Upgrade Path

snakeater · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:08

It's been a long time since I've upgraded my system; I decided to buy all three consoles and enjoy the simplicity of actually gaming as opposed to constantly benchmarking my equipment, testing driver sets and creating a bunch of graphs out of equally spec'ed competing hardware I would buy.

In the meanwhile, my PC has managed to handle all my online gaming needs so far. However, recently I've realised my system is failing when it comes to modern games, such as Bad Company 2.

The dillema is that I'm at a point where I can't see an upgrade path that doesn't involve a full system switch over. A new CPU requires a new motherboard, which requires DDR3 nowadays. This is, of course, simply in aid of not bottlenecking a new graphics card. In order to power all this I need a new PSU.

My current specs are:

680i
4 gigs Corsair 6400C4
e8400 running @ 4.0ghz
8800GTS 640
Hiper 580w

Is this build too archaic to revive with just a new GPU or does my lack of a decent quadcore still not matter in terms of gaming?

Fallen god · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:17

I dont really think quadcore makes a huge difference in games and do you have any kinda of budget you wish to spend on the upgraded.

setter · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:20

All you need is a new gpu, the 640mb 8800 gts isnt a great card for modern games, cpu wise you have a perfectly capable chip in the e8400, an upgrade to a quad would actually be a downward step, your limited to the 65nm quads on 680i boards. And even then, you wont get much of an overclock on a quad with a 680i board, possibly the worst quad clocking boards ever, sadly ive been down that particular path.

snakeater · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:28

I was thinking no more than £500 for an upgrade? Of course I'd probably want it to last a year of being able to max out settings other than AA naturally.

So just updating the GPU will tide me over for a little while?

My concern arises from seeing things like the Metro 2033 required specs...

Fallen god · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:34

Well this is what I found

Recommended:

* Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
* DirectX 10 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 260 and above)
* 2GB RAM

And with a new Graphics you should be fine i think. You could then save later for a full upgrade or something.

Anyways i recommend getting 5850 should hold you over for awhile

Asus ATI Radeon HD 5850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£224.99

snakeater · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:37

Fallen god said:
Well this is what I found

Recommended:

* Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
* DirectX 10 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 260 and above)
* 2GB RAM

And with a new Graphics you should be fine i think. You could then save later for a full upgrade or something.

Anyways i recommend getting 5850 should hold you over for awhile

Asus ATI Radeon HD 5850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£224.99

Recommended:

Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
DirectX 10 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 260 and above)
2GB RAM

Optimum:

Core i7 CPU
NVIDIA DirectX 11 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 480 and 470)
As much RAM as possible (8GB+)
Fast HDD or SSD

Optimum is what I meant, but I guess that is pushing it for pretty much everybody! Guess I'm looking at a GPU upgrade like the 5850 then, thanks.

setter · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:52

Id have a read at this thread here in graphics cards.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18127041

Concerns metro 2033 and a user with an i7 at 4ghz and an ati 5870.

Fallen god · 20 Mar 2010 at 22:59

snakeater said:
Recommended:

Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU
DirectX 10 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 260 and above)
2GB RAM

Optimum:

Core i7 CPU
NVIDIA DirectX 11 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 480 and 470)
As much RAM as possible (8GB+)
Fast HDD or SSD

Optimum is what I meant, but I guess that is pushing it for pretty much everybody! Guess I'm looking at a GPU upgrade like the 5850 then, thanks.

Or you could wait abit and see how the 470 compares to the 5850.