7900GTKO>GTS250>GTX550Ti

A

afronumeric

n00b
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
38
what up new to this forum but known about it for 7+ years.. anyways..

looking to buy newer GPU. trying to setup a 2nd gaming rig for my GF lol.... right now I have a GTS250 I paid 130$ at frys maybe 2 years ago.. ITS GREAT, plays BF BC2 @ 1920x1200 on my 23inch display at Med-High graphics on winXP dx9. (tried win7 dx10) didn't like it, didn't notice any difference)

last night I picked up a GTX550Ti for 130$ at frys.. Looked up some comparison charts, its better then the GTS250 but I was thinking of spending around 200$ for something better... Any Ideas??????

is it GTX>GTS>GT ?? I know GTX is highest but was not sure whats better out of GT vs GTS
 
yes gtx-gts-gt is the order from high to low from one generation to another so far.

gtx550ti is really worth more around the $100-110 range.

7900gt to a gts250 is a good 3x faster or more.

gtx550ti is maybe about 30-40% faster than a gts250.

around 200, i would look for a gtx560ti or hd6950 (after mail in rebate); otherwise if you dont want to deal with rebates, then it would be either a gtx 560 (non-ti) or hd6870.

those cards should be around 2x faster than the gts250.
 
Last edited:
right on so far guys, thanks....

my other specs are as follows....dont laugh, its old but its good.... for me

socket939 abit fatality an8 sli delux
athlon x2 4200+
2gb corsair xms + 1gb ocz premier series
10k rpm WD raptor
500watt psu

I run games on dx9 and winXP, but have dual boot for winSeven but I tried to game on win7 and only took performance hit (laggy) and didnt notice any graphic increase with dx10.
 
oh ya and I just picked up a opteron 165 to overclock, trying to keep my system alive a little longer =)
 
you "upgraded" from an Athlon 4200 X2 to an even a slower Opty 165? even with overclocking you will not be running some modern games smoothly. its WAY past time for you to upgrade to a newer pc.
 
crap - forgot about asking for his specs; op, not worthwhile to upgrade your gpu until you upgrade your cpu first. your athlon x2 is going to hold back (A LOT) any of the recommended gpus. and why did you get an opteron?

first, return the gtx 550 - you have little to gain from going to that from a gts 250 on your cpu; then use the 200 you were going to spend on a new gpu towards a new cpu-mobo-ram combo; when you are ready to buy, sell your old parts and use that money towards your new build. either wait for bulldozer next month or get sandy bridge now. that is my recommendation. otherwise, just stick with your athlon x2 and gts 250 combo until you save the funds up for a new cpu upgrade (at least a quad).
 
Last edited:
afronumeric said:
oh ya and I just picked up a opteron 165 to overclock, trying to keep my system alive a little longer =)
Click to expand...

lol, you went from 2.2GHz to 1.8GHz, that's not an upgrade.

As the others have said, you need a new processor, mobo, memory, etc. as there is nothing left to keep alive on a socket 939 system.

Getting a new graphics card isn't going to net you squat in additional performance.

Upgrade those items first, then we will talk GPUs.
 
aw man, not what I was wanting to hear :(

I picked up the opty cause the fatality M\B and silverstone case (which mounts the motherboard, upside down, and on the reverse side) has a wind tunnel with 2 large intake and exhaust fans , is geared toward overclocking. which I got for free......

then my 4200 went into my shuttle XPC case, but then turned out that PCI-e slot is burnt out, never the less, it still has onboard grahpics.

I am so old fashioned , I remember games being mostly GPU dependent. not cpu

On the otherhand, I just aquired a new ASUS "compaq" motherboard I thought was socket939, but found out its socket AM2, with a 3800+ single core!
 
Games are mainly GPU dependant. However, that doesn't exclude the CPU platform from action, either. That's why a "balanced system," is always recommended.
 
games still are mostly gpu dependent but that does not mean outdated cpus can run them smoothly. none of those cpus even meet the minimum requirements for many newer games. even if you do meet the minimum requirements those old cpus will not handle most games smoothly on anything but low settings thus defeating the point of getting a decent gpu.
 
I kind of noticed the minimum requirements are around what my specs are....

I play mostly out dated games as it is..the most newest games I play are COD4, that came free with my gts250, BF bc2 is prolly teh newest game. and I plan to play Planetside 2 and maybe bf3 when they come out.. as of now I do only game on winxp dx9, as my system is old and does not game as well on win7.... I wonder if those newer games will drop support for dx9 people.. THEN I would be forced to upgrade. was also thinkin about checking out Civ IV or V , whatever one that just came outt =)
 
afronumeric said:
aw man, not what I was wanting to hear :(

I picked up the opty cause the fatality M\B and silverstone case (which mounts the motherboard, upside down, and on the reverse side) has a wind tunnel with 2 large intake and exhaust fans , is geared toward overclocking. which I got for free......

then my 4200 went into my shuttle XPC case, but then turned out that PCI-e slot is burnt out, never the less, it still has onboard grahpics.

I am so old fashioned , I remember games being mostly GPU dependent. not cpu

On the otherhand, I just aquired a new ASUS "compaq" motherboard I thought was socket939, but found out its socket AM2, with a 3800+ single core!
Click to expand...

It's not that games are CPU reliant, the CPU has to have the processing power to feed the GPU the information necessary to process the game at appropriate resolutions and refresh rates.

A 1.8GHz X2 939 does not have the necessary processing power to feed any modern gaming GPU the necessary data to run above 15fps.

A Core i7 @ 2GHz with only one core active would run circles around your Opty 165 OCed to 3GHz. That's the difference in processing power. ;)
 
oh ya, almost forgot to mention.. reason I picked up the GTX550ti was to have a 2nd gaming computer so my gf can play something with me, maybe something like champions online or along those lines, something a girl would play.. u know?
 
There is nothing wrong with buying a modern GPU. Just remember though that there will be no increase in performance when moving to a newer GPU with such old processors. It will work fine, but it will be the exact same as the old GPU (no increase in fps).
 
afronumeric said:
I kind of noticed the minimum requirements are around what my specs are....

I play mostly out dated games as it is..the most newest games I play are COD4, that came free with my gts250, BF bc2 is prolly teh newest game. and I plan to play Planetside 2 and maybe bf3 when they come out.. as of now I do only game on winxp dx9, as my system is old and does not game as well on win7.... I wonder if those newer games will drop support for dx9 people.. THEN I would be forced to upgrade. was also thinkin about checking out Civ IV or V , whatever one that just came outt =)
Click to expand...
for old games its fine. you mention BF3 though and you can 100% forget that as early indications are it will be killing even dual cores that are over 2 times faster then what you have. your cpu is below minimum requirements for even BC 2. oh and BF3 will not have DX9 support.
 
stayed up until 6am messing with my 3 socket 939 desktops and came to the conclusion that OK... I will buy a new M|B , CPU and RAM.

you guys are right on something else too.. I ran benchmarks for 3dmark 06 and the GTS250 yields the same score as the GTX550TI!

but on another note. I installed BFBC2 on WinSeven with the DX11 card GTX550ti and it ran smooth! @ 1920x1200 MED settings w\ 3gigs of ram installed, only 1.25GB was being used at all times!

BUT here some some more questions.. I quickly noticed AMD CPU'S are half the cost of an INTEL I7. is anyone going to judge me if I go AMD? seems most of you guys are running I7's
 
Intel holds the top end of the CPU market by a fair amount currently. The i3 2100 dual core processor outperforms quad core AMD phenom II chips in terms of gaming on a regular basis. But thing to do is find your budget and post in the General Hardware section for suggestions.

Just to give you an idea, I went with an i5 2500k, MSI mobo and 8 gig of DDR3 ram for about $360 which is going to be so much more powerful than your current 939 setups it's not even funny. It was about 4x more powerful than my pentium dual core e2180 at 3ghz which was about 4x more powerful than your 939 setups.

On the GPU side you should stick it out with the 550ti for another couple months if you can as the new AMD chips will help push the prices on the current lineup down. I'm hoping to get a 6950 2gb for under $200 in October or November.

Don't forget to make sure your current PSU is quality enough to run new components a 6-7 year old 500w PSU probably isn't going to cut it if it's weak on the 12v rail.
 
I recently sold my media center which was a 4200+ like yours. After all was said and done it was only about $60-80 to upgrade it to i3 2100 (I did buy an open box mobo though so it might cost you a little more). The dual core 939's still go for a decent amount and the ddr does also, since ddr3 is so cheap you can basically sell 2gb of ddr and get 4gb of ddr 3 for free. The 4200+ will get you a cheap h61 mobo and the 939 mobo will pay for some of the i3 2100.
 
sounds like a plan, but I always liked the idea of having a 2nd gaming rig for a guest or my GF. although space is a factor at this apartment.. maybe I will get rid of it all. I have always wanted the M11X alienware.. I would look else where, but the AW has light up keyboard, not many others do =x
 
As much as I'd like AMD to be competitive, they're simply not right now. The price on the Phenom II x6 and x4 980 needs to drop to $120 to be competitive with the i3 2100. I've built four i3 2100 systems this year for friends and one for my HTPC. They are remarkable chips that do well for gaming on a budget.
 
oh... from what I remember, buying AMD, you got more for your money vs an Intel comparable chip. right now the best bang for the buck is Intel? shoot
 
for <$100 price, AMD processors have good value.
there's been some deals recently for the 3 year old Phenom II x3 720 for $65 or the Athlon II x3 440 for $60.

The sad part is, I helped a buddy build his x3 720 system 2 years ago and we got his processor for $80. Not much of a drop.

I won't build a computer for people who have that small of a budget though.
 
sorry to bring up my one month old post.

but people here were telling me the GTX550 would not improve my computer at all. I returned the GTX550 and now run my GTS250. ever since that... BF BC2 will not run smooth on windows 7. I am back to windows XP and the GTS250 on BF BC2.

so u dont have to scroll back, system specs

amd athlon socket 939 4200+
2 + 1 gb of ram.

I play on 1920x1200 on my 23inch apple display, med-high settings.

MAYBE I will tone down BF BC2 settings on windows7, cause really.. I need to switch over already.
 
Why are you running on XP? Switch back to Win 7, that's probably half of your problem.

I don't understand why so many people think that XP is faster than 7.
XP is far more bloated, less secure, and far more inefficient at everything than 7 is.

Seriously, go back to Win 7, then we'll talk.

Also, your CPU/mobo/memory is a huge bottleneck. That's the other half of the problem.

You're trying to play games on a 10 year old OS and on a CPU which is 6 years old. Time to upgrade. :rolleyes:
 
okay, well your def wrong about win XP being "bloated" if anything windows 7 is bloated.

all I am saying is, I get 30+ fps on win XP, and win7 I get 10fps on battlefeild bc2. this is with GTS250

with the GTX550, (not sure what FPS it runs, didnt have fraps yet) but it ran perfect on win7

where as, people here are claiming my CPU and DDR1 is bottle neck and I would have zero performance increase with GTS250 vs GTX550.
 
The people here claiming your CPU and RAM are the bottleneck are seasoned professionals, whereas you're some kid who's only been here for less than a month.

Your CPU and RAM are holding back your video card quite a bit. I had an old AMD Athlon 64 3200+, and it wouldn't even play Mass Effect 2 with an 8800GTX, I don't even want to know how it would have handled BC2. It's time for an upgrade, simple as that.

And yes, AMD's current processor offerings are several generations behind intel now, though that's set to change with the release of BD.
 
