really recommend anything otherwise.

Secondly, you can't run SLI with anything other than another GTS 250. SLI is more trouble than it's worth anyway, you're best off getting the best single card you can afford.

I see. Oh,well. Single card it is. I guess I'll get a duplicate of the new card down the line,then. As an aside,SLI never gave me issues. So,what problems exist with SLI?

Budget isn't a concern for me,so long as I stay within the "Middle of the road" level of cards,so,suggest away. I already did a bit of research,and found the 520 to be poor for games.

Again, what do you consider "middle of the road"? $100? $200? More?

And it really would help if you gave a full spec list

You seem to be misunderstanding. Middle of the road has no direct correlation with price. Middle of the road is performance. And how would a full spec list help? This is a vacuum. All I want is a single new card. My power supply is approximately 850 watts,making power to feed a single card a non-issue. I have twenty gigabytes of RAM. My CPU is an i7 with multithreading. That what you're looking for? Those things that still work for me,and still will after the new card?

Also,as an aside,I can't seem to run ATI cards in this machine. When I tried to test one just last week (my dad upgraded and passed the old one down to me),all of my games told me I was running an incompatible resolution,even though it didn't change from 1920*1080. So yeah.

 

[AWAR]

Snip-

The rest of your system is relevant when making a graphics card purchase. If you were still rocking an old Core Duo, a new graphics card wouldn't increase performance because it would be bottlenecked. The PSU is also important. You mentioned that you shouldn't be able to run a titan at your setup, which is not true as 850 watts are plenty for even 2 titans (although that's a terrible idea).

Anyways, if you are looking for "middle of the road performance" a 760 will do just fine.
Consider a 770 or a 780 if you have the cash.

two gtx 650s are going to need ~800w psu .

Your power estimates are way off, since the gtx 650 peaks at 64 watts and its "ti" variation at 110 watts.

 

[Albino Boo]

two gtx 650s are going to need ~800w psu .

Your power estimates are way off, since the gtx 650 peaks at 64 watts and its "ti" variation at 110 watts.

Odd that seeing Nvidia say the minimum power requirement for gtx 650 is 400w at 24A. Perhaps you should inform them that they are wrong.

 

[AWAR]

two gtx 650s are going to need ~800w psu .

Your power estimates are way off, since the gtx 650 peaks at 64 watts and its "ti" variation at 110 watts.

Odd that seeing Nvidia say the minimum power requirement for gtx 650 is 400w at 24A. Perhaps you should inform them that they are wrong.

That's the minimum power supply recommended. So informing them isn't needed.

 

[sanquin]

Woa... 850watt supply? You can get top end cards to run on that one. I have a 750w and can run 2 GTX 560 Ti's no problem. Also, why go with a mid-range video card when the rest of your PC is more top-end? ^^;; 20GB of RAM is a huge amount, and i7 isn't mid-range at all. (i3 or i5 is mid-range, I'd say.)

 

[Riddle78]

Woa... 850watt supply? You can get top end cards to run on that one. I have a 750w and can run 2 GTX 560 Ti's no problem. Also, why go with a mid-range video card when the rest of your PC is more top-end? ^^;; 20GB of RAM is a huge amount, and i7 isn't mid-range at all. (i3 or i5 is mid-range, I'd say.)

Why drop two grand on a pair of Titans? If I grab a pair of mid-tier cards,I get comparable performance for less.

 

[sanquin]

Why drop two grand on a pair of Titans? If I grab a pair of mid-tier cards,I get comparable performance for less.

Two grand? Wait what? I think we're confusing 'Ti' for 'Titan' here, don't you think? ^^;; Mine cost me 200 euro's each. What I meant was that the recommended for the card is 500 watt. But I can run 2 of them with a 750w PSU. As said before, it's the recommended power for your entire system when using said card. The card itself doesn't use it all.

Also, don't forget that getting 2 cards does not mean that your performance will be doubled. It will increase from using only 1 card in most cases, but it's not double the amount of 'power' you get from the cards.