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Would appreciate your opinion.

Dark_Angel said:
I would highly recommend *not* going SLI.

Now in particular is a bad time with ATI and NV preparing their "new" cards. Which will out perform the current ones.

I would recommend if you need to get a GPU now, a single 8800GTS. Save the rest of the money and just sell it and grab the latest range of cards a month or so after releases, when prices should be a little more stable.
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I hear you.
Substitute an ASUS P5E X38 motherboard for the Striker Extreme ??
 
uvmain said:
You're wrong again.

A 8800GT would be *completely* bottlenecked by a FX60 in modern games.
He'd notice a small performance increase, for the money.

Upgrading to a C2D setup and keeping the grfx would give a *much* more noticeable performance increase, for ~the same price.
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No it wouldn't...

At 1600x1200 (the OP's Res) the 7950 GX2 is the bottleneck regardless of FX 60 or a C2D.

Stop telling people they are wrong again all the time when you are not even correct yourself.

Upgrading to a C2D and keeping his current GFX would not yield the results you claim.

I would argue that installing a 8800 GT and running a FX 60 would be faster than running a C2D and a 7950GX2 at 1600x1200.


easyrider
 
I wouldn't bother personally, you have a well balanced system at the moment and going from a 7950gx2 to a 8800 wouldn't give that huge a boost except for games where SLI doesn't work properly.

Save your pennies and then update the whole lot in one go (Core 2, 4gig+ RAM, high end gpu).
 
HangTime said:
I wouldn't bother personally, you have a well balanced system at the moment and going from a 7950gx2 to a 8800 wouldn't give that huge a boost except for games where SLI doesn't work properly.

Save your pennies and then update the whole lot in one go (Core 2, 4gig+ RAM, high end gpu).
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I would whap in a 8800GTS (£138)and sit tight for Nahelem.

His current chip etc... is hardly slow when current games are GPU bound.
 
I would also go against SLI at the moment.

Personally if buying an nVidia chipset I would wait for a 780a board, it has this thing called HybridPower whereby you can shut off the graphics card and run through the onboard graphics when not doing something 3D, resulting in great power saving. Only problem is you can't run 2560x1600 through it, but that'd be ok for you.
 
well his chip fx would be same or a bit faster than a c2duo 6400 so unless he going to over clock the nuts of something its rather pointless at moment just wait a while till newer cards come out.already been proven aswell hat if amd you need a cpu of 2.8 ghz for say a gtx.
 
Guys

If you read my updated post, I am going to upgrade CPU/MOB now due to my main hard drive crashing on me.

Any advice you can offer on the components I'm thinking of using would be appreciated.

cheers and thank you again for replying
 
bagman said:
Guys

If you read my updated post, I am going to upgrade CPU/MOB now due to my main hard drive crashing on me.

Any advice you can offer on the components I'm thinking of using would be appreciated.

cheers and thank you again for replying
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A hardrive crash does not mean a new system.

Read my posts.
 
its been pretty much proven that a fast cpu over a graphics card does not improve performance much, you will get higher max fps but the minimum fps which is what counts doesnt budge much. Unless your talking of a game that likes cpu speed like the HL2 engine etc, other than that it wont make a huge difference.

Then it really depends how old the CPU is, look up and there is usually not much difference from slightly older to newer cpus.

I can vouch for the fact faster graphics is better than cpu for games, because my 8800 GTX was definately slower than my 2 8800 GT's.
 
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ASUS Striker II Extreme NF 790I LGA775 board
Corsair Twin 2x 4096mb 240-pin DDR2 XMS2-6400 RAM
INTEL Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16ghz CPU
ANTEC 650w Truepower Trio power supply
2 x 8800GTS cards.

IMO, skip SLI, and get a good X38/48 board, then go ATI when they release their new cards - use your current vid card till you buy the new cards. Get the E8400 - the 8500 holds little OCing benefit over the E8400 once OCing (which i assume you want to do). Get a better PSU, ie Corsair HX620 or better
 
easyrider said:
I would whap in a 8800GTS (£138)and sit tight for Nahelem.

His current chip etc... is hardly slow when current games are GPU bound.
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I agree, an FX-60 is no slouch which is why I'm not recommending a platform change at this time. But equally I don't see laying out £140 on a GTS512 as that great a move when he already has a decent gfx card. It's only a modest upgrade, I'd be waiting to see what happens in the summer in terms of new cards.
 
:D Wow some of the replies in this thread are hilarious. The CPU only comes into it with UT3 and Supreme Commander. The only time someone will become CPU bound is at a low resolution when using a good graphics card. I don't know why anyone never mentioned this in all the debates I've been reading through in this thread?.

I was playing at 1600x1200 with my m8's GTX before I bought mine and this was on a X2 3800 @ 2.8Ghz with 1gb of DDR400 @ 466. I feel no difference at all at the resolution I play at (usually higher than 1600x1200) and the games between my PC now and the PC before. Maybe I've gained a few FPS in the odd title but the point is that my old system and a GTX ran everything smoothly and it's all I ask for when playing any title. Games ran smooth on my new PC also so I don't see the CPU boundaries that people are talking about in here.

If someone has the 8800GTX and a resolution of 1280x1024 then you'd maybe need a 4.5Ghz capable Intel CPU to get the full performance of the GTX. This is well known though. At 1400x900 it would maybe be down to 3.5ghz and for 1600x1200 I can confirm that my 2.8Ghz dual core AMD gave me a great experience just as my 3.2Ghz Intel CPU does now. The 4.5ghz and 3.5Ghz figures is just a guess as I feel it will be different between titles.

When the games that you play require a better CPU then get one. Not before.
 
Hi there
Thought I would update what's happened with my setup.
Have kept the 7950GX2 for now and have updated to the following:
Intel C2D E8500
ASUS P5N-D motherboard
Crucial (1gb x 2) Ballistix DDR2-800 PC2-6400
Silverstone 1200W PSU
Zalman CNPS9700NT CPU cooler

A friend lent me a BFG9800GTX OCX card to try but unfortunately either the mob was not compatible or the card was a defect....had major PC lock-ups when using it.
With the 7950GX2 back in, no problems.
I'm thinking it was a defective card.
Will await the new models next month to see which way I go with the GPU.

Mind you, those "old" 8800GTS cards that were released last Dec still look good in SLI.

cheers
 
gurusan said:
Nice, and how do you like the change?
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non game related stuff is running much smoother with the faster CPU.
Havn't noticed that much of a difference game wise (e.g Crysis extra 2fps) so will be interested to see how things improve when I get a n ew card.

Of course not all games have been loaded yet due to the reformat, so only time will tell.

So far I'm impressed

cheers
 
It makes sence to upgrade the cpu mobo and ram now, then the gpu l8er. You can get a better graphics card in a few months time, no point getting a current GPU as your 7950GX2 plays most game well enough apart from crysis and not even a 8800GTS/9800GTX :p can play crysis at full.

Even if the next gen card don't bring enough horse power our, current gpu prices will be cheaper so it's win win if u have the cash plus making a new rig is fun hehe.

edit haha didn't see the dates lols

well all you have to do is wait for ati and nvidia to bring out the new cards.
 
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