Videocards and other trinkets

[Hyneria]

Hey everyone <3 I have a question for the tech savvy folks here.

I am (slowly) saving up to upgrade both my videocard and my comp, and I thought I'd ask for some suggestions. My current setup dates back to 2008:

Pentium D dual core at 3.20 ghz, 2 gb of ram and I still run Windows XP. My videocard is a Biostar Geforce 8600 with 512 DDR2.

So yeaaah, even oblivion runs at like 10 FPS if I want to have a decent image quality, and Skyrim is out the question. So what would you guys suggest with a moderate budget? What should I upgrade first? card or processor-motherboard?

Are the GeForce GTS 450, 1GB GDDR5 and Radeon HD 6770, 1GB GDDR5 any good?

[Jerbsinator]

If your rig is from 2008 it would probably be smarter to just build from scratch. Reasoning being depending what socket your MB is it could be outdated already and upgrading would be not worth the money. Here is a good guide you can glance over to see what parts are good for which budgets etc. The only thing I would say is if your really strapped for cash go the AMD route, otherwise don't bother because Intel i3 , i5 , i7 series is superior in almost every way except price.

[beck11]

You're better off saving for a while more and getting a new rig completely. The 2 GPUs you want to get are probably gonna bottleneck your PC as it is and we still havent discussed your PSU yet and weather it can handle those GPUs. With Ivybridge coming out and the next gen GPUs down the line, there should be a better choice offerings as prices come down a bit more.

A standard 2nd gen i5 rig would be my recommendation and it should last you for a good 3-4 years or more if intel allows backwards compatibility with Ivybridge CPUs on current mobos.

But if you still want to get just a GPU then I would consider dropping down a few notches down the ladder and get a slightly weaker one, the ones you chose will most likely have performance issues on your PC.

[LordJerle]

That and Black Friday's just around the corner (this week), and a lot of online retailers in the states are already offering Black Friday deals. Even if you're not in the states, some of them ship to other countries, so it's a good idea to check choice sites like Tigerdirect, Ecost, or hit up Google Product Search.

[Slammer64]

Check Newegg too.

[Dreamer102]

I concur, Build from scratch.

I am saving up for the same thing. Well, not really, I'm just gonna buy it straight out with tax return money in january lol.

The only thing I'm keeping from the current setup are the Hard drives and case.

Actually, I may just get a new case too...hell, the wife could use an upgrade.