Thoughts on upgrading

Rage474 · 21 Jul 2012 at 02:39

Hey there,

I've had my current system for a good few years now, and I'm really starting to feel it's power straining a bit, especially when playing the newer releases, such as Guild Wars 2. Which is beginning to mar the experience quite significantly.

I don't want to spend a huge amount, preferably no more than £200-£250 max.

I'm thinking I should upgrade the GPU/CPU, but not sure if that would cause compatibility problems etc. Here is my current setup anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated

.

Case: Coolermaster 690 Black ATX 5 Bay (RC-690-KKN1)
PSU: Coolermaster Real Power 1000w Modular Silent (RS-A00-ESBA)
CPU: Intel Core 2 QuadPro Q6600 8MB 2.40GHz 1066FSB
RAM: Corsair 4GB DHX XMS2 (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4DHX TwinX
MOBO: MSI P7N SLi -Fi 750i 775 PCI -E 1333FSB DDR2 SATAII ATX
GPU: BFG 260 GTX 896MB OC2 MaxCore x16 PCI-E 2.0 DDR3 Dual DVIHDTV

Cheers

honosuseri · 21 Jul 2012 at 02:45

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire HD 7870 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £227.99
Total : £238.79 (includes shipping : £9.00).

Have you overclocked your CPU? Go with the 7850 and there is some change to get a heatsink to let you push your CPU harder.

Rage474 · 21 Jul 2012 at 02:54

I have not yet overclocked it, without any additional cooling, how high is advisable?

Doomedspeed · 21 Jul 2012 at 09:50

honosuseri said:
Have you overclocked your CPU? Go with the 7850 and there is some change to get a heatsink to let you push your CPU harder.

Great advice.

YOUR BASKET
1 x PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £189.95
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £32.99
Total : £234.34 (includes shipping : £9.50).

Rage474 said:
I have not yet overclocked it, without any additional cooling, how high is advisable?

Not very, on stock cooler you can up it a little but not far, as it will get hot. With a new CPU cooler you can easily get to 3ghz.

Space Monkey · 21 Jul 2012 at 11:17

With the right cooler I had my Q6600 up to 3.6GHz

SheepBeast · 21 Jul 2012 at 11:21

+1 to advice already given. OC the Q6600 for now and just get a graphics card.

Rage474 · 21 Jul 2012 at 13:34

Fantastic, that you all very much for the advice given

. I'll stick a new graphics card in and pump up the old CPU a bit further. Are there any other clear bottlenecks, or should this be grand?
Also, on a side note, what would an equivalent Nvidia card be, would it be worth say running a new one in SLI with my current one if I currently use 2 monitors?

SheepBeast · 21 Jul 2012 at 18:27

There isn't really an nvidia equivalent in the current gen. 670 is more expensive and the lower cards are too low.

Either wait for the 660ti to come out, or get a previous gen card like a 570

Rage474 · 22 Jul 2012 at 18:46

Do you reckon it's be worth it, or is going with the previously mentioned cards a better idea?

olivier renault · 23 Jul 2012 at 01:02

Rage474 said:
Do you reckon it's be worth it, or is going with the previously mentioned cards a better idea?

You have enough power for any card you want, so a 570 using more power wouldn't be a problem.

The 7850 uses less power (only one PCIE connector), runs cooler, runs quieter (general statement), overclocks better. Performance-wise, it's about the same as a 6950 / 570. It also has 2GB. Not sure how much VRAM GW2 uses, but I don't think a 570 would be a problem, even in zerg WvW.

Some games do like more VRAM even at 1080p, especially if you start modding with high res textures.

But frankly, you'd better be a massive NVidia fanboy to go for a 570. It's a shame they are dragging their feet at releasing a competitive card against the 7850 / 7870.

TrojanWhore · 23 Jul 2012 at 01:32

Rage474 said:
what would an equivalent Nvidia card be, would it be worth say running a new one in SLI with my current one if I currently use 2 monitors?

thought I should point out that it is not possible to SLI (or crossfire) cards of different generations. Also, with SLI you can only match it with the same card, so would have to be 2 260s, which would still be no-where near as fast as a 7850.

if you really want to use some of the wattage you have going spare, there is this:

http://eu.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=02G-P3-1387-KR&family=GeForce 400 Series Family&uc=EUR

direct from EVGA, which is about as fast as a 580 (or heavily overclocked 7850), and significantly cheaper (even better at current discounted price!) but I think the general concensus would be 7850 + better cooling.
The 7850 has a 'true' 2GB Vram, whereas the 460 2win is 1GB per GPU, which would be a limitation at higher resolutions.

as for your CPU overclock, if it's a G0 stepping (as opposed to B3, cpuz will tell you), then they pretty much all do 3.2GHz (mine managed about 3.4). A fair few will do 3.6 happily, but will be running hot by that point.

you said it was GW2 that was causing you issues, and MMOs are generally very CPU heavy, so OCing would likely give you better results than a GPU upgrade alone