Waste of money, I ran an i5+gtx960 on a seasonic 360W. Rock solid.
With his current setup plus a rx480/gtx1060/gtx960 he wont pass a max of 300w. and that's extreme as extreme goes.
he doesnt sli/crossfire (no point in that, he'll be cpu starved/limited anyway) nor overclock so his quality 400W is more than enough for what he asks.

He's on a (very) limited budget so he has to do with his old case. No point in wasting the buget for this.

be quiet is an european (germany) premium quality psu brand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_quiet!
http://www.bequiet.com/en So yeah, his 400W would carry without problems any modern single videocard setup, including the top contenders.

He'll be fine even with 5 additional hard drives and still have room for more ...

He'll be cpu starved when sli. for balancing his system he'll need to upgrade the cpu (and probably the motherboard too).

Well I offered my help. And threw out some ideas for him, i did not read every reply in this thread cause its pretty big. I am a computer expert, Its about finding the best option for price/performance given his budget. Someone on this thread ragged on me about stating the amd drivers are bad calling it a myth, when I struggled with the bad compatibility with them on certain games for 5 years.

I offered my help, and I would know what to look for if he tells me what he needs. But I was scoffed at and told the budget was 200 euro or so. If thats the case, a GTX 960 should be within reach. Which would fit the fx-6300. But psu and case are a problem there supposedly, so a low profile card is most likely what he will end up having to get. And EVGA makes some really good low profile cards for 120 give or take. But, im not going to get into all that. Someone who just wants to hear a bunch of differing opinions from random people who may be computer illiterate or are not experienced enough wont know if his PSU is sufficient ect. Its not just wattage either. But I wont get into that either. Help offered, scoffed at for suggestions based on budget i didnt know about, help retracted.

So what though, your experience is just that?

I never had any issues with AMD except for when RAGE was released, that was a disaster that lasted for weeks.

But that's just my experience, it means little just like yours.

Seems like people here are over-complicating things, or didn't really pay attention to what OP is actually looking for.

OP, feel free to correct me, but as I understand, all you wanted was a recommendation for a slightly more powerful GPU, to allow you to play more recent games, yes?

He's not looking for a high-end GPU, SLI setup, or overclocking advice, and it doesn't sound like he wants to replace his entire system.

I think it comes down to this: If you're really interested in one of the more recent GPU releases ( 10XX series etc. ), you're probably best off waiting a little longer and saving up cash, and then replacing your old system entirely.

Otherwise just pick up a GTX 950 or GTX 960, as several posters here recommended. The power supply should be fine, just make sure your mainboard is compatible with the GPU. If it's not completely outdated, then it shouldn't be a problem.

Edit: And for the record, I just verified that my own power supply is indeed a be quiet! 400 Watt unit, and it's powering a Core i5 and an MSI GTX 960 4G. Had the PC for 2-3 years now, and the GPU for about 1 year, and never had any problems with the power supply or otherwise, even while playing games such as Witcher 3.

Either drivers will have their hiccups its true. But Nvidia support is better across the board. There are games where Amd may be slightly better, but Nvidia has games where it crushes Amd. Look at the r9 390 vs the gtx 970. And look at their specs on paper, the 390 should be crushing it, and yet its not, its back and forth on most games. Because of better engineering and better drivers.

Amd has only 20-25% of the cpu/gpu market right now. And there is very good reason for it. Saying it is "just my experience" is taking my words as only my words, and discounting all the research I personally have done about performance and issues between these two brands. It was very tempting to go with the r9 390 honestly, because 8gb of ram is a huge draw. But heat wise, power consumption, overall efficiency and smoothness without drops is something that comes into account too.

Amd has its benefits, it does offer more for cheaper. But, would you rather buy off brand pop, or do you want real coke/mountain dew. Your decision.

Neither, mostly.

I just wanted to help someone, i even asked them to add me to bypass getting caught up in all the forum stuff that people get into. But, im washing my hands of it now, im out.

I see it like this - the OP admitted he knew nothing about computers. That's fine, I don't know how to change the ball joint on my car - I just drive it.

The problem on the internet is not that there isn't enough information, it's that there's too much. From a position of little knowledge, he was looking for a consensus opinion - ten people answer and eight said: "Go for this upgrade."

Unfortunately, ten people have answered with ten different opinions, some of which talk about 750W PSUs and SLI, which is a bit silly, bearing in mind the OP's question.

I'm not sure I saw any scoffing in the replies, but tone is hard to convey in text.

I don't think anyone here's interested in a "Nvidia vs. AMD" fanboy battle. That's why I won't mention that Kepler architecture "aged" badly and lost it's initial performance plus compared to AMD's GCN architecture. And it is why I won't mention that the 970 will start to suffer badly very soon, when games start to use more than 3.5 GB VRAM and ask the 970 to make use of it's last 512 MB of lamory. And I won't mention Nvidias horrible DirectX 12 performance, where a 980 Ti is on par with a 390X and gets beaten by the Fury.

