Graphics card of CPU upgrade?

black-ops

black-ops

black-ops

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Hello all, Currently my system is using an Nvidia 8800 (getting old) and an E7200 which I don't know how old tech it's getting, either way I've managed to OC my E7200 to 3.1 Ghz, and my gpu is just well, lying about. I wanted to know what would be most advantageous to upgrade atm and looking at games like ArmaII, BF1943 etc. what you would recommend as an upgrade as opposed to my current hardware. Only one either graphics or CPU then i will buy the latter of the choice another time.
Thanks all!
 
For games the gfx card is the best choice - the 4890 at ~£150 would be a great upgrade for your system. (Plus 4Gb of memory if you're only running 2Gb)
 
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I believe ARMA2 is a very CPU intensive game and plays best on Quad cores. An upgrade to something like this (Q6700) would give you a nice boost in that game (as well as GTA4 and any multithreaded applications).

As for graphics card, the 8800GTX is still a great card, roughly equivalent to a GTS250 or 4850 if I do recall. If you want more FPS and higher settings in modern games- then a GPU upgrade would be useful but not imminetly neccesary (unless you play at very high res). If you upgrade the GPU, make sure you get a card at least as powerful as this (4890) - otherwise you won't see much improvement.
 
brilliant feedback guys, yes i heard arma was quite cpu intensive. I thought the 6700 was a cheaper version of the 6600 or am i thinking backwards aha =P?
Im currently running at 1280 x 1024 and don't really have an intensions shortly of getting a screen capable of higher res atm. So if i were to say anything better than the 6700 by say around £50 would you say thats worth it or is the 6700 the best for that margin? Same with the 4890?
Cheers.
 
The Q6700 is just a faster version of the Q6700. They all use the G0 stepping (the good one) and their multiplier is 10 compared to 9 on the Q6600, this can allow for easier overclocking with lower FSB. Great chip, great price.

This CPU (Q9550) is pretty much the top end CPU that will fit in your motherboard. Its £40 more and about 20% faster than the Q6700. Also, it is very cool and I believe it can overclock to around 3.8GHz with the right motherboard and cooling.

Personally I would go for the Q6700 and save the rest.

Also - as Plec said above if you have 2GB of RAM or less - upgrade to 4GB. It's cheap and gives a nice performance boost in pretty much everything.
 
black-ops said:
yes i heard arma was quite cpu intensive.
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I hadn't (i play very few games) - with that in mind i would focus more on Andi's reply as i was replying using a 'general rule of thumb' but it perhaps isn't applicable in your case/hardware.
 
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Well it seems the ATI fan boys are in the house, personally I think the GTX260 is the best value card that'll give you a decent performance gain
 
Yea, i'm a massive ATI fanboy (check sig). The fact is that for £127 you can get a 4890 or a GTX 260. The 260 is a great card, but its performance is well behind the 4890 - that's just the way it is. If the 275 dropped to £130 then it would be more of a toss-up, but it isn't - so get the ATI.
 
dangerstat said:
Well it seems the ATI fan boys are in the house, personally I think the GTX260 is the best value card that'll give you a decent performance gain
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No. A 260 is roughly equal to a 4870, and the cheapest 4870's now are about £10-20 cheaper than the cheaper 260's, and the 4890's are only slightly more than the 260's.
 
oppss.. nvm

anyways, ATI does give you best bang/buck, nothing beats their mid-high end cards.. maybe even low-end (haven't checked) for bang/buck..
the best bang/buck card Nvidia has is a 2nd hand 8800GT/GTS/GTX..
 
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