Graphics card advice please.

S

sinky

Member
Hi,
I have been browsing the website and forums for a couple for days and I am just about ready to place an order. I picked up the following spec in another thread and it seems to meet my requirements for a general purpose family PC with a bit of gaming. My budget is £500.

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD ATHLON II X4 630 (2.80GHz/2MB CACHE/AM3)
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, DDR3, USB 2.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTS450 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD6400AARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply & Case Cooling
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £503.00 including VAT and delivery.

I have seen a similar build, but it includes the ATI Radeon 5770 GPU. So should I go with the Radeon 5770 or the NVIDIA GEFORCE GTS450 ?

Also would like to know what I would gain by upgrading the motherboard ?

Thanks in advance.
 
Phoenix

Phoenix

Prolific Poster
The 5770 is better than the GTS450 for gaming so if that's going to be a priority then it's worth going for, with a better motherboard you'll be future proofing your system to allow better graphics cards to be installed and allow SSD's to gain more performance out of the system as well as giving you USB3.0 on the rear panel. Although, with a budget of £500.00 I'd just stick with the micro atx board.
 
Goatboy

Goatboy

Member
IMHO, you should go for the 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5770, hands down, as for only £5 more, you get a far more powerfull card that's closer in performance to the 1Gb GTX460! The other bonus with the Radeon card is that with the ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, you get ATI's Crossfire-X, which will let you combine the power of the Radeon 5770 Graphics card with the on-board Radeon 3000 gpu, adding more gaming power and a few more frames per second over someone else using the same graphics card in a stand alone configuration, so i'd stick with the mobo you've already chosen as well. I hope this helps :)
 
Last edited:
Goatboy

Goatboy

Member
no, the one you have chosen will be fine, unless you want to add another optical drive in future, or more HDD's etc, otherwise it will be plenty:)
 
S

sinky

Member
Hi again, taking your advice here is an updated spec.

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 955 (3.20GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, DDR3, USB 2.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
768MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD6400AARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days

Price: £584.00 including VAT and delivery.


However the configurating tool gave me the foIlowing warning...

We notice that you have selected a 450W power supply, but based on our calculations we recommend you change your selection to a 600W power supply because your computer could require up to 455W of power including a 20% allowance.
Click to expand...

One additional thing to consider is that I have a Seagate ST3250620A drive that I currently use for storing photos. I assume there will be an IDE slot for this to be added ? So should I stick with the 450W power supply ?
 
Last edited:
PCS

PCS

Administrator
Staff member
450W will be OK, but I would recommend 600W, especially if you plan to add extra components. A typical hard drive uses around 25W of power, so that's 483W, inc allowance...
 
S

sinky

Member
Have blown the budget a little to get the GTX460 , but never mind. (If the wife asks it was £550). This look OK ?


Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 955 (3.20GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, DDR3, USB 2.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
768MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD6400AARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply & Case Cooling
600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£59)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £614.00 including VAT and delivery.
 
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