Upgrade advice

Hmmm

Hmmm

Hmmm

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Joined
18 Feb 2009
Posts
9
I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card and CPU to play Napoleon: Total War on max settings, and would appreciate some advice on what my best choices would be.

Am currently running:

XP Home
Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 DDR2
Intel Conroe Core 2 Extreme X6800
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB
4GB of Corsair XMS2 Dominator
PC Power & Cooling SILENCER 610 EPS12VB

Would be nice to do it without breaking the bank, but I'm not massively constrained by budget or anything.

Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
gfx card wise you can be looking at a 5850, couple hundred quid but should be nice step up, or even 5870 if you want to fork out £300
CPU wise yours is pretty good still, if you want to drop in a quad core then look at a Q9550 or similar, but when youre starting to look at spending £200 on a CPU Id be more tempted to look at selling your existing rig and moving over to something like i5 maybe even i7 or AM3 if youre not averse to AMD
 
Even a 5770 should do it. I heard 5770s are really quick.

Core 2 Extreme is obviously not doing it for you, so move up to i5 or i7 like thrifles said.
 
Been doing a little digging, and this article seems to agree with the suggestion that my CPU should be OK ("Currently the ideal CPU for the game has two cores and a high frequency."). I'd been under the impression that the game (like Empire) should benefit from 4 cores over two.

Maybe that will be the case after a patch or two. Regardless, I think I'll stick with the upgrading the graphics card for now. Thanks for the suggestions - will take at look at those cards suggested. IKMS, by "should do it", do you mean the 5770 should handle maximum settings (should specify that I'm running at 1600x1200), or for that should I be looking at the 5850 or 5870 that 95thrifles suggested?
 
Yeah NVidia havent yet released the DX11 cards, you could wait for them to be released but theyll prob be stupid prices when they are, imo a 5850 is best bet atm if youre wanting top performance without paying over the odds, check out anadtech or somewhere to compare how the cards perform, link
 
Ahh DX11. Is it worth it, then, considering I'm running XP Home 32-bit? Will the added grunt be enough to mitigate my lack of being able to take advantage of DX11? Or would a topline DX9 card give me similar improvement?

(I suppose I could always get Windows 7 and have a dual-boot setup.)
 
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XP can't use DX11, but the ATi cards are still cheaper than the nVidia ones regardless of DX11, use less power too.
 
Long shot, but does anyone know if the 5850 and 5870 will fit onto a Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 mobo? I've had a cursory look in my (Lian-Li V-1000) case and length doesn't seem to be a problem, but my 8800 does look quite snug thickness-wise...
 
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