A friend asked what his best options were for upgrading his graphics card, he has a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE in this computer: http://www.walmart.com/ip/eMachines-ET1331G-07w/14314622 and is looking to play new MMO's like Aura Kingdom; he's not too stingy but doesn't want to OP or get a subpar-card - if you know your graphics cards lend me a hand

The problem is that on that desktop the power supply is only 300W

So MAYBE your friend could go the GT630 Edit: 300W is probably not enough

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-02G-P3-2639-KR-GeForce-2048MB-Graphics/dp/B008Y8PON8/

I think your friend should go for a better power supply...

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 28 2014, 8:43 am by MasterJohnny.

There's 2 major problems:
- The PSU will probably not be able to power a discrete graphics card. He could try an ASUS GTX650-E but that's risky since the system may suffer from underpowered components when gaming or an overheating and ultimately dying PSU.

- His CPU will limit him.

The computer is too old for any reasonable gaming and upgrades are difficult with a premade system like that. They are just not meant to be a flexible platform.

The cheapest reasonable upgrade route would be to get a Haswell CPU since its integrated graphics are somewhat decent. Power shouldn't go up so he would "just" need a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. Then again I'm not even sure if it's a standard ATX tower.

GTX 750 Ti is the new badass around town for efficiency. no joke.

While the 750 1 GB (non-Ti) is also no slouch, it's still way behind the Ti.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487027

Nvidia recommends a 400W PSU, and for a noname PSU that's something you should probably stick to. However, it doesn't require a 6 pin power adapter, and barely uses 60 W of power total. I would recommend a CX430 for ~$20, which is enough to power almost any single graphics card.

Note that the new card is more powerful than a 7770, which is more than enough to run starcraft II on medium at 2560x1440. The only other thing I would recommend would be a quad core phenom II.

Barring that, he can always grab a low end graphics card for $10 after rebate. I bought at 6450 for a friend for $10 and it plays all his low end 3d stuff 10x better than his previous card.

The CX430 does have a really annoying coil whine though.

Actually give me your address and I'll give you mine. It's just sitting around taking up space. I regard the CX430 as a piece of junk, but hey if you're looking for the cheapest stable option I guess that's the best you can do.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Mar 4 2014, 12:43 pm by Sacrieur.