is it viable to upgrade my video card?

Hyperian

Limp Gawd
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Mar 20, 2006
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My current system is a c2d E6300, 4gigs of ram, mobo is P5B-E, and video card is a geforce 8800 GTS 640MB (old stuff)

I want to upgrade my whole system to something like a i5-2500k, 8gig ram, one of the P67 motherboards, a new case and a new video card, but that's gonna cost about 1 grand and i dont want to spend that much money right off the bat. my eventual set up i want would be a triple monitor with a single card. (not interested with 2 card set up)

I believe i can go for either radeon 6870 or 6950, but they are around 100 dollars difference. (which seems like big since they are next to each other in charts)

now I am not going to play games with 3 monitors, like ever, i would use them for coding and what not. but i would play games with 1 monitor.

would getting a radeon 6870 or 6950 be a big improvement in gaming or would I be choking the card because the rest of my system is so old? or would i have more room if i upgrade everything else but a video card? or should i wait because there's something coming out later this year?
 
If you're running that C2D E6300 at stock, a much faster card might be severely CPU limited. You could see some performance and quality benefits with a faster card and it's up to you to decide if the video card upgrade is worth it for that. No matter what card you get, some demanding games just won't play well while you still have that C2D E6300.
 
What resolution do you play at? If you are going to upgrade your system, either of those cards would be a substantial upgrade. Do what you can to upgrade your cpu/motherboard/memory and see what you have to work with after that. Even a $100 5770 would be a good upgrade over your current 8800.
 
You would see a great improvement going from a 8800gts 640mb to a 5770. Anything more your cpu will choke it. You could also sell your cpu and drop in a cheap used quad core to have even more of a upgrade. That would easily double your performance for about 200$.
 
i like the idea of the quad core and 5770, but then i dont want to upgrade to yesterday's hardware. i rather wait and get a more of a leap.

I play games at native LCD which is 1280x1024, when i get a new monitor it will probably be 1080p.

i run my e6300 a stock. i dont OC, my case sucks too much to do it.
 
You might look up if your motherboard will support a Pentium E6800, its a very cost effective upgrade, moving you from .. 1.8? to 3.33 ghz, for less than $100. I think then you coud bump your video card to something like a ATI HD5770 or maybe a GTX 460 1GB for another $120, and have a much more powerful system for less than $250.

If you decide later to upgrade you can take the video card with you and pawn off the rest.
 
Well, the 8800GTS was a good card in its day. But given todays standards, just about anything is an upgrade. If you can afford around $150 to $200, the GTX 560 would give you about a 140% performance upgrade. This place can probably help you... its effective for comparing a current GPU and trying to figure out what the heck you want to buy (gpubench

The good news is, your card is still in the Top 100 GPUs, lol. Its like #68.
 
Ideally upgrade everything at once. While a 6870 or 6950 would undoubtedly get you more frames in games, you likely wouldn't be rocking playable framerates if you aren't close at the moment because of your cpu and your low res. Waiting normally results in lower costs, but this is not guaranteed or predictable. If you really need to upgrade (and if you are playing modern games you do), the best time is usually now, but maybe wait for amd bulldozer, i think it's pretty close now.

(IMO)
 
Definitely viable. Get a AMD X3 or i5 quad-core for gaming and a GTX 460 video card. If you go the AMD route, you can save ~$100. Ram is cheap nowadays, though you will want triple channel. I'd say you can get a new system for under $400.
 
My current system is a c2d E6300, 4gigs of ram, mobo is P5B-E, and video card is a geforce 8800 GTS 640MB (old stuff)

I want to upgrade my whole system to something like a i5-2500k, 8gig ram, one of the P67 motherboards, a new case and a new video card, but that's gonna cost about 1 grand and i dont want to spend that much money right off the bat. my eventual set up i want would be a triple monitor with a single card. (not interested with 2 card set up)

I believe i can go for either radeon 6870 or 6950, but they are around 100 dollars difference. (which seems like big since they are next to each other in charts)

now I am not going to play games with 3 monitors, like ever, i would use them for coding and what not. but i would play games with 1 monitor.

would getting a radeon 6870 or 6950 be a big improvement in gaming or would I be choking the card because the rest of my system is so old? or would i have more room if i upgrade everything else but a video card? or should i wait because there's something coming out later this year?
See my sig, I did similar even though my base cpu is a tad beefier. Also came off of a 8800GTS 640MB original.

Witcher 2, 1280x800, minimum settings, unplayable.

$210 Upgrade to 560TI

Witcher 2, 1920x1200 native, high settings, smooth.

Was a huge increase in performance. Maybe some GPU power is wasted, but the game doesn't appear to be maxing my CPU, so maybe not *shrug* either way, not concerned as it got me what I wanted. May do a more comprehensive upgrade, minus GPU, when the next major microarchitecture launches, Ivy Bridge.

Games are generally GPU dependant. What games are you struggling in?
 
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i like the idea of the quad core and 5770, but then i dont want to upgrade to yesterday's hardware. i rather wait and get a more of a leap.

I play games at native LCD which is 1280x1024, when i get a new monitor it will probably be 1080p.

i run my e6300 a stock. i dont OC, my case sucks too much to do it.

OK, no overclocking? I would at least grab a used e8400 cpu for about 100$ and add a used 5770 for another 80$. That would still easily be 2x faster than what you have, for 180$. At your 1280x1024 resolution it would play 90% of games at high setting at a decent framerate.

If you were to go for the full system upgrade, I suggest you wait till after September, I believe when the new AMD Bulldozer cpu's launch, you can pick up a much better quad core based system for cheap.
 
Well, your cpu will choke a 6950, but its not like it will not perform well at 1080p.

I'd say get the vid card first and the 2500k later, hopefully p67 boards will drop in price now that the z68 is out.

BTW I think your $1,000 bucks figure is a tad high. I bet you can get a 6950 a 2500k, a z68 mobo and 8gb of memory for under $800 bucks.

A quick check on newegg and I can easily get it all for under 650 dlls.
 
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thanks for all the replies, i might just go with getting a video card for now, and wait for CPU/mobo/ram later

i thought triple channel is only for certain i7 processors?
 
You could do some second-hand upgrades on the cheap...

I upgraded my E6400 to Q6600 G0 for about $40 net a couple of years ago by being patient and waiting for the right CPU to buy on ebay. (I also have/had a P5B-E). You could also possibly find something like a used GTX260OC (if you want green team) or 5850 (if you want red team) for a good price too. I thought my GTX260OC was fairly well matched to my Q6600G0 for 1920x1200 gaming. Only in later games with heavy AO and tesselation did it start to show trouble (like JC2 with all the toys turned on).
 
Go with the nice GPU my friend. You may get a bit of choking from your CPU, but even with it you will still see a very big performance boost right out of the gate.

I wouldn't bother with the 5770 at this point. Eventually you're going to have to upgrade all your parts. Whenever that time comes (the new GPU will probably buy you another 6 months), at least you'll already have your GPU covered then.
 
you could grab an AMD 990 board or 890 board and an Athlon II X3 for about 175bucks unlock it to quad and give it a mild OC and youd notice a diffrence overnight
 
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