Deciding on video card

[fluentd]

Ok so I am getting to the point where I am putting together the PC that will run my cabinet. I ended up with an MSI board with an AMD FX 4100 Black processor. It has 4 gigs of ram but I can drop some more in if need be. I plan to play mostly indie games and emulators, nothing high end like Crysis or anything like that. My first thought was to mount everything to wood but I am starting to lean towards putting it into a case. I plan to run 2 large Cooler master fans that will blow cool air into the cabinet at all times as well. What type of video card should I aim for? Budget doesnt matter to me but I would rather not spend the money on a higher end video card if it won't get any use from the low end games I plan on playing.

[fluentd]

Would this be sufficient?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130788&nm_mc=BAC-Criteo&cm_mmc=BAC-Criteo-_-Video+Card+-+Nvidia-_-EVGA-_-14130788

[lilshawn]

i would look for something with faster core speed and PCI-e 3 not 2 (if your board supports it). maybe this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121643

[fluentd]

Only PCI E2.0. Im not looking to spend that kind of money on the videocard. As long as it can play HD 1080p videos, emulators, indie games then im good to go. No Playstation or wii is needed.

[lilshawn]

what board is it?

now that i think about it...I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a board that supports an AM3+ processor but not PCI-e 3.

your money is best spent where it counts...in the core of the computer. emulation is a slippery slope. if your core is no good, the whole suffers.

right now you buy a videocard...games keep lagging...you dump in more ram...still lags... but i think your problem is going to end up being the board. It's slow bus is going to be the root of the issue. the speed difference between a PCI-e 2 and a PCI-e 3 card is going to be at least DOUBLE. (500mb/s vs 1000mb/s)

[fluentd]

MSI 970A-G46 is the board. Processor is an FX 4100 I believe

[lilshawn]

hmm. wierd. has all sorts of other things like usb3, yet no PCI-e 3.

my computer doesn't have usb3 but has PCI-e 3. 

nevertheless, a PCI-e 3 card will work just fine in a 2 slot. You should realy try to put as much as you can into it but if you are seriously strapped for cash, consider this card then... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130808

it's double the price of the GT610, but it's faster ram speed and bandwidth size will be a great improvement. The GT610 you posted scores a passmark score of 342, while this GT630 with ddr5 scores a 719 the GT640 I linked before even with ddr3 scored 1302. this puts the GT630 right about in the middle...seems like good bang for the buck.

my videocard right now (9500GT) which scores 290 on the passmark (not much better than the GT610)... even with my overclocked FX8350, I might as well have a 486. "The herd is only as fast as the slowest animal" There are instances where I have had to dial back settings and reduce screen size to get frame-rates up to even 60 FPS.

I'm currently scabgrading my computer so i'm really lopsided. I'll be upgrading the water-cooling, then the power supply, then the videocard. once i get the videocard upgraded I won't have to worry about anything because the ridiculous bottleneck that is the videocard will be gone.