Upgrade advice

[ShadowFold]

Should I stick with my cards, get a Phenom II 710 or sell both my 4830's and get a 4870 1gb and get another later on.

It really depends what your after - do you feel that your 4830's are not up to spec for what you do? If so, grab a 1GB 4870 and then maybe another down the line. Also, aren't the phenoms meant to be poor overclockers?

[farlex85]

Well, knowing the way you rotate parts this really is up in the air. You've already had a PII I think and already had a 4870 at one time (or a 4xxx something), so it's really just what do you feel like playing with. Processors are more fun to tweak imo.

[ShadowFold]

Uhh no. The lowest I've seen a Phenom clock was 3.6ghz. I could easily get a 710 to 3.9ghz. I think I have a processor bottleneck but I'm not 100% sure.

Originally Posted by farlex85

Well, knowing the way you rotate parts this really is up in the air. You've already had a PII I think and already had a 4870 at one time (or a 4xxx something), so it's really just what do you feel like playing with. Processors are more fun to tweak imo.

I have had a PII and it was a lot faster than my kuma. I just didn't have my 4830's when I did so idk if that's the bottleneck or not.

[farlex85]

Originally Posted by kyle2020

It really depends what your after - do you feel that your 4830's are not up to spec for what you do? If so, grab a 1GB 4870 and then maybe another down the line. Also, aren't the phenoms meant to be poor overclockers?

The phenoms were, the phenom IIs are around core 2 level oc'ing.

Originally Posted by ShadowFold

I have had a PII and it was a lot faster than my kuma. I just didn't have my 4830's when I did so idk if that's the bottleneck or not.

I mean, if you really want max performance of the two cards you'll probably want a PII 940 or back to (dare I say it) C2Q land. That said, you could always go more and more powerful, but I don't think that necessarily constitutes a bottleneck. In other words, I think your current set-up is fine and you'd see little gain from going to an x3, but you may, and it's something new to play w/, so....

[Tatty_One]

I went for the 4870, simply because, in the real world, at your 1920 res, there is no CPU bottleneck really (that does vary from game to game but does generally apply), yes if you were gaming at lower res possibly my vote would have been different, I dont know what you use your sytem mostly for, if it's gaming you are likely to see more benefit from your $ with the card upgrade.

[ShadowFold]

I can't RMA my dead 940, I wish I could tho.. I'm leaning towards the 4870 right now tho..

[HolyCow02]

I went with the 4870 since getting a triple core won't show much over your dualie, and 4870's are /going to DROP in price later this week. So definitely 4870, but wait until thurs/friday