Noob looking for graphics card advice

[blazeaglory]

You dont need anything faster than an i5 2500. Most games will never use more than 4 cores. Save some money.

This is getting too confusing. If your having the problems you described, a new video card will not help to solve them.

[Cuda440]

You dont need anything faster than an i5 2500. Most games will never use more than 4 cores. Save some money.

This is getting too confusing. If your having the problems you described, a new video card will not help to solve them.

What should I do to troubleshoot the problem? It's mainly just animated GIFs and streaming video that gets sketchy. Videos saved on hard drive of play just fine.

My Internet speedtests at 7mbps/1mbps with .5ms ping.

I just thought that the video card would be the cause of video playback problems, especially when we all know how bad the GT 220 card turned out to be.

Like I said, I'm new to all of this. Any direction of where to go from here would help. Thanks.

[Merc1138]

What should I do to troubleshoot the problem? It's mainly just animated GIFs and streaming video that gets sketchy. Videos saved on hard drive of play just fine.

My Internet speedtests at 7mbps/1mbps with .5ms ping.

I just thought that the video card would be the cause of video playback problems, especially when we all know how bad the GT 220 card turned out to be.

Like I said, I'm new to all of this. Any direction of where to go from here would help. Thanks.

Format and re-install your OS.

[Cuda440]

Quick update:

The Radeon HD 6870 and Corsair TX650 PSU showed up today, and I just finished throwing them in and installing the driver.

I am no longer experiencing any of the problems I had, full HD youtube videos play great and for some reason they buffer much faster now. Also, websites with a lot of animated GIFs load faster than before and display perfectly.

I'm starting to think that the main culprit was the 300w PSU. The old GT 220 video card needs a minimum 300w PSU, and I was also driving the whole rest of my system including the I5 CPU and a 1TB HDD.

I plan on buying BF3 and seeing how well everything runs.

I'm also still thinking about wiping the system and re-installing the Windows 7, mainly because I hate all of the extra crap programs that dell loads on to all of their computers. I want a simple clean install without useless junk running in the background.

I really appreciate the help from everyone involved

[Eldraque]

Gratz. Its an amazing do feeling when the comp runs smoothly

[stilly]

Time out now. This aint over yet.

FIRST you should prolly know that this upgrade, although a HUGE breath of fresh air for your comp, MIGHT be all that you need. BUT, if you reinstall windows 7 again, you might want to get a version that is NOT OEM. That way when you need to upgrade your mobo, you can do it a bit easier then if you do NOT have an OEM version. OEM marry's the OS install to THAT mainboard and when it changes, problems are bound to arise, like not being able to swap out mobos and such... Anyways just something to look out for. So far I have 4 GB of RAM, an Nvidia 285GTX and a Phenom X4 955 blackie and I have not had any issues playing MW2, Crysis 1 and 2, Farcry 2, and Skyrim. GTA4 seems like it is in slow motion, but I imagine that that game is always gonna be jacked, even with the lowest settings... BTW, I am running windows XP Pro, the actual build is Windows XP Vista Black and Blue Edition. XP pro but looks like 7/vista. CEPT there is no Direct-x 11 or whatever for windows 7...

Anyways, have fun and come back here when you are ready to upgrade again.

OH, BTW, nobody really uses more than 4GB of ram so please resist the urge to waste your money buying a mountain of RAM. I am gonna say it now, Unless you are doing some pretty intense CAD work while watching 1080P BR videos and editing footage and playing games while waiting for things to level out, and Also have 50 browser windows open (AND EVEN THEN more than 4GB of RAM is too much), You aint gonna need more than 4GB of ram. Why waste money and fill the landfills with garbage that you do not need to buy?

I am glad to see that you only needed a graphics card and psu. Glad to have been in the pool. Have fun.

