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Budget GFX card upgrade for low spec PC? Worth it?

Tool

Tool

Tool

Associate
Joined
8 Aug 2003
Posts
76
Hi,

I'm thinking of upgrading my GFX card so that I will be able to play a few of the latest FPS games like COD4 at reasonable detail. Not worried about switching on AA and AF etc and please note that my monitor has a max resolution of 1280 by 1024.

One, it is worth upgrading based on my PC specs (in sig) and my budget of less than £80 inc vat?

Thanks.
 
3850 pro is shouting buy me after reading your post.

I'd try and stretch to the 512Mb version - tho it would put you £2-8 over your budget - as it would give it a hugely longer useful life than 256Mb.

Your other option would be the 8800GS - but as you seem to be familiar with ATI I'd say the 3850 was the all around better option.

EDIT: As for is it worth it... the 3850 would be atleast 3x faster than your current card and has support for SM3.0 and newer which is a baseline requirement for many newer games - IIRC the x800 only does SM2.
 
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Thanks for all the responses.

Just to clear this up, my AMD 64 3700+ is not a limiting factor when upgrading a gfx card then? Is my 2gig memory up to scatch as well?
 
Tool said:
Thanks for all the responses.

Just to clear this up, my AMD 64 3700+ is not a limiting factor when upgrading a gfx card then? Is my 2gig memory up to scatch as well?
Click to expand...

:)

I'd say it will be. Especially if at stock. The majority of 3700+ CPUs clock pretty well so you should be able to get at least 2.6Ghz out of it. Time to get tinkering :D.
 
Tool said:
So is it still worth upgrading my gfx card based on my single core CPU?

Will this cause a bottleneck if I do upgrade to a say a ATI 3850 pro?
Click to expand...

It probably will, the newest chips do offer a huge performance boost, not only in regards to single-core vs dual core but rather the bandwidth and IPC that they do offer. You should be able to get a C2D chip + a P45 motherboard without sacrificing too much cash if you shop around, maybe get a used combo of them? It will give you a much better boost.
 
Tool said:
Thanks, that was the answer I was looking for!

Just to wrap this up, would I be able to run COD4 and similar games at 1280 by 1024 easily with fairly high detail with my single core CPU combined with a ATI 3850 pro 512MB?
Click to expand...

should do no probs, blame me if it don't :D
 
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