Graphics card upgrade -some issues

Gents, Ladies, Confused intermediates;

I wish to upgrade my puny febrile graphics capacity. I currently use an NVidia Geforce 7500 SE, which I suspect is an El Cheapo type card.

Anyway I think I have two problems to overcome before I can proceed:
1) I don't know how much juice my current power supply generates, or the rest of the PC uses. As a result I'm unsure as to whether I need to buy and try and install a new one (oh joy....). Is there any utlity on the net I can use to judge this? Or is it just a matter of looking in the case (I'd prefer to avoid opening it more than needed as its a pain to get back on).

2) Anyone have any thoughts on what would make a good not too bulky (I.e. not a two slotter monster) and relatively decently priced NVidia graphics card to replace the current one?

I haven't got a clue about current graphics cards... the name numbers and the power don't seem to relate logically anymore.

How much are you wanting to spend?
You can spend anything from £60 upwards for a card that will handle M2TW nicely.
And as for your PSU, unless you are stuffing some SLI/Crossfire monstrosity in there with multiple drives I can't see you needing more than a generic 500W PSU (generally speaking)

Can you nail down your budget and tell us what the rest of your hardware is?

It will help to see what card might be best for you.

Sorry guys. OK more info:

Budget is probably on the order of up to £150-200 tops for a graphics card, plus whatever I'd need for a power supply if I need a new one.

Existing PC get-up:

Pentium D, 3.2 Ghz.
2 Gb RAM
Windows XP Home
1 16x PCI Express slot on motherboard (for the graphic card). Currently where the 7500 SE is located.

Hope this is enough to make a suggestion based on.

You could do with whipping out your PSU and checking the wattage and what it delivers on 12v. It will be on a sticker somewhere on your PSU.


Personally, if I had to buy a new PSU and graphics card on that budget, I'd probably be looking at an Nvidia 7900. I believe there aren't many performance differences between that and the 8600, it's just that 8600 is DX10 ready. But by the time that will be an issue in most games, the 8600 will be out of date anyway, as will the 7900. I think you can just get more bang for buck with the 7900.

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...r_id=0&tid=n/a



If you already have a good quality PSU and you want to go for broke, you could buy an 8800 for that money, but unless you are thinking of upgrading you PC in the next year or so I think it will be money wasted.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/125114/rb/0

As you can probably tell, I'm a believer in not spending to much cash on a DX10 graphics card until it is needed, by then DX10 graphics cards will much cheaper (and probably better). Thats why I'm not spending a big chunk of money yet. My 7600 does just fine for now, and when DX10 is an issue I'll probably splash out then. I'd save that £120 in a safe place until you really need it for R2TW hopefully.