Graphics card Advice

[Garcian Smith]

kamil said:
I am also looking for a new card and would like advice so I post questions here instead of starting a new thread. Games Im hoping to play are Crysis, Dead Space, Red Alert 3, Crysis 2.


1) I think that 5750/5770 suit my budget and I've seen its pretty popular choice right now so I think I'm gonna settle for one of those. But I've noticed that all 5750/5770 aren't the same and I'm not sure on which paramters shoul I look on before buying. I'm sure that memory size is important but what else? Also is it important which manufacter I choose? If so which one would you suggest?

2) I've got AM2 motherboard with Athlon X2 4000+ (2.1Ghz) with 2 GB of Ram. Is't the processor or RAM going to be a huge issue in games? I do expect it to be a bottleneck of my system but I would like to stick with my mobo for a while (I'm also buying harddrive and PSU so my planned budget is already exceeded). Eventually I could consider buying another 2 GB of RAM.

So, what do you think, guys?

We really can't know yet what will play Crysis 2, since the specs haven't been released yet. That said, don't expect to run it on anything higher than medium settings no matter what hardware you buy now.

But to answer your questions:

1) The manufacturer for video cards generally doesn't matter. The only one I wouldn't buy from is Diamond, a company generally known for their high percentage of defective units. For the 57XX line, make sure that they have 1 GB VRAM, and you may want to invest an extra $5 or so to get a better cooling unit if you plan on overclocking. Either way, the 5750 isn't that great of a value at this point in time, so spend the extra $20ish to get a 5770.

2) That CPU will indeed bottleneck you in modern games. If you're interested in Crysis and its sequel, you should definitely have a modern CPU and 4 GB RAM. Socket AM2 is obsolete now, so you'd be well advised to invest in an Athlon II X3 435, Socket AM3 mobo, and 4 GB DDR3 RAM as well.