Upgrade for Witcher 2?

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7 Mar 2006
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At the moment I've got:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (Socket 939)
ATI HD 4850 1GB
4GB DDR3 RAM

I can barely play The Witcher 2 on Medium settings with a decent framerate, which is pretty disappointing. What sort of upgrade cost am I looking at to upgrade my PC to the point that I can play the game comfortably on Ultra settings?

No real budget specified, just looking for the maximum bang for my buck. I guess I'd only need processor, graphics card and motherboard (unless you guys think more RAM would help?)
 
Realistically you would need to upgrade the graphics card and the cpu+motherboard which will probably cost around £400.
 
ram is perfect. before i forget, what PSU do you have, and what case do you have (want to make sure everything fits and runs properly)

unfortunatly with anandtech being down im not sure how good the graphics card you have is, so heres a worst case scenario upgrade for you:

YOUR BASKET
1 x XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Stalker Call of Pripyat PC Game Voucher £159.98
1 x Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.5GHz 4MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - Retail £109.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
Total : £307.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).
 
If I'm honest, I wouldn't want to spend more than £300. I might stretch to £400 if it's going to give me a significant boost.
 
Looks like a pretty good deal, probably don't need the cooler as mine is pretty good. My concern is that I'll upgrade now but by the time next year rolls around, the upgrade won't have been significant enough and I'll end up spending another £300 when it would have been better to spend £500 now, you know?
 
What is your cooler?

Yeah that's a fair concern, obviously the more you spend in one go the better.

If you had a budget of £500 excluding RAM, HDD, DVD-drive and case you'd be able to get a decent Sandy Bridge set-up with a decent GPU.
 
I can't remember, it was decent when I got it, though. I guess it might not fit the slot?

Well, let's say my budget is £500 then. Would that last me a couple of years of playing games at max settings?
 
What about selling your current computer and using the funds from that to put towards a new one. I'm sure with your current budget and the sale money you could get a pretty nice SB system that will keep up for a while.
 
There is a certain bidding site where you can get an i5 2500k Sandybridge and an Asus ASUS SKT-1155 P8P67 PRO motherboard for £300 and then get something like a 5870 for £160 or a 6950 at a push for around £190-£200. You could probably sell your current CPU/Motherboard and GPU for around £60-£100 (I'm not sure about the value of those) which would bring you to around £400. I would recommend you get an aftermarket cooler for the CPU if you go this route though so you can OC the i5.
 
I didn't really have an issue with my E8400 and Witcher 2, I do have a 6870 GPU and was able to get up to High on the settings with no particular slow down.
 
Can he not squeeze in to his budget a 2500k cpu?

Cheap as chips mobo.

By the time he is upgrading for future titles, he will be shooting himself in the foot going to a Q8300 chip.

With £400 he could get a 2500k based set up (using his existing ram) under £300 and spend the remainder on the best gpu he can get.

Although I love my 5870, I would advise something current, like a 560 or 6950, will have more love from drivers in the long run.
 
Some one else posted this for me:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £167.99 (you need a cpu cooler however)

MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £89.98 (or a step up allowing for sli if wanted)

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1333LV4GK) £29.99

Total : £299.35

If you minus the ram, that leaves you with £130, I reckon you could get a 560

Slight over budget but it will give you a few years more life than saving the £30-£40 and needing an upgrade sooner.

That set up should max out the Witcher (obviously with no uber sampling) and it would be a great set up too for future titles.

Bear in mind we are working on a budget here. I would rather suggest to you a 2Gb 6950, becuase of the vram, but thats gona add another £30 to the budget.

The 560 is only a suggestion, you could go for a 5870. But, its a gpu from 2009 (a powerfull one yes) but old.

The 560 is 2011 tech, new. Driver support will last longer, probably tesselates better and from some benchmarks performnce better and worse than the 5870, depending on the title.
 
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