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Originally Posted by killer_roach

It's a single-GPU card, but it has two fans.

If you're looking to go a couple of years without having to upgrade, I'd recommend a GTX 570 or 580 (or, from the AMD side, a Radeon 6970 or 6990). A high-end GPU should last you a good three years at least, whereas an upper-mid-range card like the 560 would probably be good for at least two.

As far as the RAM question, yes, more RAM will almost always help. 4GB works wonders, although if you have a 64-bit OS you may consider the merits of 8GB...

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Ouch, nearly $500 for the video cards alone :(. And the Radeon looks to be nearly $700. While PC games have an edge on consoles in many ways, the PC will drain your wallet like no other.

Considering I'm also buying more RAM and a good CPU, I'll probably have to do for a video card closer to the $250-$350 range. I tend to play more "classics" than current releases, at least as far as PC goes, so I guess it wouldn't be too bad. After all, I have made my 7900 work since 2007.

You don't really need two video cards, seriously.

I'm hardly a PC guru, but two video cards is almost certainly unnecessary.

Just grab those 8GB of RAM and a decent GeForce card.
I've got a GeForce 9800 GT and while I don't know how it fares against more current cards, I have yet to have any trouble out of it and I get very nice graphics.

A 9800GT would probably compare reasonably well to the nearly three-year-old Radeon 4850 in my desktop, which will run most everything at least decently, if not pretty darn well (not so good with current stuff and anti-aliasing, but that's minor - high resolutions mean less need for anti-aliasing anyway).

Yeah, if my smoke-addled memory serves correctly I got this card about 2 years ago and I don't see myself upgrading for at least another 2 unless I find an excellent deal or something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by killer_roach

You don't really need two video cards, seriously.

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Oh, I don't intend to go for two cards, though it seems a GTX 980 alone is nearly $500.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by supernova1324

This is pure genius.

http://www.metalstorm.net/forum/topi...topic_id=10190

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Read that a while ago, still enjoyable.
The BM one is my fave....The protagonist IS the dragon...hehehe

So, KillerRoach, I've decided that the really high end cards, like the GTX 590 and HD 6990 are out of my price range... $700 and up is just too much.

So, stepping down a peg, if I go with these two, it seems I'm left with the Radeon 6970 and GTX 580. Would these two be able to play games like The Witcher 2, Dragon Age 2, Fallout New Vegas, etc? Any huge differences between the two, or any specific requirements you need to be able to install them? I need to find out what my power supply is.

I'd like to chime in and say that you definitely want to make sure that you've got enough space on your motherboard and inside your case for some of the bigger graphics cards. As someone who had to learn that the hard way, trust me, it's worth it to get something extra spacious.

Honestly though, unless you want to go all out, you're not going to need the biggest and best graphics card. Outside of Witcher 2, Crysis, and a few other key games, a graphics card in the $70-100 range will be enough to let you play most games on med-high settings, depending on your set-up.

And yeah, you definitely don't need 2 graphics cards. Some games don't even support the feature, so I think it's a waste, personally.

That is one of the reasons I'm considering having someone upgrade the computer, rather than do it myself. I'd hate to buy a good card, only to find that it won't fit in the case.

I'm not as sure about the CPU, though it seems like the two "big ones" are intel and AMD. I'm gonna hope that a $100-$150 CPU is enough.

Also, Take On Me is enough to make this week of DLC awesome... not even Avenged Sevenfold can ruin it :)