Do I have the power?

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ritch1

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 1, 2005
Messages
112
Hi

I'm in a situation where I'm not sure if i need a full upgrade or just a new graphics card. i was pleased with my 4890 but am looking for silky performance on new games, i'm very fussy about lags in frame rates.

so i'm basically going for a top end card. My current system is running a Quad Q9550 overclocked to 3.80Ghz with 800mhz memory. i could probably squeeze a bit more overclocking out of it if i knew what i was doing lol.

will this be powerful enough or would you suggest i upgrade to a core i7 or something? my power supply is 650 so assuming i might need to upgrade that as well. im basically looking to get a GTX580 or wait for the 6900 series.

thanks for any pointers
 
A quality 650W PSU should be plenty for a single GTX 580. What is the make and model though? Also what resolution do you game at?
 
its a Corsair so decent, I spent around £80 on it a year or so ago knowing a decent PSU was a big plus. it think the cooling is pretty decent as well which is why i could probably overclock more, the case is massive so good airflow. but before getting into all that i wanted to know if its worth it, or just better to upgrade to a newer processor

thanks
 
In the current state of PC gaming where the majority of titles being put out are Consoles ports, you really don't need a beefy rig. Your Q9550 is a great CPU especailly at almost 4GHz, take that 4890 up to something like a 5850 or GTX 470 and you can kill almost any game out these days. Core i7's are great chips and the X58/P55 platforms are monstorus. But don't waste your money if you're not going to take full advantage of it, i would recommed moving over to i7 if you're not just focused on gaming but you plan on doing a lot of other CPU intensive things on there, CAD, Photoshop, Benchmarking etc. If your main goal is gaming, i'd keep the overclocked Q9550 until the games you want to run start to bog down significantly, then analyes the market at that time and find the right price for performance you need.

A 650w PSU is right on the edge of running an i7 and GTX 580 setup (with little to no overclocking). So if you plan to upgrade to the i7/ GTX 580 setup at some point, then i'd definitly grab at least a quaility 750w PSU, or maybe even higher to get some room to grow.

I don't think you should worry a lot about bottlenecks, as there will always be some sort of bottleneck in a system. Now to prevent from any big ones, it is best to spend equallity on both CPU and GPU to have the best balence in a system. Now your current overclocked Q9550 should play pretty well with a GTX 580, you may not see all the performance it has to offer but nothing to weep over. Also what monitor resolution are you gaming on?, because you could probably save yourself a few bucks by going with a good bang for buck card like a GTX 460/470 or 5850 that can run well at pretty high res and bot have as big a botteneck as using something like a 580.
 
Q9550 @ 3.8 ghz should not significantly bottleneck a single GTX 580 so you should be fine.
 
id like to game at 1900 x 1200 but my monitor scales nicely to 1680 x 1050. the make of the psu is Corsair TX 650W
 
ritch1 said:
id like to game at 1900 x 1200 but my monitor scales nicely to 1680 x 1050. the make of the psu is Corsair TX 650W
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Then you're just fine. That PSU can handle a GTX 580 plus your overclocked quad core. Just don't ask it to handle GTX 580 SLI, and you'll be okay:D
 
thanks 3far4shot thants pretty encouraging, ideally i'd prefer not to spend too much on upgarding the system and prolong that pain for a while. would a 6870 be a good choice compared to those cards?
 
ritch1 said:
thanks 3far4shot thants pretty encouraging, ideally i'd prefer not to spend too much on upgarding the system and prolong that pain for a while. would a 6870 be a good choice compared to those cards?
Click to expand...

A 6870 is around GTX 470 /5850 performance give or take depending on the game/software. It should run fine at your res.
 
Seriously? you guys are recommending $300+ video cards to run at 1680x1050?!

Wow.
 
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