Advice on new vid card

[Corona]

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4200 in my Win 7 (64) HP Pavillion. And 8 gigs ram wasted on it. The 4200 is dropping my Windows Experience Index to 4.0, the limit for Aero graphics & such. Any others familiar with ATI graphics cards that could suggest a good mid-level ATI graphics card that would hold out well for a few more years?

 

I know I could scrounge around online myself, but damn, all of Piriform is just incredible. Learn from the best.

[Winapp2.ini]

I have a 5770 in my rig right now, and it performs very well. I've been considering upgrading recently, just for the sake of upgrading to the 6870 but I'd say 5770 is still a great card.

 

Good luck finding it though

 

6700 series would probably be a safe bet, if you can find it in stock

[nodles]

Do you play games? I'd buy some AMD 6000-series, NVIDIA 500-series or wait for AMD 7000-series card/s. Also depends a bit of your budjet.

Not sure where you/people (from US) buy PC's / parts (and where's cheapest), but for example in http://www.newegg.com there's AMD 6870 for ~160$.

[Winapp2.ini]

I think a good mid level card would be one of the later 5000 series or earlier 6000 series that'd hold up for a while. I always order online.

[Corona]

I'll check those out online. Thanks for the replies.

[Corona]

You know what, I think my current card is a DD3. Would a PCI Express video card be compatible with my PC board/tower?

(ie. Would it "fit"?)

[nodles]

DD3?

I checked your current GPU (AMD HD 4200) and it uses PCI-E (PCI-Express) interface, so the new card should be compatible, because (almost) all new cards are PCI-E.

I guess the only thing is that too big card (or card with big cooler) might not fit in your case, but budjet/mid-level GPU's are usually pretty small and take only 1 slot (from the rear of the case).

[Winapp2.ini]

A lot of newer cards will be GDDR5.

[Corona]

DD3?

I checked your current GPU (AMD HD 4200) and it uses PCI-E (PCI-Express) interface, so the new card should be compatible, because (almost) all new cards are PCI-E.

I guess the only thing is that too big card (or card with big cooler) might not fit in your case, but budjet/mid-level GPU's are usually pretty small and take only 1 slot (from the rear of the case).

 

I took a look at those AMD 6870s and they seem to be double-slotted (using 2 aluminim port openings in the back of the PC...If they're called something else please, please correct me.) It seems I have 4 continuous aluminum port openings available.

 

I might have to go to Best Buy (I know, I know, it's my only choice out here in the sticks) to "ask" more about this, just to see if my PC is built and ready for this change. (All talk, no spending.) If it's doable I'll definitely get the card from New Egg.

 

Thanks for confirming my old card is PCI-Express. Speccy doesn't mention that.

 

Oh, Speccy shows my actual PCs' RAM is DDR3. My bad.