[NYT]

sorry stilly but that is incorrect. While most games require no more than 4gb of ram, running a game at the same time you are running other apps will most definitely cause an issue.

windows 7 can also generalize an image using sysprep that is already built in to the running os. This means that no matter what hardware you have running, you will be able to generalize your os when it comes time to upgrade. After this, you throw your generalized hdd into your new box, just load the system specific drivers.... or if you're fancy have winpe do it for you from a shared resource.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Merc1138]

OH, BTW, nobody really uses more than 4GB of ram so please resist the urge to waste your money buying a mountain of RAM. I am gonna say it now, Unless you are doing some pretty intense CAD work while watching 1080P BR videos and editing footage and playing games while waiting for things to level out, and Also have 50 browser windows open (AND EVEN THEN more than 4GB of RAM is too much), You aint gonna need more than 4GB of ram. Why waste money and fill the landfills with garbage that you do not need to buy?

Umm, because getting 8GB of DDR3 is dirt cheap. Windows alone will use 2GB idle, games using another 2-4GB depending on address awareness, and any other applications that might be running will end up having to swap back to the pagefile, that's why. Watching 1080p lossless video doesn't really eat much RAM since it's just buffering off of the media anyway. Plus, most modern CAD applications that I'm aware of offload most of their work to the GPU and it's memory these days.

Now if you had said encoding 1080p blu-ray video or something, that's a resource hog that I'd recommend 16GB for.

[blazeaglory]

Quick update:

The Radeon HD 6870 and Corsair TX650 PSU showed up today, and I just finished throwing them in and installing the driver.

I am no longer experiencing any of the problems I had, full HD youtube videos play great and for some reason they buffer much faster now. Also, websites with a lot of animated GIFs load faster than before and display perfectly.

I'm starting to think that the main culprit was the 300w PSU. The old GT 220 video card needs a minimum 300w PSU, and I was also driving the whole rest of my system including the I5 CPU and a 1TB HDD.

I plan on buying BF3 and seeing how well everything runs.

I'm also still thinking about wiping the system and re-installing the Windows 7, mainly because I hate all of the extra crap programs that dell loads on to all of their computers. I want a simple clean install without useless junk running in the background.

I really appreciate the help from everyone involved

Congrats! Feels good huh? I guess the PSU was the problem?

[blazeaglory]

Umm, because getting 8GB of DDR3 is dirt cheap. Windows alone will use 2GB idle, games using another 2-4GB depending on address awareness, and any other applications that might be running will end up having to swap back to the pagefile, that's why. Watching 1080p lossless video doesn't really eat much RAM since it's just buffering off of the media anyway. Plus, most modern CAD applications that I'm aware of offload most of their work to the GPU and it's memory these days.

Now if you had said encoding 1080p blu-ray video or something, that's a resource hog that I'd recommend 16GB for.

I agree. RAM is basically the workhorse of your comp when used with your processor. The more the better...lol

Micro Center has 4GB DDR3 RAM for $20

[Merc1138]

I agree. RAM is basically the workhorse of your comp when used with your processor. The more the better...lol

Micro Center has 4GB DDR3 RAM for $20

Yeah, DDR3 RAM is one of the cheapest components in a computer these days aside from a maybe a DVD burner.

[stilly]

sorry stilly but that is incorrect. While most games require no more than 4gb of ram, running a game at the same time you are running other apps will most definitely cause an issue.

windows 7 can also generalize an image using sysprep that is already built in to the running os. This means that no matter what hardware you have running, you will be able to generalize your os when it comes time to upgrade. After this, you throw your generalized hdd into your new box, just load the system specific drivers.... or if you're fancy have winpe do it for you from a shared resource.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Sword is out! Time to defend!

Well I am sorry but when I went looking for reasons to get 16GB of RAM I found NO good reason on several pages that I came across. Well, for the AVERAGE user and most gamers anyways. If your only reason to buy RAM is because it is cheap then you are a fool. Sorry to put it that way but please STOP and think, if you buy 16 GB of RAM and it never gets used beyond 4,6,10GB, then that extra RAM IS WASTED MONEY. The idea of putting together machines where you just throw money into it until it goes fast is absurd to me. OKAY, if you want to go for it, but are we talking about a server here? Sorry, I saw no mention of a server. I am not a server guy though I am usually a desktop/laptop guy and everytime I see MY ram usage it is hardly EVER up past 1-2GB of ram. Durring a game I do not care because I am playing a game. And when I play games it is only habit to NOT do anything else but play games. MAYBE my attitude will change when I make the move to windows 7 but until then. Sorry, I have found NO good reason to go MAX in ram. You are just a sucker for the big box stores and alienware propaganda...

