What to do....? *Upgrade Question*

Davepen

Davepen

Davepen

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Hi,
Currently have an E6600 with 4gb ram, 8800 gtx and 24" monitor.

I updraged my monitor to 24" from 19" recently and have found that upping the resolution has caused some newer games to slow down considerably and I want to upgrade.

The question is:

Should I upgrade my graphics card? Or wait till I have enough cash to also upgrade the cpu (probably to a i7)?

See Im not sure that if I do upgrade my graphics card (probably to something like the 4890 or gtx 275) whether I would then be bottle necked by the CPU?

Im abit out of the loop when it comes to processors, are the i7's much of an improvement over the core 2 duo's?

Thanks ^^
 
If you give that E6600 a nice overclock and buy something like a 4890, you'll see a big improvement.

Unless of course, you can afford to go i7. :D
 
Just go for the gfx, the CPU should be fine if you OC it and wont bottleneck, pretty much all games are still GPU dependant, either get a 4890 or if you have cash a 4870x2, or their NVidia equivalents, though imo with prices atm ATI make most sense
 
If you get a I7 processor you will have to get a new motherboard and atm there £200 + i would just get a new GFX card do you overclock your E6600 ?
 
Well do you have a budget at the moment? Helps if we know how much money we have to work with :p

But like others have said, the best thing you could do is get a new graphics card, a 4870 or 4890 would be great to be honest and at the current prices are a right bargain!!

An upgrade to i7 would see a massive improvement in performance, but its gonna cost you probably over £500 for the cheapest mobo, RAM, CPU and new heatsink for it. And then you'd still have the old 8800gtx to upgrade to match :p
 
Thanks for the input guys ^^

The budget is kind-of non existant due to holiday plans, but probably got about £170 to blow.

I dont currently overclock my e6600, but its on a stock cooler, will this be sufficient for 3ghz? Or would it be worth my time investing in a new cooler?

By the sounds of things getting a new card would be a good idea, ideally I want an GTX295 or 4870x2 but do not currently have the cash.

I do plan on upgrading my entire computer sometime between now and christmas, so if I buy a cheaper card, and then go on to get a new i7 build, will the cheap card then be my bottleneck?! :s
 
With that budget i'd say get this overclocked gtx 260 and a titan Fenrir cooler.

The good things about doing this is -
- You can overclock your CPU (Aim for atleast 3.2Ghz) and keep it cool
- Good graphics today
- The cooler will happily cool the new rig you plan to get (i7 maybe?)
- The graphics card will run very well with an upgraded rig and you can add a second in SLI of you want more power (SLI gtx 260 = performance of gtx 295)
- Its in budget
 
So your non existant budget is actually a budget of around £170? :p

Yea, if you want to overclock you could probably do with a better cooler, the Sunbeam is a good cooler for around £30.

That leaves £140 for a graphics card. Prehaps a 4870 1Gb?
 
Ahh, actually cmndr andi's idea of the Fenrir that you can still use later on an i7 rig seems better than my suggestion of the Sunbeam, ignore mine haha
 
Well my budget should be non existant, as if the gf found out I was buying stuff instead of saving for the holiday Id get a punch :)
 
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