BleepingComputer.com: Help from professionals

I have relied on the threads from this great place for some time now. And, since it is time I feel I need an upgrade on my graphics card, I personally feel obligated to ask the pros here what they would get.

I currently have a NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT I mostly play World of Warcraft. My wife plays Sims 3 and sometimes I play betas of games that I have been invited to. I just have the feeling that with all the new stuff they are doing in games it's time for an upgrade on the graphics card.

I'm running Windows 7 home 32 bit. I have 4 gb RAM, 2.4 ghz

The Max Resolution of my monitor 1440 x 900 / 60.0 Hz but I run it at 1024 x768 / 60.0 Hz.

my computer is a Q6600 2.4Ghz.
Intel core 2 quad

Power Supply 550 Watt Top Power Power Supply

Motherboard Board NVIDIA nForce 630i based chipset, DDR2, mATX, PCI-e

Processor Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor Q6600, quad 2.4GHz cores, 8MB L2 Cache (+$100.00)

CPU Cooling Intel® Certified Heatsink/Fan, Thermal Controlled Variable Speed Fan

DDR2 Memory 4096MB Corsair™ XMS2 DDR2-800 Low Latency Extreme Memory with Heat Spreader (2x2048)

I had it custom built from Velocity Micro about two and a half years ago. (The time may be a little off.)

I am willing to spend up to about $200 dollars right now but if waiting a few months will get me more for my money is the right thing to do........that I am willing to do.

I was looking at

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130591

but I don't know if my power supply which is here,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817101021

will run it.

Thanks in advance for you help friends.

AJ

I would stay away from no name power supply's.

And if the system is playing all your games fine then I would wait till there is a point were the system no longer does what you want.

Those links are bad, but I agree with jesse here-if you want to upgrade, do not go with a no name or off brand PSU, ever. The two things you always want to invest in, are PSUs and motherboards, don't skimp on either. Go with a good quality from a name brand such as Coolermaster, Antec, OCZ, or Corsair, try to find one with at least 30 amps on the +12v rails (single or combined) and I usually recomend finding one with a 80% efficiency rate such as this I can see why you would want to upgrade (I upgrade myself even when I dont need to) but if your going to upgrade, upgrade right. The top power line of PSU, from what I am reading on newegg is fairly new, definetly not name brand, should in theory power most single cards on the market, but since I cant find the specific specs of yours and your link is dead I cant tell you for sure. I will say that it is a brand I would not trust, but if it works now and supplies decent amperage then it should handle most video cards, but again-hard to say for sure-can you repost the links?

Sorry about the links......I thought I posted them correct. This is the power supply that came with my computer when I had it built. Since it was free.......well......the price was good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817101021

The card I'm wanting is this one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130591

How hard is it to replace a power supply? I've called Velocity Micro and was told that the one I have would run that card fine but I'm getting a different reaction when I do some research. Will the one that i've posted run the card that I've posted?

Thanks again all.

AJ

Should be able to handle it, 40 amps on the +12v rails. I wouldnt try to SLI with it any time soon but it should handle a single card with no worries.

You picked a nice graphics card there and it should be able to play all your games.

Thanks all. I really appreciate this board and all it's members that take the time to reply. This is the reason I come here for answers.

Thank you again.

AJ

No problems, we are all here to help!

How about this card. Is this just as good as the one I posted above? It's a little cheaper. The one I had posted is 1gb and this is 768, can you tell me what the difference is?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127519

AJ

Little more video memory, will make a difference especially in frame rate when running in higher resolutions. If you dont do a lot of gaming, you probably won't notice much difference, but if your wanting to do some of the more intensive games on the market like say battlefield bad company 2, then having the 1 gig would be better. In all reality, its only a 10 dollar difference and I personally don't trust MSI-I would recomend going with the 1 gb EVGA card.

Yeah I only play World of Warcraft and my wife plays sims 3. The only problem I have is that I don't know what the SE means in the EVGA card. What does that mean?

what I mean is........is that a knockoff card or budget type card? Will it really be that much better than what I already have in the 9800 gt?

thats the performance sub level. SE is one of the mainstream sub levels-along with LE and GS, with performance sublevels being GSO, GT, GTS, and GTO, and GTX, ultra, and GX2 being enthusiast. More reading here So technically, the MSI one has a slightly better GPU-100 mhz faster, and will be able to boost slightly better graphics, though with perhaps a slight framerate drop. If you want the power of a GTX GPU with perhaps a better manufacturer (at least in my opinion) How about this its 145 after rebate. Or perhaps this ASUS one which is 130 after rebate.

And its not really a knock off-unlike the 9800 which was just a tweaked up 8800, the 460 is an entirely new architecture, much better card, and you should have a large performance increase off of it.

so to play WOW or sims 3 would you recommend the 1gb version that I had orginally posted or one that you had posted. This stuff is so confusing when you don't do computers.....LOL