As for sysprep, well, hold a sec, I gotta read what the **** I shot my mouth off about to get that blasted at me... OH yeah. YEah maybe they fixed something but last year I did an upgrade for a XP pro based machine and it was an OEM installation of Windows. I DID sysprep, It shutdown, I did the change and upon bootup NOGO. I ended up doing a REPAIR install and THAT was a nogo. I ended up then doing some research and found that that OS installation was married to that mobo (not really married, but it IS oem) and since that OS was installed with THAT mopbo, I was not allowed to upgrade that mobo. I had to WIPE and reinstall XP fresh and THEN it was FINE. No problems since and everything is running great.

NOW, about your sysprep for windows 7. Good for you, but I had the poor experience of getting two different machines brought to me that did NOT work. BOTH needed new mobos. BOTH machines were OEM windows 7. I fought and fought after booting up and it never really made it into windows, it got to the desktop and then BSOD. The damn startup repair disk did NOTHING. I had to wipe and reinstall and what a coincidence, BOTH machines were fine after I entered the info in again. I DID have to activate two of them by phone but they worked.

FINALLY, My friends machine went down due to a bad mobo, This was about 4 months ago. We thought it was the PSU but no, it was the MOBO. OKAY, well, a new MOBO fixed the problem... Anyways, HE had windows 7 ultimate and I was SHOCKED because I expected a fight but it was a seamless boot and installation of drivers. I was so thrilled I about **** my shorts because now I had a whole weekend freed up to do whatever instead of data moving and reinstalling games and ****. SO bottom line, THAT worked GREAT and I am thankful, but when you can't sysprep a dead board with an OEM os on it, then you might be in for a fight when it wakes up.

I can only tell you what I have experience with and from what I just read, even with many browser windows open windows rarely uses more then 3GBs of ram...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html

http://lifehacker.com/5415355/do-you-really-need-more-than-4gb-of-ram?

http://www.desktopreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1465&Review=How+Much+RAM+Do+I+Need+Kingston+HyperX

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_7

I multitask too, but I play games on a game system, I do NOT burn things while I am playing games. (okay, ONCE I did) but I think if you just buy ram because it is there then well, that is a foolish choice. That is what they WANT you to do. Now if it were an AK-47 then things are different, but it aint, it is RAM and I seem to be collecting it as I go through life with all of the upgrades that I do for me and others so Anyways, I am sticking by my 4GB of RAM from what I have read.

[stilly]

Yeah, DDR3 RAM is one of the cheapest components in a computer these days aside from a maybe a DVD burner.

LoL and Microcenter has a DVD Burner on sale for $15.99 I think...

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0382892

[stilly]

Umm, because getting 8GB of DDR3 is dirt cheap. Windows alone will use 2GB idle, games using another 2-4GB depending on address awareness, and any other applications that might be running will end up having to swap back to the pagefile, that's why. Watching 1080p lossless video doesn't really eat much RAM since it's just buffering off of the media anyway. Plus, most modern CAD applications that I'm aware of offload most of their work to the GPU and it's memory these days.

Now if you had said encoding 1080p blu-ray video or something, that's a resource hog that I'd recommend 16GB for.

I actually am not a video guy yet so I meant to say BURNING a blur-ray disc but okay, Yes, I mean encoding.

I am running windows XP with 9 browser tabs open spybot resident, passkeeper, cacheman, avast, net limiter, and sandbox along with about 35 more processes and I have 1.1GB free from 2 GB... This is not my game system but I do all of my burning and video indexing from this machine too. The only problem I seem to have is when I keep IE open for too long and the memory leak eats up everything and bogs it all down, then I close IE and reopen it and all is fine again...

[Holding Name 1]

Ive never spent more than $170 on my graphics card, and ive always been able to run max graphics on any game

I call BS.