Upgrade - when?

[[TW]Fox]

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!

 

[[TW]Fox]

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?

 

[[TW]Fox]

This is sounding a heck of a lot cheaper than I thought

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?

 

[[TW]Fox]

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?

 

[[TW]Fox]

get a 4870 and when it starts to slow down add another on your current board.

My current board doesn't support Crossfire I wouldn't imagine?

 

[[TW]Fox]

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.

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