My weakest machine (a Core 2 Duo @ 3.8Ghz, 4GB DDR3, 2x8800GTS-512mb) will tear yours to shreds....and it's still to slow for me. Upgrade your CPU and RAM (the GTS-250 isn't too bad to survive a CPU/MoBo upgrade) I'd say a Phenom II x4 965 (NewEgg hads them for $115 after coupon code http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727 ) tie that together with a good 9-series mother board ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157262&Tpk=ASRock 970 ) and for about $220 (a bit more than that "GTX"550) you have yourself a nice machine with an upgrade path to 4/6/8 Core Bulldozer in the future. Granted you need ram, but I got 8GB for $30 at www.mwave.com (check them out, the ram deals rotate around). I'd say get an X2/X3 and try to unlock it, but the x4 965 is so fairly priced right now probably thanks to the i3-2100.
 
TheOneKnownAsMe said:
The people here claiming your CPU and RAM are the bottleneck are seasoned professionals, whereas you're some kid who's only been here for less than a month.

Your CPU and RAM are holding back your video card quite a bit. I had an old AMD Athlon 64 3200+, and it wouldn't even play Mass Effect 2 with an 8800GTX, I don't even want to know how it would have handled BC2. It's time for an upgrade, simple as that.

And yes, AMD's current processor offerings are several generations behind intel now, though that's set to change with the release of BD.
Click to expand...

AMD chips are not several generations behind. I have two Sandy Bridge rigs and two AM3 rigs and in gaming and general computer usage, there is no difference between them in performance. And yes I know that the Intel's are faster chips in benchmarks, but the AMD's are no slouch and are more than capable of satisfying performance.
 
afronumeric said:
okay, well your def wrong about win XP being "bloated" if anything windows 7 is bloated.

all I am saying is, I get 30+ fps on win XP, and win7 I get 10fps on battlefeild bc2. this is with GTS250

with the GTX550, (not sure what FPS it runs, didnt have fraps yet) but it ran perfect on win7

where as, people here are claiming my CPU and DDR1 is bottle neck and I would have zero performance increase with GTS250 vs GTX550.
Click to expand...

hmm, win xp shouldnt be too diff from win 7 performance in bc2. you sure you are using the same settings? are you using the same drivers as on win 7? is bc2 defaulting to dx10settings in win 7? if you run the game in dx9 in xp and 7 with the same drivers, performance should be very similar on the same card and the rest of your components. i recommend you should troubleshoot further before drawing any conclusions. when you had the gtx550, did you compare performance btw that card and your gts250 in bc2 with win 7? that would have shown if there was a performance increase and if so, how much. just a thought.
 
^^ Makes sense. In XP he's running DX9 since there is no DX10 support. And on Win7 he's for sure running in DX10 if he didn't edit the config files.
 
rUmX said:
^^ Makes sense. In XP he's running DX9 since there is no DX10 support. And on Win7 he's for sure running in DX10 if he didn't edit the config files.
Click to expand...
yeah and BC 2 will run much faster on slower cpus and gpus in DX9 than DX10. if he just forced DX9 for the game when using 7 then his performance would have been basically the same as in XP.
 
afronumeric said:
okay, well your def wrong about win XP being "bloated" if anything windows 7 is bloated.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not wrong. XP is beyond obsolete and very bloated compared to all other OSes on the market today.
You NEED to move to Win 7 and edit your config file to run DX9, not DX10, hence the "slow down".

Yeah, your CPU and RAM are obsolete as well.
I can't stress this enough: Your system is 6 years old and your OS is 10 years old.

You NEED to upgrade. What don't you understand about this?
It's no wonder you are getting 10fps, I'm amazed you even get that on such an archaic system. :rolleyes:

If you want better performance, your CPU/mobo/RAM and OS all need to be upgraded.
/thread
 
If you want better performance, your CPU/mobo/RAM and OS all need to be upgraded.

he said it!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top