Would you upgrade this spec?

NotAGolf · 10 Sep 2010 at 13:31

I've had the following for a good few years now:

Core2Duo E6420 @3GHz
7800GTX
OCZ Modstream 450W
ASUS P5N-E
Geil 2GB PC6400 DDR2

I've also recently bought a 22" Benq monitor which is 1920x1080.

I want to upgrade the whole lot but I'm saving for a house so I think that has priority! Currently it handles all my needs fine apart from gaming. The 7800GTX is obviously past it's best and now I've bought the new monitor it can't handle anything new.

So I was wondering if you would upgrade the graphics card? Obviously I want to but I'm put off for 2 reasons:
- Not sure the PSU is up to handling anything modern.
- Even if I get a new card, the rest of the system isn't up to scratch and might bottleneck, or even just not let me play any decent games.

I don't have any games in mind really, so can't check the spec. Haven't really played anything released since 2007-2008. Only games I'm really interested in are FPS.

What do you think?
Thanks for any help.

95thrifles · 10 Sep 2010 at 13:37

You should be ok dropping in something like a 460, PSU should still cope, and no it wont really be bottle necked, certainly not in FPS which are heavily gpu dependant

NotAGolf · 10 Sep 2010 at 19:12

95thrifles said:
You should be ok dropping in something like a 460, PSU should still cope, and no it wont really be bottle necked, certainly not in FPS which are heavily gpu dependant

Is there anyway you can check whether the PSU will be up to it, as I would be quite surprised if it could. And I'd be royally cheesed off if I bought it and it couldn't power it!

I forgot to mention that I'm still running XP as well, does that count against me at all? Obviously win 7 would be better but that's another ~£80

vsmora · 10 Sep 2010 at 22:19

According to a few tests I've seen, a complete 460 system peaks at approx 330W from the wall. This is equivalent to around 270W load on the PSU, which is only 60% of a 450W PSU's capacity. If you find your PSU struggles at such low loading, then you'd do well to replace it for a better one anyway.

Also you won't be able see the best from the card as XP can't run DX10.