general upgrade musings

FishPolice

FishPolice

FishPolice

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Joined
22 Aug 2003
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Bucks
Was considering treating myself to a nice new 24" screen. I currently have an old 19" Acer lcd with res of 1280 x 1024.

Basic question is: if I upgrade my monitor to a 24" iwidescreen am I likely to need to upgrade my spec to play modern games at a higher resolution? GTX is currently not overclocked btw (not sure how much extra oomph i'd get from clocking it anyway).

So what do you reckon? Should i get ready to fork out a shed load on new bits n pieces or will my rig still cope?

Current rig as in my signature.
 
It depends on the resolution, I doubt 1920x1080 would make much difference to the current 1280x1024, however 1920x1200 will probably start to slow things down a bit at higher settings.

I think your current rig has some life left, a memory and graphics card upgrade would improve it a lot. Test it as is with the new monitor, if it doesn't perform to your satisfaction, I suggest the minor upgrade route.
 
Thanks for your reply Morlock. I reckon I'm gonna order some memory anyway. Thinking about 2 x 2gb sticks. What's compatible with my system & will clock nicely? Budget around £80 max.
 
Considering its age, the 8800GTX is still a good card. It should be able to play most modern games at 1920x1080, however to maintain playable framereates you will need to turn off AA in most games and lower the details.

If you are considering a GPU upgrade I would strongly suggest this 5850, it is a great price for such a fast card. This page shows how the 5850 compares to the 8800GT (very similar gaming performance to the 8800GTX).
 
Question (coming from one a little out of touch and trying to brush up on what's current again), wouldn't this HD6850 be slightly better value (given it includes CODMW2 despite being a tenner more)? I realise the 5850 is arguably ever so slightly faster than the 6850 (but by how much) and does that really matter?

Edit: Comment from another forum: "Well the 6xxx series has better tessellation and DirectX 11 performance, along with 3D support. It all depends on the game/program/use I guess. The difference in performance is very small and probably won't be noticed at all so I would go with the 6850 in case you decided to try 3D in the future and the slight increase in DirectX 11. " Interesting.
 
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ByteJuggler said:
Question (coming from one a little out of touch and trying to brush up on what's current again), wouldn't this HD6850 be slightly better value (given it includes CODMW2 despite being a tenner more)? I realise the 5850 is arguably ever so slightly faster than the 6850 (but by how much) and does that really matter?
Click to expand...

It really depends, the way I see it it's a card that costs £10 more and isn't as fast - so inherently worse value. The free game could tip the balance if you think you will enjoy the game and don't already have it.
 
Hmm...that 5850 certainly looks interesting. Cheap too when I consider what I paid for my GTX!!

What about the cpu upgrade path? I cant check the pc now cos the missus is asleep in that room but I've a feeling my mobo is the revision 2 version. Socket 775 seems to ring a bell too (?). Damn it's been ages since I looked into all this. I just threw it all together, clocked the hell out of it and it's been happily chugging away since.
I'm assuming I could stick a quad core in there if it would make much difference?

Could be an expensive xmas I fear. I do hate this site :D
 
A 3.4GHz Core 2 Duo should be fine for most games, tbh.

However, increasingly modern games are using more than two cores - so a quad core upgrade would benefit you in these games. Your best bet for a CPU upgrade would be a second-hand Q6600, this works with your board and costs ~£70-80.

Your best bet is probably to do the GPU upgrade and then see if you feel the CPU upgrade is needed.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Your best bet is probably to do the GPU upgrade and then see if you feel the CPU upgrade is needed.
Click to expand...

Ok that's sound advice I reckon. Thanks for that :)

How much do you think I could sell my GTX for? Guess I could let my son have it to replace his aging 7900gt if it's not worth selling.
 
Looking at recent prices on the members market - the going price for a working 8800GTX seems to be around £35-40.

If you are considering giving the 8800GTX to your son - this should give you an idea of the performance boost he will get, its pretty big.
 
Bloody hell!! Thats gonna be some improvement for him!! Not worth selling so I'd better do the decent thing.

Thanks again for all your help & to everyone else too :)
 
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