Need a Graphics card.

Hey everyone,
new to the forums here and need some help. :)

Now I need a good graphics card to play games like ME2,BFBC2 etc,
i dont know where to start looking for a good one so if anyone has any good suggestions that would be great.
Price range. 200-300

thanks.

Dwarf said:

Hi bigpopa and welcome to Windows 7 Forums

Some more information would be useful. What is the make and model number of the motherboard? Are we talking $, £, or some other currency?

how do i find out what motherboard i have? im pretty new to computers aswell. :)
and im from australia,

Dwarf said:

Download and run CPU-Z CPUID

The information required can be found on the Mainboard tab, as shown below.

alrite so the model is GA-K8NF-9 , and PCI express is x16

RST101 said:

How much are you willing to spend on one?

anything between 200 to 300.

You're going to need a lot more than just a video card if you want to play those games,

OS Windows 7 PR0
CPU AMD athlon 64 Processor 3000+ 1.81 GHz
Memory 1.00 GB
Graphics Card NVIDIA Geforce 6600 GT
Sound Card Realtek AC 97 audio
Monitor(s) Displays Generic PnP Monitor

You're under-spec for both games, and way under for BFBC2,

Minimum:
OS: Windows XP
Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz
Memory: 2GB
Graphics: 256 MB Video Card (GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900)
DirectX®: DirectX 9, 10, and 11 support
Hard Drive: 15 GB

Recommended:
OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad or higher
Memory: 2GB
Graphics: 512 MB Video Card (GeForce GTX 260/ ATI Radeon 4870)
Controller Support: Support for Logitech G15 and G19 keyboard LCDs in multiplayer

which unfortunately in your case would require a lot more than just a video card upgrade. To play BFBC2 at anything even remotely resembling playable (if it will even run) you're looking at a complete system upgrade.

ME2 won't be much better,

Mass Effect Community - Mass Effect 2 DRM and PC requirements Announced

In your case you have a single core socket 939/DDR motherboard, and socket 939 has been discontinued, and it isn't really worth buying more ram as anything you spend on it is wasted as it cannot be used in a new system.

Well your motherboard: GA-K8NF-9 (Rev 2.x) - GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Specification

Option 1: Upgrade currnet Mobo and system

supports the Athlon 64 X2 which is priced at lowest of $60: AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.9 GHz Processor

Supports 4G of DDR Ram @ 400mhz which is PC3200
You will need more Ram. I would suggest looking at CPUID again and look at the brand of RAM and get the same one as what is in your system. You might have 2x512 sticks for 1g total. I which case you would need to buy 2 more 512 sticks so they are all the same. Example:Priced at about $45 Crucial 1 GB ( 2 x 512 MB ) Memory - DIMM 184-pin - 400 MHz ( PC3200 )

(I dont know about just adding a new 1g stick. Someone on here might be able to confirm it is doable, but not recommended as it might be incompatible with your current ram.)

So you dont need a new motherboard to update your system. Your current mother board could support up to a dual core @2.5Ghz and 4G of ram @ 400Mhz. This ram is going to slow you down though. But, your board also allows for overclocking so thats not bad. You would need a cooling system though if you did that....


Option 2:
If you are putting 70+45+(200to300forGPU) + (100 for a new Power supply) then I would suggest to get a new mobo and go with faster CPU and Ram and a nice GPU. A top-notch GPU wont do much in your current system with slow RAM