Any worthwhile upgrade path for me?

R

Remote

Weaksauce
Joined
May 31, 2009
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I haven't upgraded cpu or video card for a long time now and am not sure what is available that is going to give me some good bang-for-the-buck so thought I would ask you guys if you think there is anything worth upgrading to at this point in time.

I currently have Asus P5K mb, 4GB ram, C2D running at 3.4GHZ and 4870 512mb vid card. I do not want to go SLI so please don't suggest a second 4870. SLI is a PITA IMO.
If it is going to only give me minor performance increase then that does not interest me either. :)
 
I already gave the relevant info on my rig. Nothing else affects speed so no point in posting the other devices I have. OK, I use 22" LCD so 1680x1050 is my default res. It is for gaming purposes. I run all kinds of games, including demanding flight sims like FSX. I'm not asking for equipment to buy for anew build either, just wondering if there is a newer cpu or video card I could easily upgrade to that will give me some appreciable FPS differnece. My guess is probably not.
 
We like to know all of the components of your system, as well as the age of the parts, so we can narrow down the upgrades that you need. You probably want a new video card for gaming, but for all we know, your current power supply may not be able to handle the new upgrade. What about the processor? We know that it's a Core 2 Duo, but which Core 2 Duo? And what speed is the RAM? Are you using RAID? Do you just play FSX all day, or do you also play some of the newer FPS games like Crysis and/or L4D?

Please answer the questions listed in the sticky. In addition to those:

11) Which games are you (planning on) playing?
12) Which level of visual quality would you prefer?
13) Do you plan on buying a new/larger/multiple monitor(s) soon? If so, what did you have in mind?
14) How long do you want to keep this computer for?

They may seem pointless to you, but they help us fine-tune our suggestions to fit your needs.
 
Eh...I'd wait a bit to upgrade unless you have some game not performing satisfactory. I don't know what that CPU is. I assume it is OCed to the max. Maybe a q9550 will be a decent upgrade but still...eh...unless you have money to blow nothing is really worthwhile to upgrade unless your games scale to quad cores. Anyway, Q9550 seems to be the only real worthwhile upgrade. Wait for next generation cards to come to upgrade your video card.
 
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Remote said:
I already gave the relevant info on my rig. Nothing else affects speed so no point in posting the other devices I have.
Click to expand...

sounds like you are the guru here. why bother asking for help if you know everything?
 
posting what you plan to do with it is the only way to tell whether or how you should upgrade
 
OP, to be honest, maybe buying a 275 or 4890 and a quad core, providing you can clock it up to near the what you are getting on your core 2. Even with that, you are still not really going to see dramatic improvements from those upgrades I mentioned at 1680x1050 except in games that make use of quad cores or games that are vid mem limited for AA by your current card. The current crop of games that came out recently are just not the system killers Crysis/Warhead are.

I have a core2quad at 3.0 Ghz with 8 gigs of ram. I also game on a 22" @ 1600x1200. I upgraded from a 4870 512 to a 4890 1gig. In FSX I noticed almost no improvement aside from just seeming smoother, it is rather a CPU limited game when you turn up the air traffic. In FPS titles, (primarily Source and UT engined games), I did notice I was able to use higher levels of AA without sacrificing frame rates. I got a much larger boost in FO3 though.
 
ATI video cards can't do SLI. :rolleyes:

IMO get a bigger monitor or better speakers / headphones. Or switch to 8GB+ of memory if you have a license for 64-bit Windows.

Hard to say more than that unless you give us some real info on your applications for the system.
 
ATI cards can do SLI, they just call it Crossfire instead, same thing as SLI though. My mb is a Crossfire mb so I could put in a second 4870 if I wanted to.

My PSU is Seasonic 600w and is SLI certified.

My C2D is E8400 Wolfdale 3.0ghz stock and is OC to only 3.4GHZ. Probably can do more with voltage tweaking.

My ram is Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X4096-6400C5 4GB DDR2 2X2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 5-5-5-18 240PIN Memory Kit

I play everything from Crysis to Empire:TW to hex wargames to racing sims to flight sims. HTH.
 
Isn't much you can upgrade too... Better to wait a few months and get ATI's next gen of video cards and Intel's i3/i5 CPUs.
 
The simplest upgrade you could do right now would be to buy a second HD4870, used, for CrossFire. Though Crysis and FSX can utilize a quad-core, it's not a necessity.

However, I agree with lt_shiro that it's better to wait a few months for the new parts to arrive.
 
Remote said:
ATI cards can do SLI, they just call it Crossfire instead, same thing as SLI though. My mb is a Crossfire mb so I could put in a second 4870 if I wanted to.
Click to expand...
Another 4870 might not be bad if you want an upgrade now. OC your CPU to the max. It should hit around 4 ghz.
 
I said in my first post I don't want to do Crossfire because of possible issues. I see that game ArmA2 is causing people issues with SLI/Crossfire right now. I had one of those 7950GTX cards and that caused me some grief too so would like to stick with single GPU only. Thanks for al your opinions and the one I am going to go with is those who said to wait a few months longer and then decide. I may try to OC my cpu to 4GHZ as I know other people have gotten the same cpu up to that speed but even if i reach only 3.8GHZ that would make me happy as it is still a free upgrade. Thanks again.
 
I see no point in upgrading. That is a very fast system as it is.

I'd wait a year and a half and then buy a new one.

Unless your favorite games happen to be Crysis, FSX and ArmA 2, you can pretty much max out everything out there with ease.
 
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