No, seriously, let's don't start those Masterrace-ish fanboy battles here. Crackpot knows that he doesn't have a high end PC and asked for a possible GPU upgrade that won't cost him that much. Recommending him a 960 for $200, when there's an $200 AMD card that'll outperform the 960 by quite a lot coming out this month, is... not nice. Especially since there'll be some cheaper AMD cards too (maximum budget doesn't mean "I want to spend this"). And those cards won't run into the bottleneck that's his FX-6300 (not that the FX-6300 will bottleneck the 960, but it'll have a hard time keeping up with something that goes into 980 territory). As I said: There were rumors about a cheap card with the performance of a R9 380 (which is a tiny bit faster than the 960). I'd say it'd be the best to wait for those cards, instead of NVIDIA NVIDIA NVIDIA DRIVERS DRIVERS DRIVERS :/

AMD's whole 300 series and everything up to Nvidia's 970 is obsolete. The 980 could be obsolete too, depending on how close the RX 480 really comes. This leaves the 980 Ti as the only last generation card that's still definitely worth it (and it'll still be for quite a while, since an overclocked 980 Ti still beats a 1080 that doesn't like overclocking). If you're hardcore Nvidia and don't want to spend 400something, all you can do is to wait for the 1060, which is rumored to have roughly the same performance as AMD's RX 480 and to have a price between 229 and 279 Dollar - but it still got no release date.

There you go: your best bet is to wait a little until amd rx480 is available.
and then decide what to buy:
-if rx480 is really good (highly probable) then buy it or buy from nvidia, which will be forced to drop prices and/or release the gtx1060;
-if rx480 is bad then you have gtx950/960 from nvidia.
-don't buy gtx970/980/1070/1080 because your current cpu wont be able to keep up (your current psu will run these cards fine too).

you have a quality branded 400w psu so ignore all advices telling you to upgrade it.

your current system will still be relatively good until the rx480 is available in like 1 month.

good luck!

Let me make something clear, I am not a fanboy. I look at the numbers, and performance from every site possible on the internet with ways to compare. Youtube also gets scoured by me. So assuming im a fanboy when I just upgraded from an amd card is quite a stretch. I am not a fanboy, but amd hardware may be more powerful for gpu, but it is also alot more power hungry and produces alot more heat. I go with whats good in more areas, what will perform with what I need it to perform with.

Sure a 390 may be better for dx12. But, its not out yet, and it should carry 0 weight in your purchase unless you are purchasing a mid-high to high range card anyways. Because honestly, any sub 200 dollar card is not going to play games in the future very well, depending on if its an indie/AAA title or what not. Hardware wise the amd r9 390 is the equivalent to almost the 9000 series cpus for them. Its overpacked, overclocked, and runs hot. And a quick google search for thermal levels taken with infared will show you.

Drivers is a big part of why I went Nvidia yes, and tech experts agree with me, in fact. The gtx 970 is still the most recommended gpu on tomshardware just for a for instance. The 390 may beat out higher based gpus for nvidia for directx 12 now, but thats given that AMD also created mantle, which was basically cherry picked by microsoft and incorperated into directx 12. So they have a firmer knowledge of the processes going on right now. Nvidia on the other hand does not. And mere benchmarks on say 1-2 games is quite honestly just an assumption on future performance for either company for dx12, because every single game is its own monster, you cant say either will be superior as of yet.

the 980ti is not the only one that is going to be worth having...for Gods sake man listen to yourself. Ark survival evolved, will have directx12, is very graphic, and is meant to run on the high setting for a gtx 970. The game isnt released yet, and is set to be released soon i believe. But saying they will be obsolete is a statement from someone who owns top of the line hardware to run games completely maxed as soon as they are released. The 970 will be fine for say a couple years, heck, my hd 6950 was doing well up until i tried dying light on it. Only then was I unable to get steady 50+fps, and only on the second part of the game with the high rise buildings. And that is at 1080p mind you, not scaling it down to get more fps.

You are speculation about performance per dollar on gpus that have not been released yet, purely speculation. And not much you have said has added much of anything to the conversation at all. Its just a bunch of attacking me for talking about nvidia drivers being better, and then a bunch of speculation about future directx and gpus. So if you want to butt heads about tech, you picked the wrong battle here.

3.5gb of vram is quite limited yes. But only for future titles that can use more than that. Its getting old even now, thats why a new gen is coming out. So 4 years from now dont expect to play a game on max settings with it. But for cheap gamers like myself, i dont buy games new anyways usually, and I dont buy hardware till its been tested by a ton of people over a long time. Amd hd 6950 up to 2016, and it was great. But struggled on a 2014 game that was very graphic intensive. My under powered fx 6300 was not helping that situation at all either since dying light was so cpu intense and more cpu bound. 3.5 will be enough for me for a couple years or maybe 3 even. It all depends on where developers go in the future, and how much of a hit on visuals im willing to take to save some bucks.

