You’re right that you will probably need a beefier power supply. Most pre-installed pwr supplies are shitty anyway, so it’s a good time to upgrade to a better one that will last you.
Don’t crossfire. That requires even more power, a special PSU and a high-end motherboard that supports dual 16x-by-6x PCI express lanes. Most cheaper motherboards only do 16x-by-8x, which isn’t necessarily bad depending on what cards you’re running, but kinda defeats the purpose if you’re using lower-end cards like the one you have.
These are the recommended requirements for that game:
[details=Spoiler]CPU
Core i7-860 Quad 2.80GHz
FX-8120
GPU
GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Radeon R7 260X
System
4 GB GD RAM
Win 7 64
DX 11
50 GB[/details]
These are the minimum requirements:
[details=Spoiler]CPU
Core i3-530 2.9GHz
Phenom II X4 955
GPU
GeForce GTS 450
Radeon HD 6770
System
4 GB GD RAM
Win 7 64
DX 11
50 GB[/details]
Video Cards:
I suggest that you get as close to the recommended specs as you can. The Geforce GTX 750 TI runs about $150’ish and the Radeon R7 260X is about $130’ish. Generally it’s about a $10 to $20 difference. Not much at all.
Personally, I’d spend a bit more and get a Radeon R7 265, which is a slightly better version of the 260X, with more GPU cores, more discreet rendering units and a 256-bit memory bus opposed to the 260X’s 128-bit bus and the price isn’t too much higher at ~ $150.
Radeon R7 265 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600007801%20600473899%20600007797&IsNodeId=1
Links to a selection of the other cards:
[details=Spoiler]
Geforce GTX 750 TI - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600487565%20600007782&IsNodeId=1&name=2GB
Radeon R7 260X - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600473874%20600007782&IsNodeId=1&name=2GB&Order=RATING&Pagesize=20[/details]
Check the specs on those before you buy. Some of them might have a factory overclock, which is nice because you still get your warranty and the card is slightly faster. Also, those are all 2GB versions of the cards. There is also a 1GB version which wil be slightly cheaper and perform almost exactly the same. Like seriously, there will be 0 difference. The extra GB is nice to have, but it really doesn’t mean shit if you can get essentially the same card significantly cheaper.
Power Supplies
As for your Pwr Supply, you can probably get by with something as low wattage as a 550 watt PSU on the Geforce minimum, but for the Radeon you’re going to want 750 minimum. You probably don’t want to do the bare minimum though, for reasons listed below. Rule of thumb is to don’t skimp on PSU’s. Trust me. It can get ugly. I would shoot for as high a wattage as you can afford with the best construction. What I mean by that is basically, not all PSUs are created equal. A cheap $80 750 watt PSU is no where near as good as a nice $120 650 watt one. In fact, the 650 will most definitely outperform the 750 watt one because the parts are of higher quality. PSUs are all physics and no bullshit, so while clever engineering tricks and software driver hacks can make a cheap video card or processor perform much better than it should on paper, PSUs do not get to take those shortcuts. You cannot beat mother nature, in this case the properties of electricity. Better parts = better performance, and better chances that your whole system won’t go POOF! one day.
Don’t skimp.
Then there’s the energy-efficiency rating. Most people over look this. Don’t. It basically factors how much power is just lost into thin air as heat, because physics. The better the internal components, the higher the rating, and also less money you’re spending on electricity every month. I leave my PC on 24/7 and I game for a decent portion of the time that I’m home, so it’s pretty important for me to factor this in. Sure it’s only a few dollars difference each month, but I’m going to spend those extra dollars somewhere regardless (there is no free lunch, physics has us all by the balls), so why not spend them up front on a better PSU that will run cooler, quieter, and have less chance of going POOF!? There’s Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum ratings, and the Silver/Gold range is usually good enough for most mid-range enthusiasts. Some Silvers behave more like Golds within the same price range, and vice-versa. It’s all in how well the damn thing is made, so do your homework, read the reviews, and compare products before buying.
Also, think about what parts you might want to add to your PC later on. Are you gonna put a blue ray player on it? That’s more power consumption, so you need more headroom. Same thing goes if you decide to upgrade the video card some time in the near future, or if decide to straight up build a new PC and don’t want to have to worry about buying a stupid PSU all over again (it’s not exactly the most fun part of building a PC). So that 750 watt might look more like 800 watts once you factor in all your future upgrades.
Finally, there’s features like modularity and how many fans it has on it, etc. This is all preference, but I will say that having a fully modular PSU is really nice, since you don’t get cable hell inside your case, and you also benefit from better airflow. Note that “modular” and “fully-modular” are not the same thing. Modular PSUs might still have some cables permanently attached. Fully modular doesn’t. Keep in mind that if your modular cables break, or if the socket gets damaged, then you’re shit out of luck and have to buy a whole new unit, so maybe the convenience is worth it, maybe it’s not. You’ll have to decide that.
And you can’t just go with a particular brand that you like or you think is good anymore. Used to be, you could just pick out any decent range PSU from Corsair and you’d be okay. That’s fairly accurate still, but there is a much wider gap in their product lines now. Their low end is much more cheaply made than previously, almost too cheap in fact, but also their high end isn’t quite as good as it used to be. PSU retailers use about 6 different companies to manufacture their products, so most of them are some hodge-podge combination of parts from all those different manufacturers. Some of them are exactly the same thing with a different badge on the case. Sometimes this changes multiple times within a year of product releases. You really have to do your homework to get the best PSU for your PC. Don’t go by price/brand/looks/features alone.
Good brands to start with: Corsair, Seasonic, Antec
Here’s some PSUs I recommend you look at:
[details=Spoiler]750-watt Platinum Corsair HX750I: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139084
750-watt Gold SeaSonic SS-750KM3 750W: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087
750-watt Gold Corsair HX750: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139084
650-watt Gold Antec TruePower Classic: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371072
650-watt Gold Corsair HX650: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012
650-watt Gold SeaSonic S12G-650: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151137[/details]
Good luck and happy shopping.
