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Worth updating graphics card?

ajf

ajf

ajf

Soldato
Joined
30 Oct 2006
Posts
3,067
Location
Worcestershire, UK
Currently have 512Mb Radeon HD 4850 and E8400 @ 3.8Ghz 8Gb RAM.

Purchased a couple of newer games (Skyrim, COD MW3) off Steam recently and finding it is starting to struggle on full res and detail - monitor at 1920x1080.

Based on the CPU and RAM would just upgrading the graphics be a useful and wise move?
If so what would be the recommended cards without spending mega bucks? Say upto £200 (at a push).
Happy with another ATi or go to Nvidia if better value or features etc.

Andrew
 
I would sell the E8400 and the 4850 on the members market and look on there too to buy a Q6600 or Q9550 or even Q9650 and maybe even a Graphics card like a 5870, 6950, GTX 560Ti or an GTX 570.

OR even sell what you have and update to a i5 2500k if you can. If you can't the Q6600 @3.0ghz and Q9550 @ 3.6-3.8 Ghz and Q9650 @3.8ghz-4ghz are great chips.

Your CPU is the bottleneck aswell as your current GPU for modern games.
 
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Id upgrade your CPU first. I think if you may be risking a bottle neck.

I think the Q6600 is quite popular. Maybe check an auction site or the MM. Any Core2Quad core should do the job.

For the GPU. If you can afford a GTX 560ti, id say that.

Though, if you are upgrading your CPU the GTX 460 should still carry you.
 
Just make sure your motherboard can take the Q9xxx series and can support quads like the Q6600. You didn't mention the motherboard and chipset you have.
 
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Thank you for the feedback and comments.
The board is an Asus P5q pro and pretty sure it can take all Core2 Quads.
Not wanting to go to an i5 setup at the moment as can't really afford that much at present.
 
Purgatory said:
I would sell the E8400 and the 4850 on the members market and look on there too to buy a Q6600 or Q9550 or even Q9650 and maybe even a Graphics card like a 5870, 6950, GTX 560Ti or an GTX 570.

OR even sell what you have and update to a i5 2500k if you can. If you can't the Q6600 @3.0ghz and Q9550 @ 3.6-3.8 Ghz and Q9650 @3.8ghz-4ghz are great chips.

Your CPU is the bottleneck aswell as your current GPU for modern games.
Click to expand...

Didn't everyone ditch Q6600 and get E8400s as they where better for games as they clocked higher ?

Are newer games now better coded to deal with Multi cores over higher clock speeds ?

I'm basically in the same boat as the OP
 
Toms HW review basically says for Bf3, there is little difference between a dual core or quad, So compairing a i3 to an i7,

So would a E8400 @ 3.8 not offer very similar performance to similar to an i3 @ 3GHZ ?
 
Couple of extra interesting comments as I had wondered myself from more reading. I will say that looking at my task manager the two cores on mine are running at about 90% max, but I assume games as mentioned are better coded now for extra cores?

Looking at a Q6600 on MM so if I get it for a fair price I'll try the two and see which is better! Can always sell it on :)
Might look at a better card anyway as well if I can get something cheap to try.

Andrew
 
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