Upgrade an old GPU

[drewk1]

Hi

Been out of the pc upgrading loop for a while now so I need some advice.

I'm looking to upgrade my GPU, currently an eldely 8800GT

My motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR
CPU is a Intel Q8400 @2.66GHZ
4 GB ram

Not sure what the PSU rating is until I pull the box out and delve inside but I am planning to replace as neccesary.

I would like to stick with Nvidia and looking at a budget of £150 ish.

Mainly used for some gaming ( eve online ) and light photoshop use

What would be my best option?

Any advice gratefully appreciated

 

[Marine-RX179]

Before blowing cash on getting a new graphic card, do you think you can check your GPU usage in game to make sure your CPU is not bottlenecking the 8800GT?

From what I read Eve Online is single-threaded, so using only 1 core of the Q8400 at stock clock 2.66GHz it could well be bottlenecking even the aged 8800GT.

I reason I'm suggesting this is I don't want you to get in the position of spending £150 on upgrading your graphic card, and only to find the frame rate doesn't improve at all (due to the frame rate being held back by the CPU rather than the graphic card). You can use application such as MSI Afterburner's OSD (On-screen display) to show real-time GPU usage while in game.

 

[arc@css]

Any half decent card will require a cpu overclock to get more performance from it, and to thus make the purchase seem worthwhile. However, even then you will still be restricted by the cpu in some games. Do you have a decent quality power supply unit?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-109-GI&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2379

 

[drewk1]

The main reason for upgrading is I don't think the 8800GT is going to last much longer.

Its been reflowed twice !!

I'll check eve for cpu usage and post back later

 

[drewk1]

Ok when eve is running processor usuage shows 34% max.

From what I gather its not a CPU hungry game.

 

[Marine-RX179]

No not the CPU usage, check the GPU usage.

Problem with many mmos is that they use low number of cores despite they could benefit from extra CPU grunt. 34% CPU usage max means the game would only use around 1-2 cores, and if your GPU usage is not at constant 98-99% usage, with dips down to 50-90%, then you have a CPU bottleneck.