Is an upgrade necessary?

PureAppleJuice · 23 Aug 2007 at 17:39

Basically want to invest in the Dell 24" but at the moment on a 7900GT so basically won't be able to play the games I want at full res.
Looking at upgrading to the ATi HD 2900 XT but my current spec is as follows;

Opteron 165 dual core ( not overclocked, but possible )
2 x 1gb OCZ Platinum RAM
Asus A8N Premium or something like that, can't even remember.

Do you think the CPU will bottleneck the GPU? Just thought it's worth asking before I blow my money on something high spec, would rather do that than get something mid spec and upgrade repeatedly.

Cheers,

semi-pro waster · 23 Aug 2007 at 17:52

Just to check here - do you really mean the 2600XT? I haven't checked the figures but I'd be pretty certain that it is, at best, a sideways step from what you have. If you mean the 2900XT then you are looking at something which would be fine for the 24" screen and then the question of the CPU being a potential bottleneck might need to be answered.

Skumball · 23 Aug 2007 at 17:54

You might be better off going for a 22" as the optimum res is 1680x1050. I have just built my system as per sig and most games seem to run ok at that res, but I still get some slowdown.

PureAppleJuice · 23 Aug 2007 at 18:02

semi-pro waster said:
Just to check here - do you really mean the 2600XT? I haven't checked the figures but I'd be pretty certain that it is, at best, a sideways step from what you have. If you mean the 2900XT then you are looking at something which would be fine for the 24" screen and then the question of the CPU being a potential bottleneck might need to be answered.

Oops, yep 2900XT. Yeah had a feeling some bottle necking might occur, the CPU will clock to 2.6ghz np, but even then I really don't think it'll cut the mustard

semi-pro waster · 23 Aug 2007 at 18:13

I'd still be tempted to get the graphics card and overclock the CPU a bit first before committing to buying a new CPU and motherboard (probably Core2Duo I'd guess for best overclocking potential). You can easily shift the graphics card to a new PC if the old doesn't work sufficiently well.

PureAppleJuice · 23 Aug 2007 at 18:17

Damn, that's actually a really good idea, suprised I didn't think of it when i'd been considering it for so long. Looks like I can only think of extremes, heh. Certainly saves blowing £1500 immediately. Thanks