graphics card around £75

[oddjob]

a friend is looking to get a graphics card for his pc so that he can play some games, his pc is a dell e520 with vista and 3gb ram but only has onboard graphics. unfortunately he is on a budget and can only afford approx £75, ideally the new graphics card should have min 512mb and wouldnt need a connection from the psu (the psu is standard dell 305w one). i have not looked at to verify if it has a connection for a graphics card so for now i will assume it hasnt got one.I have had a look for one but to be honest i know nothing about graphics cards so please help me find him one

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD5670 512MB GDDR5 is bus powered and has relatively low idle power consumption:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190138

Also the card is not too long.

The 9800GT Green Edition is also bus powered:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169143

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/205449

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169136

It is faster than an HD5670 but has a longer PCB and probably has higher idle and peak power consumption.

The Palit 9800GT is dual slot although it does look like the Inno3D 9800GT is single slot:

http://www.inno3d.com/products/graph...00gt_esave.htm

However,I would check with Ebuyer.

Edit!!

What CPU does the Dell computer have??

If it is a Pentium D it may limit the framerates in many games AFAIK.

[5867dude]

If £75 is his max, then the ATI 5670 would be a good buy, but if you can stretch to £105 then the ATI 5770 would be superior. But make sure you have a sufficient PSU and Processor. The Processor doesn't matter alot, provided its somewhat modern.

[oddjob]

i have managed to look at the pc and it has a core 2 duo 6300 processor (2x1.86) and also the game he wants to play (total war). the min spec for the game are 512mb graphics, 3gb ram and 2ghz dual core processor. once a graohics card is chosen the only prob is the processoras it seems to fall just short of the requirements. will this have a major impact on the gameplay or is it worth considering overclocking the processor , if so how do i do this?

[oddjob]

found a good guide on hexus for the overclocking http://www.hexus.net/content/item.ph...1&search=intel which i can follow but my only concern would be the standard psu even though i would only aim to bring the processor upto a 2x2.1ghz

[Kumagoro]

I reckon stretch an extra fiver and get this (5750 £79.99) with the free economy postage

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...h/57501GB.html

at CCL £76.99 with free del too, is it actually in stock though im not sure.
http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...17&tid=gsearch

[Pob255]

yes the psu could limit overclocking, it will depend on how good it is.
However you'll probably be blocked by the motherboard BIOS, most pre-builds don't have any overclocking or tweeking setting within the BIOS so makes overclocking next to impossible.

The current price on the 5750 makes it a very good card for £80, not sure if it's bus powered or not, but it is fairly low power demand.

I seem to remember that total war is a bit cpu heavy so you could have issues. at 1.86ghz stock, esp in large battles.

[scaryjim]

5750 is *not* bus powered, it requires a PCIe connector*

With the Dell PSU, I'd stick with the 5670. Don't forget that Core 2s are a bit more efficient per clock cycle then dual core Pentiums and Athlons, so a 1.86GHz Core 2 probably (just about!) falls into the minimum specification. As Pob says, being a pre-build there's very little chance that you'll be able to overclock the E6300, sadly, as a moderate overclock would make a big difference on that processor. On the other hand, it should mean the games won't be bottlenecked by the Graphics Card so he should be able to turn the graphics settings up that bit higher without lowering the framerates


*well, there was one company - powercolor I think - who released a bus-powered version of it by improving the voltage regulation circuitry to reduce overall power draw, but they're very hard to find and probably demand quite a premium over standard versions.

[oddjob]

thanks for all the input guys, i have got him to order the 5670 and hopefully it will more than do the job. thinking about i dont think i will be able to doing averclocking as scaryjim pointed out that the bios is probably locked down and i wont know until i fit the graphics card