Video Card Advice Please

[Cmdr Silon]

Sorry for the delay in replying chaps

Thanks so much for all of your contributions.

I typically ah and erm over this sort of this for quite a while, so I might not be actually purchasing for a little while yet, but you've all given me a lot to think about.

For those that are interested, here are the full specs of my pc such as it was when I bought it.

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™2 Quad Q9400 (2.66GHz) 1333MHz FSB/6MB Cache
Memory (RAM) 2GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz
Motherboard ASUS® P5QL: DDR2, SATAII, PCI-e x16, 3 PCI, 2 x PCI-e x1
Storage - 1st Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
Graphics Card 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE 9500GT PCI EXPRESS
Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling 350W Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

FWIW the memory was since upgraded to 6Gb and the HDs have all been replaced with much larger capacity , but similar speed.

Yeah, its time to upgrade your pc. Going up to h or z 97 chipset processors will really help out: LGA 1150 socket i5 or i7. 8 gigs of RAM, which is what I'm running on my i7 4790, and a gtx 970; will give
you great bang for the buck on your PC. All together mine was around US$ 1500 initially.

If you really wana go bananas you can get the newest x99 chipset from Intel and get massive cores and use the latest DDR4 RAM.

AMD also has some awesome stuff out there for powerful budget builds.

 

[Non Grata]

Power Supply & Case Cooling 350W Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Get the GTX750ti you mention (or something else that is 60w-ish), and if you don't know what power connectors you have available, get one that only requires one (e.g. MSI). Better cards are probably going to tax your PSU.

 

[Mad Doctor X]

Also check if your motherboard will support a modern graphics card unless you're happy flashing the Bios. I got a 750 Ti and had to go through this with my motherboard (AZrock Extreme4Gen3). Having said that my PC is running a lot better than it was with a HD5770 as my PC came with a crap PSU!

 

[Benaron]

Many good suggestions in this thread.

Right now, Nvidia seems to have better support for things like anti-aliasing.

I plan to upgrade my 5970 with a new 8gb 980 which should be out soon, but this is way overkill for ED.