Just bought a new pc and wanna upgrade some stuff..

I just bought a new PC, ran me around $1.2K including a monitor but I wanna upgrade my graphics card at least to get some better FPS for gaming, possibly more depending on what I need.

Right now I can get around 20 - 40+ FPS in WoW (20 in major cities, 40 in smaller areas) with graphics all cranked to ultra.

It doesn't bug me much but I wanna get a better card so I can run more top of the line games, here are my specs.

Model: ASUS Desktop PC CM6850 series
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.4 GHz
Video card: NIVIDIA GeForce GT 530
RAM: 8.00 GB
Hard Drive: 1TB
Type: 64-bit OS

 

Well, it really depends how much you want to spend on a new graphics card..
They can go from $150 cards better than yours to well over a thousand.

Just a few off the top of my head, don't hold me to these..

GTX 580 - $500
480, 570, 6970- $340
Radeon HD 6950, 465 - $250
560 - $200
6790 - $130
5830 - $110

(prices are approx.)

 

Dunno if this is the point but it sounds like you got ripped off assuming your values are in US dollars. You could have gotten a ton more performance for that price imo unless the monitor that came with it is like amazing.

As for which GPU you should go for, you need to give me a budget otherwise I can only assume an unlimited one . GTX 590 and HD 6990 are top dog single card solutions as of right now (not even going to include the MARS II since its basically a gimmick). Assuming a more modest budget of ~$350, the HD 6970 or GTX 570 is the best solution.

 

Let's assume $400 tops for budget.

The monitor I got was around $250.

The money isn't really an issue as I get reimbursed for at least 50% of things I buy computer/gaming related from my gaming sponsors, I just want a good processor so when more top of the line games come out, I'm ready and don't have to run around to find something.

 

So for about $450, you could get a cheaper GTX 580, 2x 560 ti's, 2x 6950's, etc..
For those, I'd probably go with the two 6950's.

for about $400, there's the GTX 460, clocked up 6970, 2x 6870's, etc..
Out of those, I'd probably go with the 6870's.


There's a lot more combinations, but these are the ones I'd pick from.

 

Imo, the best option is always a single card solution. SLI/CF are only worth the headaches they bring along if you already own a card you could SLI at cheaper cost than going with a better single card solution.

With your budget there is the 6970, which is pretty close to the GTX 580 in most scenarios for around 350. There's also the 2.5GB GTX 570 at roughly 390. VRAM is going to become more of a concern in the long haul, I would strongly urge against anything below 1.5GB for 1080p (BF3 has been shown to hit 1.5GB+ VRAM usage, and more demanding games are sure to follow)

 

How could I forget about the 570. It's a great card as well and if you don't know much about computers or don't want to deal with it, like ivy said, just go with a single card.