What would be a good budget PCIe card for up to 100 bucks?

[Valiel]

Hi, I'm either gonna get a duelcore 2.5ghz or quadcore 1.8ghz pc soon with 6gb and 4gb memory soon and I'm wondering what kind of card i should get to go with it for around 0-100 bucks.

 

[LinkedKube]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102804

This card is in your budget with a 10 dollar mail in rebate.

 

[Valiel]

Would this be good for gaming?

 

[Valiel]

I just realized that the pc I'm wanting to get has only 300 watt psu and I dont have the money to upgrade that. The card you mention requires 400, is there anything else you would recommend?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The 4670 pulls very little power and does not even require a PCI-E power connector. It will run fine on a 300W PSU. You can drop down to a 512MB version too, the extra 512MB of VRAM on that Sapphire card will not help (or hinder) performance in any way.

 

[Valiel]

So if I drop down to 512mb vram I will be within my limits at a minimal performance loss?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

There will be no performance loss at all. The gain from a 1GB 4670 will be slim to none.

 

[Valiel]

My next question is: is it practical for gaming to have a quadcore cpu? Do today's games even make use of the extra cores? Or is it better to have quadcore with low cpu
power or a dualcore with high cpu power?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Quads are the future, but no game can utilize them to their fullest. The potential is present, but by the time games start to fully utilize all four cores, CPU architecture will be far more advanced than at present and the quad you buy now will be much, much slower than the quads available then.

Better stick to a fast dual-core like the E8400 for now. Cache is also a concern, since the cache-per-core on all the quads, except for the Q9x50 and Core 2 Extreme series, is far lower than on dual-cores like those from the E8x00 series. Games are extremely sensitive to cache size, and a larger cache is almost always translated into better performance.

 

[Valiel]

#
Processor
Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core
#
Processor Speed
2.5GHz
#
System Bus
800MHz
#
Cache Memory
2MB on die Level 2

Ok then so would this processor be good enough for now?

If you're interested this is the pc I'm gonna buy.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9191545&type=product&id=1218052148213

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

That is extremely overpriced for a desktop PC. You can build an on-par (or better) one for a far lower price.

But if you cannot or will not build one, it will be OK.

 

[Valiel]

I think I will build one if it will be cheaper and better. I just need help finding the right parts. PM me with your msn or email so we can talk easier.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

PM me, I will reply ASAP. Include a budget, your location and whether you will be reusing any parts.

 

[Valiel]

I dont have enough posts to pm you but ive added you on msn.