upgrade CPU OR GFX?

tempusfugit · 30 Jul 2012 at 22:09

i play total war games the most out of any game i own and would like to increase the performance i get in shogun 2, what i want to know is whether to upgrade my CPU or GFX card.

my pc at the moment:
vtx3d HD6950 2gb
AMD x6 1055t 3.8ghz
8gb ram (dunno what mhz think 1600)
i will be playing at 1920/1080p

Now i have heard that shogun 2 is a heavy shader based game and eats vram for breakfast lunch and dinner, however i know that total war games are also very CPU intensive so here are the two options i had in mind for upgrades:

HD6950 2GB UPGRADED TO A VTX3D HD7970 3GB X-EDITION

AMD X6 1055T 3.8GHZ UPGRADED TO A INTEL I5 @4.5GHZ

so which of these will boost shogun 2 performance the most? better gfx card or cpu? (HD6950 CFX is NOT an option)

LukieBoy007 · 30 Jul 2012 at 22:25

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2012/05/01/intel-core-i5-3570k-cpu-review/6
Look at the Shogun 2 Benchmarks, the i5 3570k at stock beats an overclocked 1100T.

You can also see here a 6950 compared to a 7970 on Shogun 2:

If it were me, I'd go for the CPU upgrade.

stulid · 30 Jul 2012 at 22:36

Can you please upload and host the image yourself instead of hotlinking.

LukieBoy007 · 30 Jul 2012 at 22:40

Sorry, done.

tempusfugit · 30 Jul 2012 at 22:44

istnt ccc 12.7 meant to boost hd 7000 series performance though? im happy with my CPU at the moment but if it would mean more perfomance to upgrade it over the hd7970 i will.

LukieBoy007 · 30 Jul 2012 at 23:22

12.7 is still in BETA, and I haven't tried it yet on my 7850 (I'm on 12.6) although I might try it and see if there are any performance improvements.

tempusfugit · 31 Jul 2012 at 08:13

well the 7970 seems to be a fantastic card to run shogun 2 with according to that benchmark... im assuming thats stock too so perhaps with a bit of overclocking i could reach close to 6990 speeds

if not its still a lot less money for not a lot less performance.

Smoogels · 31 Jul 2012 at 08:27

Wouldn't a AMD X6 1055T bottleneck a 7970? :S

tempusfugit · 31 Jul 2012 at 08:30

that i5 is also extremely good for shogun 2 though, but im less confident installing it than a gfx card and im pretty sure id need a new motherboard... howerver its over half the price. im now trying to cancel my ocuk hd7970 order but they havent replied to my thread yet on the order queries page and it could come TOMORROW

edit: order cancelled thanks to ocuk quick awesomeness