I have two computers I can use however I want: my MacBook Pro (Which is mine and no one else's) and my dad's desktop (A Dell Studio 540. It's not mine; but with how often I'm on it and he's not, it's basically mine to use whenever I'm at my dad's house.) My Mac is fine, I don't want to change a thing in it, but if I were allowed to, I would get a new video card in my desktop. It sucks for playing games on. It can run games like TF2 and Garry's Mod on low/medium settings, but it can BARELY play the Generations Demo, even with the resolution turned down as far as I can set it to (320x200 w/ 70hz refresh) and all of the settings on their lowest. Here are the specs: Windows 7 (Home Premium, 64-bit) Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 @2.50GHz (Interestingly code-named "Yorkfield") Two L1 caches and one L2 cache 6GBs of DDR2 RAM (The two 2GBs manufactured by Samsung and the two 1GBs manufactured by Nanya Technology, whoever they are) I don't know the power supply, and I'm not going to take off the side panel of the computer to check. Here's the kicker - for graphics: Intel G45/G43 Express Chipset (Code-named Eaglelake), which has a whopping 64MBs of dedicated RAM. So, what do you guys think? What would be suitable for this computer? I don't have any restrictions, I just want to know what would be perfect for running games like Generations, Battlefield 3, and Crysis on maximum settings.
You're quite lucky to have a PCI-e 16x slot on that thing; quite a few vanilla pre-built desktops lack them, and it's the only slot used by any high-end GPUs. Given that, over-assuming that you'll be running these at 1920x1080, either the AMD 7870 or nVidia 670 will run Battlefield 3, maxed, at a solid 60 FPS. Now, $300-$400 is a bit much, likely, so if you'd be happy compromising a bit with your framerate/settings for a cheaper card, there are options. In a more realistic $150-$200 range, there's the AMD 6870 and the nVidia 560. I've no doubt these can run both Generations and Crysis at their highest settings, but BF3 will be a bit sluggish unless you drop the AA and AF down a bit. Don't get me wrong; it still looks gorgeous. Anything below that probably won't let you flat-out max Crysis, but Generations runs like butter with anything mid-range from about 2010 or earlier; that's not an obstacle. You won't be missing out on much eye candy by dropping the settings a bit in either BF3 or Crysis, so don't worry about that unless you really want to future-proof this thing. One thing, though, and a pretty big one. Dell's site ( http://www.dell.com/us/dfh/p/studio-desktop/pd ) say that this thing desktop you have only ships with a 350 watt PSU, and most GPUs powerful enough to do what you want will suck atleast 170 of those 350 precious watts. I have absolutely no experience with underpowered PSUs, though, so I'm only saying what I've read here. Given that, though, and knowing how troublesome Dell computers are to upgrade, you'd likely be best off just building something of your own, or finding a pre-built from a company like iBuyPower. I've never patronized them, but know several friends who have, and their stuff's usually the cheapest you can get for the performance.
