[ADNoland]

Well I'm curious as to what I could upgrade to that would run well and not be constricted with my current system, if there is even much of an upgrade I can get. I thought about upgrading my mobo, cpu, and ram, but that's abit more costly lol.

Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
OCZ DDR2 800 2x1024GB
OCZ Platinum XTC DDR2 2x2048
BFG Tech GeForce 9800GT 512MB
EVGA nForce 780i
Corsair 750TX PSU

This is my current setup, and I was wondering about possibly upgrade to a gtx 260 or better. Would my system be able to handle it or is it just not worth it until I upgrade the system with a new motherboard, processor, etc. This system has served me excellently, but it's starting to show it's age.

Thanks!

[Advertisements]

Yes your machine could handle it, also it might be worth considering the Q9550 as well...

Does that mean you have 6GB RAM in total?

[Troy]

Yes your machine could handle it, also it might be worth considering the Q9550 as well...

Does that mean you have 6GB RAM in total?

[ADNoland]

yes, I have 6GB total. Just two different ones that work together

Starting to have a little trouble running newer games, excited for Bad Company 2 and want it running smooth for online play. Considering a GTX 285 I know I could get a Radeon card cheaper and faster but I've always used BFG cards and their products and customer service has always been excellent.

Edited by ADNoland, 15 February 2010 - 08:49 AM.

[Troy]

Long as your case is up for some good airflow and has the space, it should be fine.

[ADNoland]

I have a CM Cosmos 1000 and it's huge, I think it should fit. I spent some time looking at 5850s and 5870s last night, the price and performance is hard to ignore.

Edited by ADNoland, 16 February 2010 - 06:50 AM.

[Troy]

Very true... Have you looked up Tom's Hardware graphics chart?

If not perhaps read through the article, hierarchy chart is near the end. It's a good read and they update it monthly.

http://www.tomshardw...-card,2544.html

[ADNoland]

Yeah, I stared at it for awhile then stared at newegg for awhile comparing prices and companies lol.

[Troy]

Yeah true, a bit of research and you can usually find a good deal. Obviously a card higher up on the list for cheaper is what you're looking for!

Let me know how you go.

[ADNoland]

Well I'm thinking about waiting maybe another month and see if nvidia will release their new GPU, maybe drive the prices of current ones down?

[Troy]

Possibly... possibly not. I cannot predict the market (obviously) and I usually don't recommend playing the waiting game - you may end up in permanent waiting mode!

But of course, your call.

Troy

[SpaceInvader75]

I have almost the same card (EVGA instead) and it looks like that would be the bottleneck in your system with games, since you have a quad core CPU and plenty of RAM.

I haven't done too much research but the 5750s look good to me. Unfortunately I have never used an ATI card. The first one I tried looked comparable to the 9800GT I replaced it with, because I never got it to work. After dealing with no phone support and having to wait to RMA the ATI card I decided to just buy another NVIDIA locally, because I was tired of waiting. I might have still tried ATI but the local store didn't have the ATI card I wanted.

The downside of that was I had to pay about $50 more, but at least if I had anymore problems I could just take it back to the store. I wish had the chance to try it out because it had good reviews. I edited this because I realize I was incorrect on some of my ATI numbers after looking at reviews again.

I can play GTA IV but the frame rates are really low. I suppose the CPU/memory could be affecting performance in my case but considering graphic detail is almost all the way on low I suspect the card.

I have to upgrade my motherboard to get a faster CPU so I was going to try to keep this card a little while when I do so. I'm curious to know what games you are playing now and how the performance is?

Edited by SpaceInvader75, 18 February 2010 - 05:09 AM.

[SpaceInvader75]

I wonder if this card is worth the money?

Radeon HD 4850 X2

[ADNoland]

Games run fine for the most part, I can run Crysis on high decently, but if I start trying to run something Like STALKER Clear Sky, on high, then it'll start to chug, alot. I can play most modern games on medium or low, I have to play GTA4 with a mix of low and medium settings. I can run Dawn of War 2 on high with rare slowdowns. X3 Terran Conflict runs beautifully, as long as I disable BOINC from running in the background So all in all, most things are fine, for now.

[SpaceInvader75]

Well, that's good to know. The only game I can really compare with you now is GTA IV (have you checked the frame rates?) I noticed I was averaging under 20 while driving around, so if the game runs better for you that may indicate my video card is not a bottleneck on my system. I just wish my motherboard was newer, but oh well. lol

I could download the Crysis demo again to test that out. I left the graphics on whatever default they were, and that was before I upgraded my hard drive so I took it off to make more space for games. I might even buy that game, it was pretty fun. I didn't even finish the demo cause I got the full version of Unreal Tournament 3 and started playing that more, but I think the graphics (and probably the campaign) are better in Crysis.

I need to see if the rest of my system can handle Dawn of War 2. The best I can do without upgrading the motherboard/CPU/ram is put another GB of ram in, due to my 32 bit operating system. I think the CPU is going to be the weakest link though.

[SpaceInvader75]

Have you looked at the hd 4890? I looked at some benchmarks and these scored near the top of the chart, but the problem is the only one I could find had only 1 reviewer:

hd 4890

Oh, here's the chart I was looking at. It looks like it was recently updated. The confusing thing I noticed is that it appears the hd 4870 actually beats the hd 4870 x 2?

PassMark GPU chart

I'm editing this: I found the XFX card on another site with more reviews, most of them good. I think it got 4.5 stars. If I end up upgrading my video card any time soon I'm really thinking about this card now, even though it doesn't have Direct X 11. You can see more reviews here:

XFX 4890 (crossfire supported)

Edited by SpaceInvader75, 18 February 2010 - 10:00 AM.