• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Advice Please

Kribby2006

Kribby2006

Kribby2006

Associate
Joined
5 Jan 2007
Posts
546
Hi All,

My brother has just gone from a 19 inch monitor @ 1280 x 1024 to a 23 @ 1920 x 1080. Unfortunately his hardware doesn't seem to be able to cope with the increase in res.

He likes to play his games at the highest possible settings with a decent amount of AA/AF. Last night, after installing Biosocks 2 it soon became apparent his rig wasn't cutting it anymore.

Now, he currently has an e6600 @ 3.2 GHz with 2GB of RAM on a BFG 680i Mobo with 2 x 8800 GTS 640MB video cards in SLI.

I know there are a lot of options available and maybe he should upgrade his whole system, but my questions are:

If he were to buy 2 x GTX 260's and put them in his existing setup would the e6600/Mobo/Ram combo have enough headroom to allow the cards to run effectively, i.e. without being bottlenecked?

Maybe I could just get a single 5850?

Failing that, we are possibly looking at getting him sorted with an i7 setup?

Any advice offerered is much appreciated. :D

Cheers.
 
If he has the money for a full system upgrade to i7 then thats what i would do. I have a similar spec machine and when i have the cash i will be going i7 as my board holds me back from easy overclocking which is the same as the 680i's problems. That e6600 will most likely bottleneck those gtx260's a little especially on games that are optimised for quad core. I feel with my setup that the money i am putting in is not reaping the rewards i once got now.
 
I think it is just 8800GTS showing its age. I would lean more toward HD5850 as well than 2xGTX260 (since they cost more, run hotter, higher power consumption, and don't have DirectX 11).
 
TaKeN said:
Definately look at a single Radeon 5850.

You'd be insane to buy two old tech GTX260s IMO :confused:
Click to expand...
Yes. If already own one, and would want to spend around £100 to get a 2nd to SLI and boost performance then that is fine...but not owning one and got £200 to spend, HD5850 is definitely a much better choice.
 
Hey thanks for all your replies guys, been away on hols for last week so didn't have the chance to check back and say thanks.

Looks like the 5850 is the way to go then.

Thanks again.
 
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who had made suggestions in this thread.

Just FYI, we got my bro a HIS 5850, this was a big move since both of us have never bought an ATI card before and have always stuck with Nvidia.

Ultimately the cards great and he's really please so cheers all :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom