The PSU is the one aspect of your computer you should never, ever go cheap on.  Best not to go cheap on a lot of them but PSU especially.

I know you said you're buying retail and not online but here is an example of a quality model that will fill your needs for a good price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703017

Yeah, PSU quality is important. 450 or 500W is the lowest I would go.

I would say HD4850. $100, will run any game on High settings at 1600x1200 res (and Crysis on Medium at same). Go any higher and the price will rapidly increase for tiny gains, go lower and performance halves while you save $20. And make sure you have PCIe, otherwise if it's AGP your options include only the HD 3850 or 4650 AGP realistically.

A whole new system is sub-$450 when you reuse your current monitor/OS/keyboard/etc. so maybe that's a better option?

The only thing you need to know is that your card will be obsolete the minute you walk out the store

I'm pretty sure any of the new video cards you need will need a new power supply, unless your old 300W has tons of power allocated to the 12V rail (which is very unlikely).

The question about monitor size didn't have anything to do with physical dimensions, what is the native resolution of your monitor? 1024X768, 1900X1200 etc.

And looking at newegg.com prices, pretty much any single video card costing between $150-200 will play every game you listed at 1900X1200 with all the setting maxed. I would even expect them to play DX9 Crysis maxed at 1900X1200 (no AA or AF though).

You must know your power supply, AGP or PCIe, if ur pc is a slimline or not..etc.

Radeon HD 4xxx series great for a good price.

Radeon HD 3xxx series is decent.

Radeon HD 2xxx series can play source games but not other ones..

and don't even think about 1xxx series.
Well, I don't know how NviDia cards' names work so idk but I would go for a Radeon HD.


There's a new one coming out, the 5870 I think.

That Tom's Hardware guide is good for the best choices in given price ranges, but we need to know what games you will be playing and at what resolution.

350w? that is pushing it, the graphics card alone needs 250w, add CPU, RAM, hard drive and DVD burner and you got yourself a system that will need more than 400w to run smoothly, you could run it with 400w power supply but your system wont last  very long, power supply is probably the only part you should not cheap out on when it comes to PC.

then why is it that i didn't upgrade my graphics card for the last 3 years? new and more powerful cards will always come out, thats part of PC gaming, but that wont make your card obsolete, unless you are obsessed with having the most powerful rig.

What is your CPU and how much you have RAM in your computer? it is pretty pointless to upgrade graphic card if your CPU is big bottleneck.

I'd recommend an IceQ 4850 turbo. Performs nearly as good as a regular 4870, and I'd presume it would be quite cheap by now. Also, it doesn't consume as much power as the 4870, and has a GREAT fan/cooling system.

Anyway, if you want to play those games, I'd suggest just buying a xbox 360 arcade.