Upgrade - when?

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
160,211
Hi guys,

Some tasty games coming out before Christmas - NFS Undercover, Far Cry 2, another installment of Crysis, Red Alert 3. Excellent.

Obviously I'd like to run these games at their best with acceptable levels of detail and a silky smooth framerate at my 22" LCD's native resolution of 1680x1050.

I'm concerned that my PC might not be up to the job - after all I've had the same CPU for 18 months and 'lesser' versions of the graphics card in my machine can now be bought from OcUK for just 45 quid.

So I guess what I am asking is.. do I need to upgrade? If so, what sort of thing would I need to look at to provide a noticeable performance upgrade? Is there anything on the horizon within the next 6 months thats worth waiting for or looking out for, bearing in mind I honestly can't be bothered to spend £200 on a single CPU these days (Although I would for a graphics card) so it's unlikely I'd be preorderng a bleeding edge processor.

Current spec:

Abit IP35 Pro
Core2Duo @ E6750
4Gb OCZ Platinum
BGF 8800GT OC 512Mb
Corsair HX520W PSU
Soundblaster XFi Xtreme Music.

I need to get back up to speed with hardware really. I've been out of the loop for ages and I've no idea whats hot and whats not anymore.

Cheers!
 
just stick a new graphics card in there as long as your PSU will cope with it and batmans your uncle !

Apart from crysis maybe which makes Robin Cry
 
Is there anything out there that offers a considerable performance gain over my 8800GT?

I take it my CPU is still reasonably current?

Is it worth replacing my motherboard in order to purchase another 8800GT for SLI?
 
Is there anything out there that offers a considerable performance gain over my 8800GT?
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The GTX 280 is about 100% faster and the Radeon 4870 isn't far off. Your CPU is still great for modern games though.

A new graphics card and you are set imo
 
The price hammering that NVidia has take makes the 280 GTX an attractive purchase. Particularly for Crysis. Failing that a HD 4870.

CPU is still good.
 
This is sounding a heck of a lot cheaper than I thought :D

Looking at benchmarks an 8800GT SLI setup consistently outperforms a HD4870.

At £90 for another GT and £100 for a compatible motherboard it seems to have similar cost to just going for an HD4870?
 
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I think "consistently" is the problem here, SLI may work better in benchmarks but SLI doesn't work well in all games (apparently). I'm not sure if this has improved at all recently.

If you go SLI you may need a 600W PSU, but the 8800GT's are pretty low power so your Corsair should be fine. :)
 
I guess the big problem with SLI is I'd have to ditch my perfectly functional utterly stable P35 board and get something NForce presumably?
 
and your buying old graphics cards.

get a 4870 and when it starts to slow down add another on your current board.
 
Think you should just go for a single 4870 for the time being, you can pick them up for ~£150 from MM. That and your current rig will run everything at your native res.
 
It would seem mad to change a P35 mobo now, as you said, it's perfectly functional and stable. I'd get an ati 4870 now, and wait until Bloomfield and X58 mobos to change your motherboard, as they are a new socket.

Your current board supports 16x and 4x crossfire (slot 1 runs at 16x, slot 2 at 4x) I think it is pci-e 1.0 though.

Your cpu isn't holding you back in games, your gpu is the ebst bang for buck to see improvements. It'd definately be worth taking an afternoon to get your cpu running a nice overclock, though.
 
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As mentioned by everyone else... I would make sure your CPU is overclocked to a stable setting and purchase a slight o/c'd 4870. Your system spec is more than capable to excel at running the future titles at your resolution.
 
panthro said:
Think you should just go for a single 4870 for the time being, you can pick them up for ~£150 from MM. That and your current rig will run everything at your native res.
Click to expand...

I suspect this might be better off in graphics but... is the only difference between 4870 models the level of memory on the board?
 
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