hey can anyone help me im looking to buy a gtx 280 or ATI equivalent (any 1gig single gpu ) and i am not a real pc expert . my pc is a compaq presario sr5079uk my pc specs CPU Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6420 @ 2.13GHz, 2133 MHz gpu Radeon X1650 SE (512 MB) ram 4 gig mother board ASUS P5LP-LE power supply ?? can any one tell me what i will need to power/cool a gtx280 , and if my motherboard could handle this? pics of powersupply and pc with side removed if you need to see them email me and ill send em any help will be much appreciated . thanks.
You'll need to bin the case and the PSU at least. You're also not using a CPU that can really make use of such a ridiculous graphics card. You would be better off buying something cheaper like an HD4870 to get similarly good performance, but for far less cost, you would still need to change the PSU and case - this isn't just specific to your example, all Compaqs would be underpowered for such fast GPUs.
so what sort of psu will i be looking for ? and could you recomend a suitable cpu. thanks for the advice
ok so if i get the HD4870 and the crosair HX 520W can i keep my cpu or will it be restricting the card
You can keep it. It's not an ideal companion but it'll be alright. It depends what sort of games you're upgrading your graphics for really, even the HD4870 is nearly 10 times as fast as the X1650SE.
Depending on what resolution you use, you could turn Crysis pretty much all the way up, but no matter what settings you had, it would never be perfectly smooth because your CPU isn't fast enough, Crysis is very demanding on the CPU, it certainly wouldn't be bad though.
thanks for all your help ill see what i can do about my cpu proably look for new one. one last question is quad core better than dual core if i was to get 2 of the hd4870?
You would need a new motherboard for Crossfire, and a seriously beefy PSU like a 750W Corsair TX - add to this it will up your electricity costs, and a pair of 4870s can run any game out there except crysis at a a monstrous resolution of 2560x1600 and pull huge frame rates - for most people they're over the top, one will do. You could get a quad core CPU, but your board may not support one (and even if it does, it may require a risky BIOS flash), and this will also add to the power requirement.
Actually, I would instead recommend getting 1 or 2 ATi Radeon HD 4850s (about $160 each with mail-in-rebate @ newegg) and upgrade your CPU and mobo. Not a great idea to have a CPU that will drag down the effectiveness of your GPU! By the way the 4850 is about equal if not better than the nVidia Geforce 9800 GTX.
