Worth upgrading my gfx card?

[Tombles]

Hi all,

I have been out the computer scene for a while now but have recently felt the need to go for a slight upgrade. However i cant upgrade my whole system due to money but i just bought a Samsung SM-206BW monitor and want things to look good on it and want your advice if it is worth upgrading my graphics card to help this.

My current specs are: -

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice
Asus A8N SLI Deluxe mobo
1gb Geil ram (will be upgrading this)
HIS ICEQ II X850XT

I am on a tight budget and have about £200 to spend and was really wondering if it would be worth upgrading the graphics card or if my other system specs will cause it to not run as it should.

Sorry if it doesnt all make sense, i really havent got much of a clue on PC's these days and they keep changing so fast its hard to keep up.

Any advice appreciated.

Many thanks

 

[blakka]

The graphics card you have is decent however if you want to run things with all the eye candy turned up to the max it will struggle. For around £170 you can pick up a Nvidia 8800GTS gfx card which will run todays games and the near futures games very well. If you don't mind having games on low-medium setting then I don't think you need to change your card.

An extra gig of ram will definatley help things.

Your cpu, and mobo is fine mate.

 

[Darkwave]

I'm going to second the 8800GTS, and the 640MB model can be had for little over £200 now which will help in 1680x1050 if you plan to use antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. I have the same monitor, and trust me, it helps.

You're going to need to overclock that CPU a bit though if you want an 8800GTS to run at its best, but I seriously doubt you'll notice a big difference even if you don't.

 

[Tombles]

Thanks a lot guys that helped a bunch!

Will look into a 8800gts 320mb and see if i can push the boat a little further for the 640mb.

Thanks again

 

[Darkwave]

Will look into a 8800gts 320mb and see if i can push the boat a little further for the 640mb.

Don't get me wrong, the 320MB will still do the business in 1680x1050 very well if you don't go mad with the antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.

When you find out how good the 8800 Series image quality is and that you could be running 8x antialiasing, gamma-corrected, with supersampled transparency though, you might well wish you had gone 640MB.

 

[*Chris]

Don't want to spoil the party, but your processor might prove to be quite a bit of a bottleneck.

I have a 3800+, upgraded my GFX card recently and didnt notice much of a difference (not the difference i was hoping for, anyway).

Might be better to invest in an updated CPU + Mobo rather than spending more cash on a faster gfx, but then again, neither option is particularly future-proof.

(Benchmarks imply i would get a 70fps increase minimum at most res's in COD2 with an E6600)

 

[blakka]

I wreckon he will notice more difference going from a x850xt to a 8800 than a 3500+ to a C2D.

 

[Darkwave]

I wreckon he will notice more difference going from a x850xt to a 8800 than a 3500+ to a C2D.

I concur, especially if he overclocks his 3500+ a reasonable amount.

 

[Uriel]

Ditto. In my opinion, CPU bottlenecking is an issue only when it drags your framerate below whatever's playable. Until just before Christmas I was using an A64 3000+ @ stock and the only game I'd noticed a CPU bottleneck in was Oblivion, and only when I knocked some graphics settings down.

People often say matching your CPU and graphics card is a must. I'd say running a graphics card that copes with your monitor's native resolution is more important.

 

[Tombles]

Thanks guys

I was a bit worried about bottlenecking but if its not going to be THAT bad and the graphics card will improve my system then i will opt for that.

If it is struggling a bit i can possibly look into getting a new mobo and cpu at a later date.

 

[blakka]

If it is struggling a bit i can possibly look into getting a new mobo and cpu at a later date.

Before you do that, get yourself a good air cpu cooler, and get overclocking on that cpu, should be able to get 2.7ghz out of it, or more if your lucky.