8800 GTS upgrade?

[Alex53]

Maybe my question is a little too specific, but hey I'll give it a go.

I only play one game and have no intentions of playing any others in the foreseable future. Lord of the Rings Online.

These are my system specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 (2.13Ghz)
4GB DDR2 RAM (2x1GB Crucial, 1x2GB PNY Electronics)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (320mb)

I play with most graphics settings on high and at 1680x1050 res. The performance is acceptable (maybe 30fps) while its not too busy on screen, but the moment I enter an area with a number of other players, things slow down quite a bit. Places like 21st Hall or now Ost Galadh (those who play will know) get very very slow.

My initial idea would be to consider a newer graphics card, but frankly I dont know whether its the CPU that is strugging in those situations. Or maybe both. I am discarding memory because I think 4gb is more than enough for this game. Its certainly not paging.

Provided its the card, what card would you guys go for? Its not the newest or most cutting edge game so I don't think I'd have to go and spend £200 on a card, hopefully, but I dont want to underspend either and end up with little improvement.

Should it be the CPU, do newer Intel CPUs use the same socket as an Intel Core 2 Duo, or would it mean having to change my mobo too? In which case the whole upgrade becomes more expensive :/

Finally, I have a 580W power supply. How does the consumption of decent graphics cards now, differ from something like the 8800GTS? Do they need more or less power? I've noticed that some cards that would be superior to mine now dont have so much cooling on them, and are smaller, is that an indication that the performance is reached with less 'effort' and the card will consume less or am I barking up the wrong tree with that logic.

 

[jak731]

what budget?
waht MB do you have?
willign to try overclocking your CPU?

 

[jms198]

It couldn't be your connection bring a little slow? I'm not familar with th egame but areas in GW like towns sometimes get a little laggy for me.

I'm using a 8800gts 512 btw.

 

[Alex53]

Budget: Not sure, possibly £100 for a graphics card, but I wouldnt want to spend those £100 if the card you get for that is overkill and an £80 one is fine.

MB: Asus P5E, I think. (Damn I'm out of touch, I'll edit this when I get home if I am wrong)

Overclocking: I'd rather not. My case is not the best and I think the cooling would be lacking.

 

[Alex53]

It couldn't be your connection bring a little slow? I'm not familar with th egame but areas in GW like towns sometimes get a little laggy for me.

I'm using a 8800gts 512 btw.

This goes beyond it. The actual frames per second go down to 10, even 8. With lag you get stuff appearing slowly on the screen, but the way the game works your own character's movement wouldnt look slow because of lag, he sort of moves independently of that.

 

[Secret_Window]

Firstly you should try overclocking your processor with a new cooler following an overcloking guide from somewhere. I have the E6400 processor which is essentially the same and I've overclocked mine to 3.2Ghz using a Zalman cooler - it makes a world of difference at this speed.

Graphics card wise any of these:

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5
£113.99 inc VAT

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5
£129.98 inc VAT

XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5
£119.98 inc VAT

ATI 5770 is probably the most future proof though but is roughly on par with the 4870 in terms of speed but sometimes a little slower. If you wanted to get the fastest of the three cards, that would have to the 4890 but it won't be very future proof if you want to play Direct 11 games in the future.

Edit: You posted your reply as I was typing this up, so if £100 is your budget a ATI 4850 or ATI 4870 512mb would probably suit you.

 

[Alex53]

Hmmm that XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 is looking good to me. Its a bit over budget, but not so much because I wouldnt pay VAT (Gibraltar).

I might arrange with she-who-must-be-obeyed and make it my xmas present

My only concern if whether I should be looking at upgrading the CPU too. As I said OCing might prove a fase economy if I also need to get a better case and cooling.

Thanks for the quick replies.

 

[jak731]

overclocking may only be false economy if you are planning overclock your CPU to an inch of its life, just try a mild overclock to see if this has any effect on performance before you decide on this front

 

[Alex53]

overclocking may only be false economy if you are planning overclock your CPU to an inch of its life, just try a mild overclock to see if this has any effect on performance before you decide on this front

Fair enough. How do you overclock these days? Last time I did it, it was a Pentium II, with jumpers on the mobo.

 

[bobert50]

Fair enough. How do you overclock these days? Last time I did it, it was a Pentium II, with jumpers on the mobo.

Its all done from bios now (hold down delete as your booting up) and its usually very straight forward. Just keep an eye on the temps and voltages..

 

[Alex53]

Its all done from bios now (hold down delete as your booting up) and its usually very straight forward. Just keep an eye on the temps and voltages..

Ok I checked and my mobo is a P5N-E SLI. NVIDIA Chipset, which brings up the question, is it wise to put an ATI card on it or does it not matter at all?

Secondly on the overclocking side of things I went into the BIOS and got a bit confused with the names of the options. Using CPU-Z the labels for the settings are a bit more clearly worded though. These are the corrent settings;

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 2 (max 2)
Number of threads 2 (max 2)
Name Intel Core 2 Duo E6420
Codename Conroe
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6420 @ 2.13GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 775 LGA (0x0)
CPUID 6.F.6
Extended CPUID 6.F
Core Stepping B2
Technology 65 nm
Core Speed 2133.4 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 8.0 x 266.7 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1066.7 MHz
Stock frequency 2133 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, EM64T
L1 Data cache 2 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 2 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 4096 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes
FID range 6.0x - 8.0x
Max VID 1.350 V

Is it just a question of setting the multiplier to 9? Or pushing the FSB by a couple of Mhz at a time and watching the temperature?