Need help finding a new graphics card

[Travis]

So recently I've been trying to run a PS2 emulator but my graphics card isn't coping

this is my current card.

any suggestions for a new one?

Pretty sure my current one is PCI

hoping to spend less than $250 but do't mind buying a 2nd hand card

 

[Swan]

Need more information. It looks like you're running a fairly old computer, so unless your motherboard has PCIe then you'll be upgrading more than just your graphics card.

To answer your question though, I'm currently running an eVGA GeForce GTX750 1GB SuperClocked edition which I got for AU$140 (~$110 USD) which runs a lot of modern games very well, so it should run PCSX2 fine enough.

What you're forgetting though is it often isn't graphics. What emulators have to do is get an entire set of processor instructions and convert them to a set of instructions your computer can understand. That requires a LOT of CPU. Are you sure it isn't your CPU that needs upgrading?

 

[Travis]

Here is my computers details

I'm assuming that should be enough to run it?

I can run games such as skyrym and ff14 which should be more draining than the ps2 games, but the emulator may be more taxing than i suspected?

I suspected the graphics card because i played around with the pluggin settings and changing the graphics seemed to reduce the lag a good proportion, but its still struggling in movies. It seems to go slow motion for 2-3 seconds every 2-3 seconds which drives me insane.

 

[Heeatz]

I have the R9 290 in my build. Its a monster and a bit over your budget; so you try a downgraded version, say an R9 280 possibly.

 

[SASRT8]

GTX 960. One and done. it was just released a few days ago, and it is the end-all midrange card now IMO. that said, if you don't need quite that much card, you can go with a 750 ti. for the price, that little card will blow you away as well.

if you go on the AMD side of things, the 280, 285, and 280x can be had for great prices under 250 also, and will also make you very very happy. They will require more power to run though.

I'm not sure of other details about your computer, but if you're using an OEM power supply(common in pre-built computers) then your absolute best bet will be the 750ti...since most models of that card do not require auxiliary power from the power supply.
If you built your own computer, then chances are your power supply will be better than any average OEM Power supply, and in this case you should be fine regardless of which card you choose from those listed above.

In any case, you should let me know what power supply make/model you have so that I can make sure you're not going to underpower your rig.

 

[Swan]

Here is my computers details

I'm assuming that should be enough to run it?

I can run games such as skyrym and ff14 which should be more draining than the ps2 games, but the emulator may be more taxing than i suspected?

I suspected the graphics card because i played around with the pluggin settings and changing the graphics seemed to reduce the lag a good proportion, but its still struggling in movies. It seems to go slow motion for 2-3 seconds every 2-3 seconds which drives me insane.

It doesn't really matter if your computer can run a lot of games, because as I said, game consoles such as the PS2 use a different processor architecture with a different instruction set, and those instructions have to be converted to your computer's instruction set in real time, which is an absolute tonne of calculations per second.

Your processor seems okay I guess. If you want to buy a new graphics card can't be any harm in doing so.

 

[Travis]

Nvm I seemed to of resolved my issue it was rather a dumb move on my part.

I activated the other cores and now it's running smoothly lol.

Thanks for the help.

 

Yeah your graphics card has nothing to do with this. If I was able to run a Gamecube emu on a piece of shit Pentium 3 with 512mb of DDR1 and an ancient ATI 64mb graphics card then you should definitely not be having a problem.

I'm guessing the emulator was coded with multithreaded processing in mind, so naturally your solution of allowing it to use the other cores is giving it more breathing room.