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Upgrade advice (video card, or new system?)

chron

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Right now I'm working with an E6600 at 3.4GHz on an Asus P5W DH Deluxe running 3GB of RAM on Windows XP, with an 8800GT.

Should I just upgrade the video card or do I need to start looking at upgrading my guts? Can I get by a few more years with the games coming out?

Specifically, I'm looking at BFBC2 since I enjoyed BF2 so much (when it worked right.)

What do yall think?

thanks for your time :)
 
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Well for an immediate result in higher FPS while playing BFBC2, my two cents would be to upgrade your video card..
 
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I say a new video card as well, but I will add in that you might think about upgrading your OS while you are at it...Win7 X64 is pretty damn good IMO. :toast:
 

chron

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Thanks for the replies guys. I think I might go with one of the higher end ATI cards then.

JATownes makes a good point though about upgrading to windows 7. How important is it to have more than 3GB of ram these days?
 

JrRacinFan

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Average gamer uses 4GB. Also, AFAIK, there isn't any single game/benchmark that would utilize over 1.5GB of resources. I think it's fair to say you could game on 2GB but loading would be slow and you may have microstutter due to paging files. With upcoming games, 4GB would eb the way to go.

As far as your rig is concerned, more and more games are beccoming multithreaded. Your dual core would keep up nicely but a tri/quad and above would help tremendously.

This is all dependent on which games you play/will play/plan on playing.

The question I have for you is, what's the max res of your monitor, how much do you game, and what type of games do you play? Anything MMO?
 

chron

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Average gamer uses 4GB. Also, AFAIK, there isn't any single game/benchmark that would utilize over 1.5GB of resources. I think it's fair to say you could game on 2GB but loading would be slow and you may have microstutter due to paging files. With upcoming games, 4GB would eb the way to go.

As far as your rig is concerned, more and more games are beccoming multithreaded. Your dual core would keep up nicely but a tri/quad and above would help tremendously.

This is all dependent on which games you play/will play/plan on playing.

The question I have for you is, what's the max res of your monitor, how much do you game, and what type of games do you play? Anything MMO?

I'm more into first person shooters. The max resolution I'll be playing at is 1920x1080.

I honestly don't game THAT much anymore. I play left4dead a LOT. I was looking at this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125316

But there's no reviews lol
 

JrRacinFan

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Ok, you're going to need tons of FPS for your FPS games.

The most inexpensive upgrade I think you could make would be a new 5770 OR a secondhand 4890. Not counting out the GTX275 also.


What power supply are you currently running on? How old is it?
 

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FIRST what res do you game at?
 

chron

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It's an OCZ GamerXStream 750watt. Probably about 3 years old now.

I also like racing games a lot. I'm eyeballing dirt2. The 5870 is dx11, and dirt2 is, and BFBC2 will be right?
 

JrRacinFan

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Sorry JR I missed it...

I am using a 5750 right now (I got for a friend and am testing it out) It was $100 Openbox (even came with Dirt 2, lol)
and at 1920 X 1200 its pretty dam nice.

I also use a 9800GT (same as the 8800GT) and at lower resolutions its fine for todays games, so if you have a 22" or smaller LCD I wouldnt change anything..

The GPUs are going up $$, wait till they go back down to get any of them...
 
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chron

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I am using a 5750 right now (I got for a friend and am testing it out) It was $100 Openbox (even came with Dirt 2, lol)
and at 1920 X 1200 its pretty dam nice.

I also use a 9800GT (same as the 8800GT) and at lower resolutions its fine for todays games, so if you have a 22" or smaller LCD I wouldnt change anything..

The GPUs are going up $$, wait till they go back down to get any of them...

I think I've settled on buying BFBC2 first, then seeing how well it runs on my 8800GT. If I can't stand it, I'll go ahead and upgrade and then from there, someday i'll upgrade to windows 7 and more ram.

I wasn't aware 5770 was DX11 (I guess that shows how out of it i've been) so I'm definitely considering this card as well. The only reason I want something DX11 is simply so I don't have to mess with it later when I upgrade to windows 7 :)


Thanks everybody!:D
 

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i disagree my 8800gt i can handle any game up to 1920x1200, that's with no aa/af, with all graphic settings at high, gta iv i avg 65fps avg. crysis medium to high, bc2 all high, never had a game yet i could not run smoothly, he needs to upgrade cpu, to a high clock dual core, or a quad
 

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clock that e6600 high as it will go, even then your still bottleneck, by the processor, unless u hit 4ghz, which is highly unlikely with a e6600
 

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I think I've settled on buying BFBC2 first, then seeing how well it runs on my 8800GT. If I can't stand it, I'll go ahead and upgrade and then from there, someday i'll upgrade to windows 7 and more ram.

I wasn't aware 5770 was DX11 (I guess that shows how out of it i've been) so I'm definitely considering this card as well. The only reason I want something DX11 is simply so I don't have to mess with it later when I upgrade to windows 7 :)


Thanks everybody!:D

with SLI disabled i get a solid 30FPS but you must disable HSAO to get decent performance at 1920X1080 :toast:
 

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i disagree my 8800gt i can handle any game up to 1920x1200, that's with no aa/af, with all graphic settings at high, gta iv i avg 65fps avg. crysis medium to high, bc2 all high, never had a game yet i could not run smoothly, he needs to upgrade cpu, to a high clock dual core, or a quad

I use mine on 1920 X 1200 too..
I honestly don't game THAT much anymore.
a 5870 is sooooo overkill for you
 
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Corduroy_Jr

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hes only getting 30fps, because both hes cores on the e6600 are throttling at 100% usage, that's called a bottleneck, look up bc2 system requirements, it states a quad core
 
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hes only getting 30fps, because both hes cores on the e6600 are throttling at 100% usage, that's called a bottleneck, look up bc2 system requirements, it states a quad core

At 3.4ghz? I'd like to see a screenshot of the task manager first.
 

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erocker are u asking me to prove, if both cores actually do max out while playing bc2, sure let me shut 2 cores down at 3.4ghz
 

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a snappy coming up
 
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a snappy coming up

I was asking the OP, but I would appreciate it. Now that you said you're going to provide a pic, I believe you. What resolution monitor though?
 
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Buy are a HD5770, 4GB kit RAM and Windows 7 home premium!
 

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just 1600x1200 all high settings
 
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