New Video Card (PCIe 2.0)

[fcomstoc]

Hello everyone, I have a quick question, I purchased a Dell Optiplex 780 yesterday just to mess around with. I need to get a video card for it, I want something that is decent for gaming, but it has to be compatible with a PCIe 2.0 slot (no PCIe 2.1 or 3.0) Does anyone have any recommendations (around $100 preferably)

Thanks in advance.

 

[MattNo5ss]

The PCIe specifications are all interchangeable, so there's no need to use that to filter your search.

I think the best new GPUs in that price range would be a HD7770 or GTX650. With the $100 budget, I would probably look at the used market first though.

What resolution will you be running?

 

[fcomstoc]

I will be running one at 1920x1080 and a small second monitor at 1280x1024 I am not doing eyefinity on this one. I wasnt sure if PCIe was backwards compatible, I had some issues with that a while ago, I tired putting a 3.0 in a 2.1 and it didnt work (I guess it could have been a bad slot or something).

 

[dostov]

Yep, as Matt said... If you can find a HD 7770 for $100 that's pretty much the best you can get new. I doubt it will play the most recent games in 1920x1080 with anything but settings at low. Look at the classifieds for a used card.

 

[fcomstoc]

I will try it out, I am not expecting it to be great, I am just hoping that it will be better than my laptop.

 

[MattNo5ss]

We have one HD7770 review that shows it gets in the low 30s FPS in Batman: Arkham City and BF3 single player using maxed settings at 1080p. So, it should do pretty good with mid-range graphics settings, and will definitely be better than a laptop.

Unfortunately, we don't have any GTX650 reviews for comparison...

 

[fcomstoc]

I have never owned any Nvidia cards, I have always gone ATI/AMD, I was thinking of trying one but I think that I will get the 7770 for this machine, the bottleneck is the 3.0 ghz Core 2 duo, and there is nothing I can do about that.

I was getting about 5-10 FPS in WoW on my MBP hooked up to my 1080p monitor, I suppose anything is better than that.

 

[manu2b]

Folllw the Matt suggesgion : you can cet a very decent used gpu in the $100 range. Andost of the have a owner transferable 2/3 years warrantly.

 

[wingman99]

+1 I would purchase a used $100 dollar card and you will get more performance.

 

[fcomstoc]

I agree with the assessment, and I have found this to be true in the past. So I tried a 7790 that I got a great deal on - it doesn't fit due to the fact that Dell uses upside-down MBs and so there is only one slot available for PCIe. Also the card that I got was too long so it would not fit.
I got a refund and bought a GT 620 instead (Single slot and short). So the GPU is sorted. I am having many other issues now though - basically it wont boot from my SSD, I keep getting CPU Thermal errors and I think there is something going on with the RAM. I took the SSD out and I am trying it again later.