I'm after a GPU to eke out this PC for a couple more years, budget around £45.

Primary requirement: playing Minecraft without crashing! I have to play on my net-top at the moment because it has much better graphics. Also must be capable of 1080p 60fps video; my current setup only barely does 30fps and skips at very high bit rates.

Additionally, must be very quiet and low power. I'd prefer something passive, but as long as it's quiet and reliable that's good enough. This lives in my bedroom, is on a lot of the time and it can get quite warm in here already.

Current spec:

2048x1152 23" monitor
Foxconn 945G7MD
Intel 945 on-board graphics (well it's good enough for Quake and HL2!)
PCIe x16 slot
4GB DDR2
E4500 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo

A quick look suggests maybe this PNY GT 220 1GB DDR2 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176776

Anything better around the same price?
Should I care that it's DDR2?
Is the lack of DX11 likely to be a problem?
I have no idea what type my PCIe is; is that likely to be a problem?
I do have a 6 pin power plug on my PSU, although I'd prefer a card that didn't need it.

Although I don't need anything that powerful, obviously I'd like the best performance possible because I don't know what challenges tomorrow might bring.

Thanks

Ignore any card with DDR2 except for just using it for video playback.

PCI-e is backwards compatible with older versions.

Try looking for a 9800GT or similar on ebay. I sold a few of them brand new on ebay for £45 or so.

If you are taking the ebay route, I have seen quite a few GTX 260s go for £45-£50 on there.

The TDP of the 260 is nearly 200W so I'm afraid that's out.
The 220 is 40nm and nearer 50W, which was one of the reasons I was looking at it.

The green edition of the 9800 is 75W, so I'll see if I can find one. Thanks.

Does this GT 430 do what you want?
It seems better specified than the GT 220 and is on budget.

Yes. Yes it does, perfectly I think?

Only 50Watts, motherboard powered, DX11 and according to the charts it's the fastest and cheapest suggestion so far for anything like that power. The one review says it's pretty quiet too.

Thanks

OK so that hasn't really worked out the way I hoped. I'm not sure if it's the card, my PSU or the over-all spec of the computer. It's fine now for Minecraft which was my original problem, but I'm struggling to play more intensive games.

For example, Skyrim does maybe 20fps at 1080p on High but crashes after 2 minutes. If I drop it to medium and play in a window, it's reliable but the frame rate drops annoyingly when things get exciting.

Also, Bioshock plays perfectly in a window but crashes full-screen. That's not even new.

I do have the budget now for a more serious upgrade, but I still want to keep the electric bill down so any solution must be extra efficient when idling. It's OK if it uses 200W when I'm playing something, but I can't have it clocking up the meter while I'm just surfing the web!

I'm thinking of getting the: Asus GTX 550ti although the massive cooler looks worrying.

or would I be better off with: Gainwood GTX 560

I'll be needing a better PSU, so maybe: Antec 650W although that's only 80% efficient. I'm not sure if the "green" ones have enough current?

Also looking at upgrading to Windows 7 64 bit. I'm still on XP Pro at the moment. Is it likely to make any difference to how often games crash? I have read that 64 bit is better with Skyrim.

Is it worth spending over £200 upgrading a Core 2 duo or should I give up now? The thing is, playing with the brand new i3 machines at work they don't actually seem noticeably faster, so I guess I'd have to spend out quite a lot for a really significant upgrade...

Thanks.

Give it a couple of weeks - AMD have just launched their new line and nvidia are about to do the same. Maybe it will push down the prices of previous gen cards.

You can get less 'chunky' looking 550s but, for the money a 1GB 460 would be a better bet. Other the other hand, an AMD 6790 is roughly comparable. Most modern cards have a 2D power profile now, and downclock for non 3D work.

As I undertand it, Skyrim likes a quad core and upwards of 3GHz, so your CPU will likely bottleneck the performance of any card you put in there. I'll try find the article I read, but I remember someone saying a stock speed i7 920 got a little chuggy when things were happening on screen. That's 4 cores (8 threads) at 2.66GHz.

Check with the other guys playing Skyrim, but you may need a faster dual core as a minimum. Overclocking your current chip might be worth a go, if your board is capable; and a sensible overclock shouldn't use a massive amount of extra power. £15-£20 for a Freezer7 rev2 for a good amount of overclocking headroom is better than forking out for a faster CPU.

Hmm, thanks Spreadie. I've re-read the system requirements for Skyrim, and although my system is safely inside it does indeed seem the CPU is where I'm scraping the minimum:

Supported Graphics Cards:

• Minimum – nVidia GeForce 8800 / ATI Radeon HD 3850
• Recommended -Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 or higher; ATI Radeon 4890 or higher

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
• CPU: Dual Core 2.0GHz or equivalent processor
• RAM: 2 GB

Recommended System Requirements

• CPU: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
• RAM: 4 GB

In some ways this is good as I may be able to keep the card I bought so recently.

However, I really wasn't planning a CPU/RAM/MBD upgrade for a while if I could avoid it. I guess it's lasted pretty well though - it must be 5 years old now.

*sigh* maybe I'll get that Antec 300 I was looking at. At least then it will look new too.

If you're going for an upgrade, have you considered going the AMD FM1 route? It's low powered and looks pretty capable.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2 ... 0-review/1

I bet you could get the A8-3850, 4GB of DDR3 and a decent motherboard for under £200.

I'm struggling to find a definitive review of the platform's Skyrim performance though.

I think it's slower than an i3, so probably no better than what I have now. Should make for interesting mid-range laptops though.

What is your total budget?

Sounds like a complete rebuild is needed.

Win7 seems quite stable for games - hardly any crashes since started using it.

I don't really know. I don't want to spend anything, certainly not over £300 given that my current PC is fine for 99% of what I want.

It looks like I need a platform at least 6x faster than what I have now in order to maintain a decent frame rate. Any lesser upgrade is going to be a waste of money, since I'll just end up with another PC that only does 99% of what I want. I would stretch to £500 for the entire thing.

I guess I'm looking at an i5 2500. On Dabs that's about the only chip they have in stock anyway lol. Is it worth spending the extra on the unlocked version? I guess it might be since it's just on the performance threshold.

Hmm - looks like the budget is £300 for the mobo/cpu/ram plus £100 for the case / psu and another £100 for gfx. I think I'll be doing this in stages.

Well the difference between the 2500 and the "k" version is £20 - if you have no intention of overclocking then just stick with the standard version at £160 - having said than Scam are selling the "k" version for £165 (OEM)

On motherboards the Asus P8P67 seems cheap for a full ATX board at £120 - has USB3 and Sata600. The there is it's smaller cousin the P8P67-M (mATX) at £110

For ram, at work we have been buying Kingston - it is cheap and seems to work fine - you can get 8Gb for just £30 http://www.dabs.com/products/kingston-8 ... 0000&src=3

I was looking at a gigglebyte Z68AP-D3 which is £77 and seems to have loads of interfaces. No idea what constitutes a "good" motherboard these days though...

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-z ... -7MQB.html