worth while upgrading for PC games?

Dark_Angel

Dark_Angel

Dark_Angel

Soldato
Joined
12 May 2005
Posts
12,631
WEll, I will probablly upgrade ram.motherboard/CPU but not sure if its worth really pushing the boat out with a decent graphics card, or keeping with what I have (an x800XT) there are a few games I want on the PC (hells gate, C&C and a few others) but is there anything that is worth really the 200 - 300 for a GPU?

I really want to upgrade from my venice at 2.7 and 1GB of ram, because I do photosop and various other things, and basically would like the system to be a bit more "nippy" but, really, is there anything that I should be excitted about, or would the fact that I will get a wii around march time (and that I own a 360) be enough to make it so that just the CPU+ram will be ok, and forget the games on the PC?
 
The cheaper option would be to drop another 1GB in there. I run :-

Athlon64 3200+ 'Venice' @ 2.4GHz
A8N-SLi Premium
2GB Mushkin PC3200
6600GT 256MB PCI-e

After I dropped in the other 1GB I found that most things, including Photoshop 9 CS2, worked a lot quicker. Plus, games run pretty decent at higher settings even though my GPU is getting on a bit. I can run FEAR and BF2 at max settings easily, the only thing turned down is soft shadows and the lighting. Both set to medium!
 
For gaming, GPU is king. In terms of return on your investment, by far the best upgrade you can make is GPU since pretty much all games are gpu-limited at high res/AA/AF.

As an example, spending an extra £50 on gfx card compared to an extra £50 on CPU or RAM (higher speed rating / lower timings) will make far more difference in terms of gaming performance.

Now, a new mobo/cpu/ram will make a big difference for general windows work, PS, apps, encoding etc but for gaming, it won't be that huge a difference.

Maybe one option would be to keep your existing mobo/RAM and get an X2 CPU and an extra gig of RAM? This would give a big boost for photoshop etc and might free up some extra cash to allow you get a good gfx card, i.e. x1950xt-256 or better.
 
Hmmm, truthfully there would not be much point in it. I only have an AGP 939 at the moment anyway ;)

Besides, a x2 is about 100 or so, which is the same price as conroe, I may as well sell what I can to friends or whaterv then grab a new CPU/ram. I was thinking of going for a Conroe board that has an AGP slot and PCI-E, and keeping my x800. I just dont know if there are any games out/coming out that wouod make me think "wow, I need to get a better graphics card to play them"...

I am not talking of the min specs, I am more talking about are there any OMG amazing games, (NOT MMORPG's) coming out on the PC? I know there are a few, like Hellsgate and C&C but is there any others?
 
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