Intel i7-4790 3.6ghz, intel graphics 4600 and a SATA HD - is a new video card enough?

Asked: Sep 18 2016 | 7:26 pm EDT 1950 Views 5 Answers View Best Answer

My computer is a bit over a year old, it has an Intel 17-4790 3.6ghz and intel graphics 4600, it's running Windows 7 sp1, there is 24gb RAM, and there is a decent hard drive in there, but it's not an SSD.

$1,000+ is not in the works right now, but I could look at $100-150. But, I'd want to know that if I do this I'll get reasonable performance. I don't need top of the line, but good enough to get a feel for it.

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543

Sep 19 2016 | 9:25 am EDT Russell Holly

You probably want to look at the GTX 1060 for something comparably inexpensive that will last you a while. You may get lucky and find a GTX 980 or GTX 980 TI on sale somewhere also.

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Sep 20 2016 | 2:38 am EDT Matty

I fear the 4600 GPU will not be sufficient. You could possibly get away with a GTX 970 or a Radeon RX480 ($200).
Having a new SDD will help to some degree but i think the GPU would be the area of focus for now. I think you all covered in the RAM department LOL

1,864

Sep 20 2016 | 10:10 am EDT Chemy JMHT

I'm a bit curious, what were you doing with your computer, a lot of RAM, no GPU and a 4 quad core i7.

I think you may find for around $140 a Radeon 470 with 4GB that will help you a lot.

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Sep 20 2016 | 5:11 pm EDT KermEd

If you are interested, we have a spare AMD R9 380 video card (which beats the minimum specs for Vive and Oculus) - I could offer it up for a fair price.

We had to upgrade to a 1070 because of our video demands, so it is literally sitting on a shelf beside me right now, asking me for something to do.

With your current specs, the only PC-dedicated HMD I know of that would run is OSVR's HDK 1.3 or 1.4