I agree with you, there is entirely too much information on the internet. Thats why its so hard to choose. Especially like when you put the r9 390 vs the gtx 970. They both have great things, and bad things. Its all on the person who wants what they want. But honestly, the best way to choose, is to go to youtube and say anandtech/tomshardware ect ect. Hit all those places, and hear it from people who review that stuff for a living, not from random people on a forum who mostly have no business recommending something to someone.

Crackpot, do yourself a favor and discount this thread entirely. Rather than trying to get you to listen to me, or to others who know what they are talking about on here. Just do the research yourself, otherwise you could end up with something that wont work or wont do what you need. Google is your friend man, google best gpus for 100-150. Its not hard to find like 20 different lists people have, then look at what keeps popping up high on the lists the most, look at specs, compare performances on youtube anandtech ect ect side by side, and make your decision. Good luck.

Get a Geforce 950 or 960 card.
Geforce 950/960 have Windows XP drivers, so if you'll need to play old games, which have problems on newer windows'es, you'll have some freedom (to install Windows XP on a separate partition).

Anything more powerful than 960 is not worth it with your PC config, imo.
AMD's analogue for 960 is R9 380. They are priced similarly, but they do not have Windows XP drivers.

TL;DR: Geforce 950!

Why? A game doesn't become hardware hungry just because it uses DX12. DX12 is what will be used in the near future, so of course it should carry some weight. Except you want to buy a card that keeps your PC going for another few months until you build a new PC.

A FX-6300 won't be able to play future games very well either. And Crackpot is looking to update the GPU of a system with a FX-6300.

And who exactly recommended to get a card of AMD's 300 series? Look what I wrote: "AMD's whole 300 series and everything up to Nvidia's 970 is obsolete."

I know that the 300 series sucked. And I know that the 200 series wasn't that great either. The 7000 was AMD's last good generation. 200 and 300 are just pimped up 7000s. That's why they're power hungry and run very hot. It's an old architecture at it's limits. 400 is a brand new architecture with way less hunger.

If I'd have the choice between a GTX 900 and a AMD 300, I'd go with Nvidia. That's a no-brainer. But compared to the RX 480, the GTX 960 will be the card that's more power hungry.

And saying AMD's drivers suck when Nvidia lost the first few DX12 test is smart?

Just for your info: I had a HD 6870 until few months ago. I wanted to keep it until the new GPUs come out, but it died. I played on Intel HD3000 graphics for three or four months, until I got a 750 Ti for 50 Euro. My next card will probably be the RX 480. The 4 GB edition, because I only have a 1080p monitor with 60 Hz.

No, saying that old cards are obsolete isn't the statement of someone who owns top notch hardware. It's just the statement of someone who's got eyes. Why would I want to buy a $400+ card (GTX 980) if there's a $200 card with almost the same performance? I don't say you should trash your 980 and get a new card with the same performance. I just say that no one will buy a new 980 anymore. If someone wants to spend 400+, he'll get the 1070 which is a beast that kills the 980. And if someone wants 980 performance, he'll get the RX 480 for half the price. That's what "obsolete" means.

And yes, the 970 is still a good card. But if you check system requirements, you'll notice that they went up by quite a lot in the past. My old 6870 was strong enough to play the first one of the Tomb Raider reboot and GTA V. I didn't even have to go "all minimum". But now? New games don't like to be limited to 1 GB VRAM. They NEED 2 GB. If you want to have the best texture quality, they want 4 GB. The 970 has 3.5 + 0.5 GB. 3.5 GB of "normal" memory and 512 MB of whatever it is they found in the lumber-room.

Yes, I'm "speculating about performance per dollar on gpus that have not been released yet". Why am I doing this? Because the one GPU that got presented has the price of a GTX 960 and is said to have almost the performance of a 980. For someone who runs a FX-6300, this'd be overkill. So it'd be smart to wait and see the rest of AMD's line up. I'm pretty sure there'll be something with the 960's performance that'll be cheaper (why should it cost the same as the 480?) and consumes less power (safe bet, since the the more powerful 480 only asks for 150W where the 960 already needs 120W).

I didn't pick any battle. You're the one who's trying to convince everyone that it's better to pick the 960 because AMD BLARGH.

What ... happened? I just went to sleep for a few hours.

<furious nodding>

I didn't scoff at you; if it came off that way, it's probably because I'm socially inept, or as Nemesis said, because tone is hard to convey in text.
I would also do my own research if I trusted myself enough to reach a sensible conclusion, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to get input from people who know what they're talking about.

Good summary, thank you, my brain is close to a Blue Screen at this point.


Once again, I appreciate all advice and don't (consciously) dismiss any of it, I'm just trying to figure it all out.

(Side note, I'm not a he.)