Video Card Suggestion with $100 budget

[DaveLembke]

Figured I'd check here on suggestions for my older gaming system for a video card upgrade. Currently have a ASUS ATI Radeon HD5450 with 512MB DDR3 RAM PCIE card in a motherboard with a PCIE 2.0 slot. I tried an upgrade a few years ago to same GPU Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5450 with 1GB DDR3 which was a PCIE 3.0 card and it wouldn't work in this system no matter what I tried. However the video card was completely fine in a newer build with a PCIE 3.0 slot.

I am thinking that I might need to stick with a PCIE 2.0 or 2.1 type card and not a 3.0 card.

Was wondering what people had for video card suggestions for a 2.0 or 2.1 card with a $100 budget.

I also have on order a Phenom II x4 945 3.0Ghz CPU that I bought used for $30 to replace the Athlon 64 x2 4450B 2.3Ghz which is starting to feel crippled with even what should be lightweight modern games.

The motherboard is a Biostar MCP6PB M2+ as seen here: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=387#spec

With this Phenom II 945 CPU, and best video card I could get for it for $100 or less, it will be the final upgrade for this system. I have a better AMD FX8350 4Ghz system with a much better video card, but this system is my alt gaming system and trying to get a few more years out of it for gaming without lag for lower end games.

Games played on this old system are:

World of Warcraft
Tera Rising
Allods
Rift
and other free to play mmorpg games

Lastly power supply is a 550 watt EVGA

[DaveLembke]

Looked at newegg and filtered for PCIE 2.0 cards... the best card I could find was the NVidia GT730

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127830   with 1006Mhz Core Clock 384 Cuda Cores and 1GB DDR5  ( but I have little trust in MSI brand )

Also found these others with same GT730 in which I didn't find any better GPU for less than $100 and PCIE 2.0 as well as AMD only has a HD6450 which barely scores better in benchmark info online than that of the HD5450 I already have. Surprisingly there are many Geforce 8400GS's still for sale too and that is worse than the HD5450 I have now.

Here are the 2 others I looked at and not sure why this one below is 902Mhz Core Clock and the last one is 700Mhz core clock and they also vary in Cuda Core count of 384 and 96. The one with less cuda cores and slower clock has 2GB instead of 1GB RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500367


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500357


Never seen before a GPU with different core count for the same GPU like this. I am assuming the 902Mhz card is overclocked or superclocked and the 700 Mhz is the base clock ? Is the cuda core count difference a typo in the listing?

My current HD5450 is a passively cooled card and I have a 80mm fan in front of it to keep it cool, so if I have to go with a passively cooled card to avoid MSI, I could. I have had Zotac cards and motherboards before and no problems.

[Calum]

You don't need to avoid PCI-E 3.0 cards, they're backwards compatible.
The Geforce 730 is one of those oddball low-end cards that Nvidia has released several versions of to confuse people.  There's a 96-core version based on the GF108 core, clocked at 700MHz with 1/2/4GB of DDR3 VRAM oin a 128-bit bus; a 384-core version based on the GK208 core, clocked at 902MHz with 1/2/4GB of DDR3 VRAM on a 64-bit bus; and a 384-core version based on the GK208 core, clocked at 902MHz with 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM on a 64-bit bus.  That's roughly in order of performance but none of them are intended as gaming cards.

For a $100 budget, you're looking at a GTX 750, a refurbished GTX 750Ti (decently faster than the 750), or an AMD R7 250X, couple of open box 260X cards available too.

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for the clarification on the confusing GT 730 differences.


Also that GTX 750 if I can find one for $100 is way better than the GT 730 in benchmark info.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+750

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+730

My main gaming system has an older EVGA GTX 260 with AMD FX8350 8-core CPU and I think I will get the GTX 750 PCI 3.0 and stuff it into that newest system and move this older GTX 260 to the older system. It pairs up the older video card to PCIE 2.0 BUS too and the newer PCIE 3.0 GTX 750 to the more powerful CPU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130398

I didn't expect to be able to perform a double upgrade through this for $100 and retire that weak AMD Radeon HD 5450.

Thanks for your help with this... Very Cool!!!! 

[patio]

Calum's Da Man ! !...

[DaveLembke]

Calum's Da Man ! !...

I agree 


Looking around MSI has some cheap GTX 750 cards, but I don't want problems. I think I am going to pay extra and get another EVGA brand card since I have had good luck with their quality. The card below is over $100, but is probably well worth the extra.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487027&cm_re=GTX_750-_-14-487-027-_-Product