Worthwhile upgrade from 5870?

[n111ck]

What is a worthwhile upgrade from a 5780?

I have a 650w PSU but it only has 2 x 6 pin plugs (not 1 x 6 and 1x 8 if that makes a difference).

Gaming at 1920 x 1200 with a 3.16 C2D.

(Not intending to upgrade the CPU until next year.)

 

[Admiral Huddy]

What CPU do you have, as this does make a difference?

 

[n111ck]

Its a 3.16 Core 2 Duo.

I dont think there is much I can do on the CPU front without a new motherboard, ram etc so just want to change the graphics at the moment.

The card will be a present and should get around £130 for the 5870 so not too fussed on cost.

 

[Predicament]

Two options the way I see it:

buying a second 5870 and putting it in XFire

Or buying a gtx 580

I figure these are going to yield the biggest gains.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Forget graphic upgrade until you get a better CPU/platform. 5870 is still plenty fast enough for 1080p, and your current CPU is what letting your down in some games, as the 5870 is not performing to its full potential with the dual-core holding it back.

 

[FrancesoNoir]

A GTX 580 would be limited by your CPU IMHO, something like a 6950 (ideally a revision 1 flashable card) or a GTX 560ti would be an ideal sweet-spot upgrade with that CPU for around £200 or £190 respectively.

EDIT but yeah mostly agree with Marine-RX179 above, a CPU upgrade should be first port of call really.

 

[Marine-RX179]

A GTX 580 would be limited by your CPU IMHO, something like a 6950 (ideally a revision 1 flashable card) or a GTX 560ti would be an ideal sweet-spot upgrade with that CPU for around £200 or £190 respectively.

But the problem is that GTX560 and GTX 6950 2GB are pretty much around the same level performance as the 5870, so it's more of a "sidegrade" than "upgrade". Even with overclocking and flashing, I doubt he's even gonna notice the little higher performance on the GTX560 and 6950 2GB (flashed to 6970) with his current CPU at the current speed.

 

[n111ck]

If I stayed with the 5870 what would be a good upgrade in terms of CPU?

I have a P182 case and 650w PSU that I would want to keep - along with the 5870 and an xfi sound card.

I would want something that it going to last a couple years for gaming - then I could upgrade the card next year.

I know nothing about the i series CPU's.

 

[joxang]

If I stayed with the 5870 what would be a good upgrade in terms of CPU?

I have a P182 case and 650w PSU that I would want to keep - along with the 5870 and an xfi sound card.

I would want something that it going to last a couple years for gaming - then I could upgrade the card next year.

I know nothing about the i series CPU's.

If you want to keep the motherboard your psu can easily handle a quad core. Q6600 or even a Q9650 off the bay would be a significant upgrade for gaming, especially if you OC.

Also depends on what you use the machine for. If you do cpu intensive things like rendering, then upgrading to the new Sandy Bridge processors would be a better idea. If you just game then quad core 775 would give you very similar performance per clock.

 

[n111ck]

Hmmmm the Q9650 seems like a good idea - I had assumed the i7's were significantly better for gaming.

What would be a good card to go with it - in the £250 - £300 range - or would I likely see a big improvement with my 5870?

 

[brigzilla]

Hmmmm the Q9650 seems like a good idea - I had assumed the i7's were significantly better for gaming.

What would be a good card to go with it - in the £250 - £300 range - or would I likely see a big improvement with my 5870?

Remember how old the core 2 platform and LGA775 is now, My previous system had a Q8400

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-281-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567

aswell as a pair of 4870's (so very similar to a 5870 give or take) and I found quite quickly that my processor was still bottlenecking my GPU's, when the CPU sometimes hit 90/100% usage, Really you should save some money and get a Sandybridge or 890 platform , they can be built for relatively cheap now

 

[Marine-RX179]

I agree with brig consideration toward SandyBridge. That's nothing REALLY worth upgrading 5870 this gen, as the performance gain in terms of investment (or cost) vs performance gain is quite poor.

Here's some Crysis results with various CPU, and all are done on a single 5870:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/10

Your Core2Duo at 3.16MHz would be same as the result of the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition at stock speed 3.3GHz at best. Granted it is 1680x1050 res, so it goes to show the capability of faster and newer architecture CPU.

 

[joxang]

Hmmmm the Q9650 seems like a good idea - I had assumed the i7's were significantly better for gaming.

What would be a good card to go with it - in the £250 - £300 range - or would I likely see a big improvement with my 5870?

Utterly no point in upgrading your gpu. Unless you're playing in eyefinity or a massive res.

Game performance with a cpu upgrade depends entirely on the game - games like BC2, Wow and SC2 use a lot of cpu power so you'll be able to hit 100+ fps with an i7/sandy bridge. However, overclocked Q9650 + 5870 should easily get you above 60fps in pretty much most games.

If we're talking about value for money, with your current motherboard and gpu, you could last at least another year just by getting a second hand quad core off the bay, and you can wait for the next-next gen of cpus (and the next gen gpu architecture) before upgrading.

EDIT:good thread to read: http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/958184-q9650-4ghz-vs-2500k-4ghz.html
Q9650 vs 2500k iin BC2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiqS341ibbc