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New GFX card - have recieved conflicting advice & I'm now confused

audioscribbler

audioscribbler

audioscribbler

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Joined
29 Oct 2008
Posts
33
I've signed up to this forum because I've recieved conflicting advice from a) the dudes I chat to on vent (a clan) and a mate who originally built my current pc, regarding which direction to go with upgrading and I'm stuck. First, here are some rough specs..

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
Conroe
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
Vista Home Premium 32bit
3 gig RAM (not sure what type) & not sure which mobo...

I've attatched detailed specs reports to this post from cpuz and Everest.

My first plan was just to get a new gfx card. First I looked at the 4870. Then I looked at the 260/280.

I'm not very knowledgeable on building comps at all. A friend built it. He says to me that my mobo doesn't support SLi, so getting two x 260/280/9800GTX is out of the question. After a bit of thinking I decided to go for a 4870x2 (because I do have PCI-E, thus, it is compatible). I'm currently using an nvidia 7900gs.

THEN I'm told by somebody else that the spec of my PC will not take full advantage of the 4870x2, and that I'd be better off upgrading.

- the motherboard
- the processor
- power supply

and getting a cheaper graphics card, e.g. one 4870.

What should I do? I was all ready to go out and shell out £340 for a x2, and now I'm being told I would be better off upgrading the above three components and getting a cheaper card. I'm upgrading because I want to play games like far cry 2 and crysis on very high. I've just shelled out for a 24" monitor.

So any advice would be massively appreciated, because I'm ordering the parts this weekend. Thanks.

http://www.audioscribbler.co.uk/cpuz.txt

http://www.audioscribbler.co.uk/everest.txt
 
Get x38 or x48 mobo and not 3 gig of ram they come in even numbers (except nehalem) so 4 gig and load up vista 64 bit. The 4870x2 is a great card by the way.
Don't know what power supply you are using. Will need to confirm its man enough for the x2. It would also be nice to have the proc running faster, i don't know what the 6300 is capable of.
 
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welcome

tbh, the only game that needs a 280 or 4870x2 at 24" very high is crysis, i'd settle for a 4870 and save your pennies

heck, even my 8800gt holds it's own on a 24" screen, in TF2 and Company of Heroes

Crysis isn't worth spending £300 on :)
 
gary996 said:
x38/48 is the mother board chipset. Go to motherboard section and have a look
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. I'm currently running a 330 watt PSU, was going to get a 610 watt one. Not sure if processor can be overclocked.. will ask my friend who built it.

So you reckon that's the best route to take then? Get a 38/48 mobo, new powersupply, a single 4870 and see if the processor can be oc'd?
 
Hi,

As Bledd said, any modern, mid range gfx card will be good enough for a 24" (Most games are designed to run on current gen consoles with similar performance... except for Crysis). So a HD 4850 is more than good enough.

First of all (before you buy anything) try and overclock the E6300 to 3Ghz+. If you can (this will help prevent any bottlenecks) just buy a 4850, enjoy it and feel warm inside knowing you've saved a large wad of cash!
If you really really want a 4780x2 or GTX 280 sli etc then you'll need a completly new system :p
________
Mary Jane
 
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sarge78 said:
Hi,

As Bledd said, any modern, mid range gfx card will be good enough for a 24" (Most games are designed to run on current gen consoles with similar performance... except for Crysis). So a HD 4850 is more than good enough.

First of all (before you buy anything) try and overclock the E6300 to 3Ghz+. If you can (this will help prevent any bottlenecks) just buy a 4850, enjoy it and feel warm inside knowing you've saved a large wad of cash!
If you really really want a 4780x2 or GTX 280 sli etc then you'll need a completly new system :p
Click to expand...

I see! So to get the most out of the big boys, I'd need to upgrade other parts too. Hmm. I think I see what my mate says about getting a new mobo, processor and psu now, plus a standard 4850/4870. I think I'm getting closer to what I think I want to get. I've been given the name of a good mobo to get.. but any reccomendations on what processor to get? The person who built my pc 2 years ago says these are a good combo

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail

and

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
 
Depending on your budget I would get:

A GTX260. Nice, cheap, very fast.

-If you have the money, upgrade your CPU to something a little nicer.

