Hi toribash community,

I'm here because I have a big doubt. I'm having some trouble with Assassin's Creed II, Sonic Generations ,etc. They are with low framerate , even in mininum graphics configuration. So, as the title says, I'm going to buy a GTX 550 TI for my PC. But, before buying it, I want to hear your opinion. If this is a good upgrade, or I need to buy another thing to make the games run smooth?

PC Specs:

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 910( 4 X 2.60GHz)
RAM: 2 X 2 GB DDR3
Motherboard: Pegatron(Chipset AMD/ATI) Unknown Model.
HD: Samsung 500GB SATA II
Optical Drivers: TSSTCorpCDDVDR, and 2 Daemon Tools Drivers.
Power Supply 500W(don't remember the brand but it's not generic)

Any questions about more info, just post.

Help me please. My can use GTX 550 TI? Or it will be a useless card?

Would it be possible to get your motherboard model...?

That really determines if you can even PUT the card in.

Well, that's a very good question because I can tell you EVERYTHING.....With Exception of the Motherboard Model(XD)

Well, here we go....

Brand PEGATRON
Model “To be filled by O.E.M.” (CPU 1) = ?
Chipset ATI
Chipset Model RS690/RS690M
Chipset Revision 00
Southbridge Brand AMD
Southbridge Model SB700
Southbridge Revision 00
System Temperature 54 АC
BIOS
Brand American Megatrends Inc.
Versуo 0500
Date November,05,2010
Voltage
+12V 12.430 V
+5V 5.313 V
CPU CORE 1.056 V
VIN3 1.656 V
VIN4 1.188 V
+3.3V 3.177 V
VIN6 1.500 V
VIN7 1.656 V
VIN8 1.704 V
PCI Data
Slot PCI
Slot Type PCI
Slot Usage Free
Bus Width Unknown
Slot Designation PCI-E x1
Slot Number 0
Slot PCI
Slot Type PCI
Slot Usage On use
Bus Width Unknown
Slot Designation PCI-E x16
Slot Number 1
Slot PCI
Slot Type PCI
Slot Usage Free
Bus Width 32 bit
Slot Designation PCI1
Slot Number 2
Slot PCI
Slot Type PCI
Slot Usage On use
Bus Width 32 bit
Slot Designation PCI2
Slot Number 3
There it is. Hope it helps

Of note: Your power supply may need upgrading depending on whether or not it supports the supplementary power connectors and it can provide enough power (Nvidia recommends 400W+). Furthermore, keep in mind the 550 is about 2 inches longer and twice as wide as the 9500. Also, double check that it's PCI-E 2.0. I'll point Vox at this. It may be worth also considering the 560 or the 460.

For that price range the AMD Radeon HD6850 is a better pick, same price, about 10 fps faster, however if you want an Nvidia card I'd go with the 460, about the same price range, faster than the 550 Ti, and as always nvidia make better drivers.

I'm sure that my PCI-E is 2.0, and about the 2 inches longer and wider connectors, I'll open my PC and check it.




Well, I can try to find it but here in Brazil is hard to find these cards. The best ATI I found is HD4450. But GTX here is easy to find. I found lots of them, more powerful than 550. And in dollars they are the same price range. Let me show you.

Same Price Range in Dollars = More 200 Reais(money of Brazil). The same price of 2 months of food. The Expensive ones.

As I said, it's hard to buy something here. But I'll search for here. But I think that it will be too expensive.

EDIT : As I said, look at this price. 700 Reais = Difference of 300 Reais. But when they say that you can find for that price, is because you will find for 1.000 Reais. The difference = 600 Reais. And do you know what can I do with this money? I can buy one AMD Phenon II X6 1100T and I can save 50 Reais. Lots of money.

So, consider the 460 if you can find it. It shouldn't be horrendously expensive.

I don't know much about the Brazilian market but you can check how fast the cards are here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2...marks,123.html

Just match up your screen size and the settings you want to run games with to any one of the benchmarks, if you get less than 25fps then you will see it stutter, and remember that the measurement is the average fps, it will drop lower than the average, so to be safe aim for 30fps or up.

I'm considering now HD6870. It's not too expensive here and I can find it on big city. Now I wanna know. Is my processor good enough for running Assassin's Creed at least 30 FPS? Because I'm tired of running it on 2 FPS.

My rule of thumb for this is that the i3 2100 can run just about anything, that CPU falls a tad below it, so it might struggle with games like Metro 2033, but it will max out assassins creed provided your graphics card can do the job. Toribash and StarCraft II are two other games that are pretty CPU intensive, so it wont run those as fast as a better CPU, but most games, games such as assassins creed, are all on the GPU, and you wont hit your CPU limit on those games.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...enom+II+X4+910
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...00+%40+3.10GHz