ATI 6870

550ti

IMHO for that rig, a HD 4890 with a good cooler would be more than enough.

It's cheap, but powerful - you can get it under 100 $ and it's still a good card.
For nVidia, it should be a GTX 260, considering the price.
These two are very similar, regarding performance.

If you run the CPU on default settings, a nice piece of HD 4870 is also a good choice.

or a gts250, which is between 4850 and 4870 and beats radeon in nvidia biased games (sc2, d3), 55nm short pcb version draws much less power than 4870, being cooler and quieter.

Is the CPU overclocked? What games are you planning to play and in what resolution? Two very important question to make a good answer possible.

The G94 sports a 256bit memory interface, and it's surprisingly powerful in low res when it's overclocked. I had one and it was faster then a stock g250, which was a shock to me.

It really depends on the games and the resolution. if you only play in 1024x768, an ati6850 or a gtx460 is more than enough because the q8200 can't even make them hot. But if you play in higher resolution, it will be a different story.

CPU is not overclocked and I don't plan to overclock the GFX card either.
Not really sure what games I want to play on it, but 1024x768 is enough for me. I used the ps3 for new games in the last couple of years. Do you think I can play games like Mass Effect 3 smoothly in 1024x768 on this system?
I see a used gtx460 for about $80 at the moment, is that a good price?

the gtx460 is more than enough for 1024x768. It will probably never reach more than 60-70% load with such a "weak" CPU. I think it's safe to say that you can pick the 768Mb version too, it's cheaper and will be still enough for 1024x768. I do not recommend the 260 because it's not dx11.

Don't forget that your 9600GT is very energy efficient, and these new cards need a lot more power, so you must have a good PSU as well.
I have to admit that ATI makes better cards in this price segment because they need less juice while delivering more performance, but I don't like their drivers as a gamer.

i get 40 fps in mass effect 3 in 1366x768 with a 2.1 ghz i3 and intel hd 3000 gfx lol

The 9600GT is enough for ME3 in 1024x768, but other new games are more demanding.

ME3 is not much more demanding than ME2 than?
Because ME2 doesn't run really smooth on my system, it's definately playable, but fps are quite low some times. But I don't know what resolution I'm playing on, prolly higher than 1024x768.

What about games like BF3? Will it run smoothly on
1024x768 and high level of detail with an updated gfx card on my system?

ME3 is not much more demanding than ME2, but it is a little bit, so if ME2 was struggling, than ME3 will also have problems,. and the new card could help a lot indeed.

About other games generally, this may sound surprising, but the main "problem" with your config is the Q8200, which is only 2.33Ghz on stock, and any game which is not multi-threaded (or which is not fully multi-threaded) will have to rely on the single core performance of your CPU, and that is weak (even for the 9600GT tbh). You might not believe it, but a simple $100 i3-2100 destroys a E8400 @4GHZ which have the same cores as your CPU (only two) but 3 times the cache... and the i3-2100 is not even the top gamer CPU either, so you can imagine that your 2.33Ghz CPU can't do much when it comes to single threaded games.

If you have a custom CPU cooler, I highly recommend you push it a little bit (2.8Ghz won't be too hard to do), it will speed things up a bit (10-20%).

The good part is that any game capable of using 3-4 cores will like your CPU, and BF3 will be responsive and playable online with a well made medium cfg. But no, high level of detail is never gonna happen on that system, not even in 1024x768.

Take my advice and don't invest much into that config. Take a cheap $50-80 card, it will run most of the games in 1280x720 on high detail, and will serve you well until you buy your next setup. Perhaps more and more games will use 4 cores, which will give you enough time to save up the money for a new good system.

ps.:what kind of a monitor do you have?

Alright, thanks for the info and your advice .
I didn't know that not all games can use all of the cores.

As for the monitor, don't know the model name or even the brand (not at home at the moment).
But it's a brand from a local retailer, 60hz, fullHD, was quite cheap.

NP,

Sadly most of the games are only optimized to dual core CPUs, despite it's 2012, and even some of those rare exceptions capable of using 3 or 4 cores are not really using the third and the fourth as hard as the first two.
But your quad-core investment will pay off and your system will become "stronger" as more games will be able to use all available cores, so the change is coming even if it's coming only very slowly.

You need to pick a lower resolution for sure, even brand new systems have trouble running games in Full-HD, let alone older ones.

1600x900, 1440x810, 1366x768, 1280x720, 960x540, 854x480, etc

are all resolutions with 16:9 aspect ratio, which will look correct on your monitor. You just have to make these custom resolutions in the video-driver's control panel (together with GPU-scaling), and you can select them inside the games.

Thanks for the tips so far.
Looking at ebay I see a gtx 260 for $50 at the moment, I will keep an eye on it.

What can you tell about HD 5830 and HD6870, they are also on for about 50-60$ at the moment.

I have been eyeing the 6870 for a while now, if you can get it for $60 that's insane. It's a brilliant card, way way faster than the 4870/4850 that other people have been mentioning (I have the 4870 - good card)

For future reference I generally look at tomshardware's graphics card of the month. (They rate it by price)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-gr...,3107.html

Now that the 7870 is out though, I might skip the 6870 and rather save up a bit more and get that.

Kepler will eat these cards no time. Looks like it will be the new g92, I would wait:)

You could always wait for better cards, I think it's better to get what you need for the price you want at the time you want it, unless of course you only need to wait like a month. But I expect new nvidia cards will cost a premium. (like the 6870 vs 560 for example)

However what I will most likely do is start saving now and see what I can get in around 4 or 6 months for my money. I don't really need a new card right now, but will probably want one around then.

I'll probably only want to spend about $250 on a card and use other cash for other system upgrades.

Sorry, I saw that you were talking about 7870, so I just told you that looks like cards based on Kepler will be the best buys pretty soon, that's all:)

Do you think the new nvidia cards are going to cream the 7000 series cards?

well, several different leaked infos are suggesting that it will be faster while keeping a max 200W power profle.. but nothing official yet ofc.

5830 is also more than enough, the Q8200 (on stock clock) can't load up these "beasts".

Deletion requested by user.

run quad fire 7970s

They are surely good for synthetic benchies if you have a 2600K@5.5Ghz, and it's also an awesome way to burn money on the electricity bill;)

haha. yeah it was a joke. Thanks to console ports, having a top system is not needed anymore.