-No point going X38/X48, they're a high-end chipset thats barely any better than P35/P45. Their advantage is in supporting two ATI cards in CrossFire properly, and supporting tighter chipset timings. Neither of which you'll take advantage of, so P35/P45 being cheaper are the better option. If your mobo is fine, absolutely no reason to upgrade it whatsoever. Performance increase from a new mobo is TINY. We're talking 5fps on the outside - the kind of boost you would get from a teeny tiny overclock on your graphics card.

-If the PSU is a very good brand, you'll be able to get away with not upgrading it. Failing that you want a nice quality 500-600W PSU. Corsair, Seasonic, Enermax, Thermaltake Toughpower, etc. A good PSU won't need to be upgraded again unless you go for an extreme spec.

Really we need a CPU-Z screenshot to see what you've got already. GPU people LOVE to tell you to get all manner of graphics and hardware upgrades.

Oh and @ 1920x1200, not even a GTX280 will let you play Crysis @ Very High unless you're used to low FPS.
 
hi welcome - i have a guide in my sig that may be useful - personally i think you will do well with any card in your budget- you may need to overclock your processor a bit for a higher end card - but it wont affect you much unless you benchmark - if you want to play games - get the best card you can afford and have fun!
 
Processor is nice but the motherboard is not a good option in my opinion. I would want something with pci-e 2.0 as it will become the standard soon enough for future upgrades.
 
imo p45 mobo
graphics depending on your res

check the guide in my sig for more details

new psu

3ghz on your cpu should be simple
 
Here's what I'd do....
  • Buy a cheep 4850 with the 24"
  • You or your mate can overclock the E6200 (to similar performance of a stock E8400)
Then you'll have 2 outcomes
  1. Everything works, your happy with the performance... Bobs your uncle and splash the ?XXX saved on a years supply of beer or a nice holiday ;)
  2. Performance is not quite good enough/having crashes etc, so you get a P45 mobo, a new PSU, a second 4850 (for xfire) and maybe a new processor. Then bingo uber gaming machine!

Everyone wins :D
________
Buy vapir one
 
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Imo the mobo will be fine for now, PCI-E 2.0 adds very, very little. By the time PCI-E 2.0 is actually useful I'm sure audioscribbler will be looking at upgrading to i7 (Nehalem).

The CPU could do with an upgrade, I had an E6300 and clocking it to 2.8Ghz resulted in a massive speed boost in games. The mobo won't clock paticularly well, but given a 3Ghz dualcore can be picked up dirt cheap, it would be foolish not to just upgrade to that.

PSU really needs to be upgraded tbh, just so nothing goes pop.

If you've got 4 sticks of RAM in your mobo - absolutely no point upgrading that either. You're running in dual channel, and have plenty of memory for games this year and next. I suspect you have actually got 4GB RAM, but not having a 64bit OS you've only got ~3GB addressable.

Finally the GPU. I personally would go for a GTX260, or wait for the 55nm GTX270. Alternatively the 4850 / 4870 isn't a bad option.

If running Crysis at 1920x1200 Very High is your sole goal, and you don't mind spending a lot of money, you've got a few options:

Besides the above recommendations, you'll need two GTX260s instead of just one. You'll also either need to get a 780i motherboard (GO FOR A REFERENCED BOARD) or wait for Nehalem and do a major overhaul of your PC, upgrading CPU, Motherboard, RAM, and Graphics all at once.

You'll also want to upgrade to a 64bit OS.
 
Ok, heres my tuppence worth. I flogged a gigabyte X38 mobo and replaced it with a gigabyte P31-DS3l and I get the same performance between the two mobos "when gaming" and I found its pointless overclocking the cpu past 3.2ghz 'cos the vidcard can't use the extra data. As said by Boogle, go for a P35 chipset based mobo, gigabyte, asus, abit, etc and try to overclock your e6300 up to 2.975ghz (425 x 7). get a something like a corsair 620w psu (non modular is cheaper but theres a bucketload of more cables to sirt out) 4gb pc8500 memory, ocz, geil corsair would be my choice so you're not gonna be straining the memory too far past stock.
Also I'd recommend a GTX 260 as its good value atm but the prices of all vidcard appear to be increasing on a daily basis, otherwise a 4850 or 4870 would be fine.
Finally if you feel you need a fatser cpu, then you can pick up a s/h faster cpu at a later date, an e6600 would be my choice if you feel you don't need or want a quad core.

edit: What Boogle said basically but I'd still recommend 2 x 2gb of pc8500 ram, gives you an overhead for overclocking further at a later date, and its still very cheap, worth getting even if you're not gonna use all of it (os not be able to use the full amount)
 
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