Graphics card upgrade

[Guitarguy]

As Dog once said, I have no idea what I'm doing. So I'm going to trust everybodies' opinions.

 

Many of the games I play aren't running very satisfactorily, and I believe my graphics card (NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 610 1GB) is the bottleneck. For example, Civ 5 always starts out well, but as shizzle starts crowding the screen it can go down to 1fps, so I have to play on near-minimum settings. Chivalry is completely unplayable, even on the minimum settings. Something that can handle Skyrim with mid settings and reasonable framerates (because Steam summer sale) would be sufficient.

 

I need something that facilitates playing such games (although I only have a few of them), but I don't need some hardcore 60fps-max-settings shizzlebiscuits. If there's a card less than $150 (on Amazon) that fits those requirements, that'd be great. If necessary, I can go up toward $200, but I'd like to avoid doing so.

 

Also, would it be plausible to, rather than replace my current graphics card, get a new one in addition? I figure that crappy + crappy = kind of good, but I've never heard of anybody doing something like that so I figure it might be stupid.

 

For example, would this, this, or this work? I picked them quite randomly, just seeing that they're on sale.

 

Here's the specs, if that helps to put things into proportion. The only difference is that I have a 600W power supply rather than the 350W with which that computer comes.

 

Ah, maybe Windows Experience Index would also help.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Guitarguy

[20000_Posts]

http://www.amazon.co...keywords=750 ti

 

That's the superclocked one, if you need to save $5 then get not superclocked but whatever I think this one is better.

 

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Or if you want to save a bit of money but still get similar performance:

 

http://www.amazon.co...rds=radeon 260x

 

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Both of those cards should run all those games listed at 1080p high settings.

 

No you will not be able to run these cards + your current one. Well technically you can but they won't work together, you can try getting them both to run both independently (two separate monitors) but that's up to you to try out.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Crackity Jones

[Guitarguy]

I see. The reviews seem to agree that the Gigabyte R7 260X is close to the 750Ti in quality but at a considerably more budget-friendly price, and can run my types of games at the speeds I was anticipating.

Thanks; if that's the case, it's exactly what I was looking for.

 

EDIT: Ordered.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Guitarguy