About time to upgrade?

A

adamadekat

Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2004
Messages
527
Hey guys,

Well, with all of these new games out I am sad to say I haven't really had the chance to play them in all of their glory (because my 6800 GT recently died), I'm starting to think if it is time to upgrade my rig. The main problem is I still have an AGP setup, and the mainstream is now PCI-Express. I know I can sell my ABit IC7-G and Geforce 6600 for a little over $100, and I also got some cash for graduation. My questions are...

Is this the right moment in video card evolution to purchase a new gaming rig?
Should I go with a SLi mobo and purchase a 7900 GT?
Should I just purchase a SLi mobo and wait for the 8000 series to come out?
Should I purchase a SLi mobo and buy one eVGA card, and then step-up?
...I want to make sure my purchase is worth the while.

The reason I ask these questions is that I know certain series in video card evolution have been deemed useless, mainly from the games that were coming out at the time. For example, the FX series -- Waste of money, I purchased an FX 5200 and it worked perfectly for CS which is all I played (and it seemed those were close to the best graphics offered at the time)...so basically the FX 5950 Ultra was no use. Another I kind of think is a waste is the 7000 series because no new innovations have come out yet really, now the SLi technology adds muscle to the technology, but still...Really I think the games right now can be run perfectly fine in most of any current game's greatness on the 6000 series...
 
If I were you I would wait until conroe comes out.. It should be out soon...
 
Purchase an SLI ready motherboard definitely. Since you want something that is worth while, it'll give you the chance to add in that second card if you decide you need a performance boost. As for the cards? Well thats a tough one to answer since theres so many out. I say the best bang for the buck would be the 7600 GT which has SLI capability. Go for an AM2 platform motherboard since thats the new reference design for AMD's or wait for conroe.
 
If you are waiting for the newest stuff to come out, then you will always be waiting. The only exception to that is right now AMD and Intel are set or are releasing their newest processors. Now i too am waiting to upgrade my system at home because im running an old 2500+ with a 6800 and you know what....it runs BF2 just fine....maybe not at super high resolutions but at a level where i score in the top 3 about 75% of the time.

I used to want to go balls to the wall and get the latest and greatest most expensive hardware out there, but then i got a little older and realized that that little higher resolution isnt really going to make that big of difference.

Personally if I were you, i would yes wait until the new processors are ofically out and then if you want SLI get a couple mid range cards. With the mid range cards like a couple 7800's you can get them for the price of one good 7900GTX and get better performance. Having built a nice SLI rig at work (where i can spend the boss's money and not mine :D ) i built it as a performance video machine (or so i said) but then tested it with the games i play and found that yes the resolutions were higher and yes it was nice but after about 30 minutes of gaming the newness and coolness wore off and i was just playing my game the same way i did at home, same scoring patterns and no real advantages after spending probably 1000+ more than what i spent at home.

So to make a long story short, wait for the new processor but dont break the bank trying to keep up with all the hard core junkies out there. Keep reading the articles here and see how cool it looks on a super big monitor and envy it just a little but remember that it isnt the machine that makes the gamer, its the gamer that makes the machine.
 
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