Would a vid card upgrade do?

[Bedford]

My nephew bought a second hand tower online for 'gaming'.
It turns out it has onboard graphics and is a bit ordinary.

I've been out of the pc building scene for a bit so I'm behind on what's good.

I don't know his exact budget, but it won't be too much.

So the current config is:
CPU: Pentium Dual Core CPU E6500 @ 2.93 GHz
Graphics card: Intel G41 Express Chipset
Memory: 8gig DDR3

Would he be ok to just throw a new vid card in it or should he just look at building something new?

What vid card would you suggest?

Edit: Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-G4MT-D3*

[AEKaBeer]

My nieces pc is similarly spec'd I've dropped in a 5770 and it run's everything I've thrown at it it on medium details (some things high), depends on how much you want to spend but if you get a 6850 (almost double the performance of the 5770) for ~$90 second hand you'll be laughing.

EDIT: the only thing to be careful of is that a few g41 motherboards were released with a 16x pci-e slot that is pci-e 4x electrically. Look up the motherboard model on the manufacturer's site to be sure (or post the model here).

[Bedford]

Further to that. The Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-G4MT-D3.

[Bedford]

Originally Posted by AEKaBeer

My nieces pc is similarly spec'd I've dropped in a 5770 and it run's everything I've thrown at it it on medium details (some things high), depends on how much you want to spend but if you get a 6850 (almost double the performance of the 5770) for ~$90 second hand you'll be laughing.

EDIT: the only thing to be careful of is that a few g41 motherboards were released with a 16x pci-e slot that is pci-e 4x electrically. Look up the motherboard model on the manufacturer's site to be sure (or post the model here).

Is a 7750 or 7770 any good?

[AEKaBeer]

They sit in between the 5770 and 6850, considering the price I'd lean towards the used 6850 even a 6870.

EDIT: ninja editing duplication "the price".

[Reaper_1994]

Originally Posted by AEKaBeer

They sit in between the 5770 and 6850, considering the price I'd lean towards the price I'd get the used 6850 even a 6870.

+1 to that. The HD6800 series is becoming cheap and is still up there with the best of them so I'd go with a second-hand HD6850/70

[White_Ice]

Originally Posted by Reaper_1994

+1 to that. The HD6800 series is becoming cheap and is still up there with the best of them so I'd go with a second-hand HD6850/70

Yep thats the way to go.. Decent bang for buck!

[Bedford]

I found out he has up to $300 more to upgrade with.
What's a second hand 6850 worth?

How does a GTX560 compare?

[Forgiven]

Originally Posted by Bedford

I found out he has up to $300 more to upgrade with.
What's a second hand 6850 worth?

How does a GTX560 compare?

At the end of the day don't need to spend so much as the CPU will be the bottleneck... On top of that you need to be sure your PSU is also up to the task..

Go 2nd hand if you can and GTX560 is a good choice

[D_W_Y]

if you start wanting to spend that much on a gpu like others said your cpu will bottleneck, especially things like battlefield bad company or 3. they get a huge boost over having a quad core. just go with a 6850 or 70, tell him to deal with medium settings.

[Bedford]

Sweet. Thanks for the heads up.

What would be a good bang for buck CPU to look at?

[bobbth]

Originally Posted by Bedford

Sweet. Thanks for the heads up.

What would be a good bang for buck CPU to look at?

if you can, nabbing a q6600 would be ideal

[SpudBoy]

imo, if you have the 300 extra to play with, nab a newer i7 board and cpu (hell even second hand from these forums) and you will see a much larger improvement over a second vid card.

if you want to stay ati, go ahead for the 6800 series.. even if i would personally go nvidia purely out of spite of the shit time i've had with everything ati/amd.

[AEKaBeer]

I'm reading that he doesn't have a first video card, no a new cpu/mob combo will not net you better results than a decent video card. You will just be cpu bottlenecked (to a point) but you won't get as high frames with a ballsy CPU and crappy GPU.

6850 is overall faster than a 560 and uses less power the power supply is more likely to handle it. They go for $90 around here but occasionally so does a 6870. 560s tend to go for $110, unless you can score a 560ti (a whole different kettle of fish)for that money it's not the gpu I'd pick for that setup.

Here's another alternative but it means the money already spent has gone out the window:
Intel Core i3 2120 (3.3Ghz dual core) $127
ASRock B75M Motherboard $69
Second hand 6850 $100
ram: salvaged
total: $296

It's no quad but the i3's are proven gamers the cheapest i5 (quad) is another $60, the downside is there's no room for a powersupply if it's needed (should be fine though total load will be around 250watts).

I'd still recommend going just the card, as I posted earlier, my nieces pc plays everything I've thrown at it on a 5770, your nephew's pc has 4x the ram and a 400mhz faster cpu.

[bobbth]

Originally Posted by AEKaBeer

I'd still recommend going just the card, as I posted earlier, my nieces pc plays everything I've thrown at it on a 5770, your nephew's pc has 4x the ram and a 400mhz faster cpu.

+1 picking up a cheap 5770/GTX460/6850 from the forums would be the cheapest course of action and an e6500 should get through most games at decent FPS without too much trouble.