~misfit~ wrote:

Once upon a time on usenet VanguardLH wrote:
misfit wrote:

I'm running an ATI HD7770 (with a QX9650 CPU) but the game I play is
getting more and more complex. Also apparently it's better optimised
for nVidia cards rather than ATI / AMD.

So I need an affordable card that doesn't draw (much) more power
than the HD7770 (~120w). Obviously it should be considerably more
powerful than the now quite old HD7770. I can't afford the latest
gaming cards nor can I afford to replace my PSU. I'd even consider a
second-hand card if there's something that's likely to fit my needs
and price bracket.

Thanks in advance for reccomendations. I'm quite out of touch with
GPU development lately.

You never mentioned the game.

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

Enter the game to see what specs it requires. If you select a game,
there's another "Can you run it" button that downloads an inventorying
tool. It uploads what hardware you have to their site and thereafter
when you pick a game the site will tell you if your hardware meets
minimum, recommended, optimal requirements for that game on your
hardware.

Path of Exile: Atlas of Worlds *min* sys req:
CPU: x86 compatible 1.4GHz
RAM: 2GB
Video Card: NVidia 7800GT

Yeah right! Maybe if you're happy with 20 fpm.

Even with everything turned down to the minimum my QX9650 w 8GB RAM / HD
7770 idles at ~30 fps but drops below 10 fps at times. If I enable shadows
and antialiasing at the lowest settings it sometimes drops to 2 fps for
short periods. Seriously.

Cheers,

Tried booting in Windows safe mode to get rid of all the startup
programs to test the game? How much free system RAM is there before you
play the game? You certainly don't want the game thrashing to slow disk
cache (pagefile) to play the game. Make it so the OS is only playing
the game to see how the game behaves in a clean[er] environment.