• 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.

Graphics card upgrade

shodan

shodan

shodan

Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2006
Posts
212
Location
London
My ageing rig:

Asus P5W DH Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
Geil 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 667MHz RAM
HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 (PCI-Express)
Enermax Liberty 620W PSU
Iiyama 1280x1024 LCD panel
Windows XP

I know I know, the wrinkles are showing on this one so I plan on building a complete new rig once DX11 gets going.

However, with several games on the horizon that I'd just love to get on PC instead of PS3 (Modern Warfare 2, Aliens vs Predator, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Crysis 2, Bioshock 2), I want to upgrade my graphics card to see me through.

Essentially, I want the card that will bring me to the pinnacle performance my rig is capable of, before bottlenecking sets in and I start wasting money. I'm not switching mobo/cpu or getting vista and adding more ram as it'll take the wind out of the sails for the new build. So can you guys help?

Looking through the forums I've noticed that the ATI 4890 is universally loved and is really good value, but I'm guessing a huge chunk of that performance would be wasted through bottlenecking and the fact that I only go as far as 1280x1024.

Something like a 4850 would save almost half the money, but would the rig still hold it back?

Are there any other cards that you think are better suited still? Or should I just stick with the X1900XT and save up for the DX11 build?

Thanks
 
It's not clear whether the next round of GPUs will be the ones that really need PCIex2 to run properly, it might be worth waiting to find out. If they don't really need PCIe 2, you might just look at upgrading the CPU, and buying a DX11 card. (An overclocked core 2 quad can put up a good fight in gaming benchmarks considering it's cost vs an i7 upgrade).

Alternatively, if the whole system upgrade is going to be required, it may be worth waiting for the intel LGA1156 platform (commonly called i5). These might be cracking value for the performance.
 
For £100-£110 a 4870 would be a good choice.

When you go i5/i7 in the future you could get a second 4870 for xfire goodness.
 
At that resolution an 8800gt or similar would cope very well indeed, with the added benefit of saving you a ton of money for your upcoming rebuild.
 
A 4850 would be absolutely fine at that resolution. I run one with an E5200 and play games on high with performance to spare. You could play Crysis on High and still get around 30 fps. Anything more would be overkill to be honest.

I recommend overclocking your CPU to at least 3 ghz though, since at lower resolutions your CPU is more of a limiting factor. I have my E5200 at 3.7 ghz.
 
Deffinatly don't go above a 4870 at that resolution - you woudln't see any meaningful gains for the extra money.

I'd say like above an 8800GT or similiar would work great for that res - but a 4870 would give a little more future proof and you will see some performance gains over an 8800/4850.
 
Very similiar rig to mine, I got the same mobo and processor and very similiar on the RAM. I ordered THIS yesterday after my Gainward 8800GTX died on me recently. I too play mainly on 1280x1024, mostly Call of Duty series. I went for the 4890 for a future upgrade hopefully, hoping it doesn't get bottlenecked too much for now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom