Looking for upgrade advice...

C

Cybergooch

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Mar 28, 2009
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A little over 2 years ago, I built this system:

Motherboard: Asus P5B-Deluxe
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600
RAM: 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB

It's been a great system, but I recently bought the Dell 3008 WFP 30" monitor, and I want to beef things up a bit, though I'm not wanting to build a whole new system just yet. I know that if I get a new faster graphics card that there's a possibility of the cpu becoming the bottleneck, so I'm looking for advice on upgrading in a "balanced" way.

I'm looking at going with the Nvidia GTX 275 for graphics, and possibly the Core 2 Duo E8400 for cpu. Does that sound like a good combination? Is there something else I should be looking at?

Also, RAM has gotten crazy cheap since I built this system. I could either get a couple more sticks of the 2GB I have now, or should I upgrade the RAM as well?

Thanks,
 
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with a monitor of that size i'd say at least a GTX285 to play games at the native resolution, you should also think about going SLI ;)
 
Thanks for the reply...in looking at the specs between the 2 cards (GTX 275 vs. 285) I'm not sure that the extra frames would be worth the extra $100.00. I can get the 275 for ~$250, while the 285 is ~$350.

I don't think that I could go SLI unfortunately, since I already have 2 graphics cards since I use a 3 monitor setup. But then again, I may not understand how SLI really works. I assumed that in SLI (or crossfire) you had to have the display from the two identical cards going to one monitor. Is that correct?
 
Cybergooch said:
Thanks for the reply...in looking at the specs between the 2 cards (GTX 275 vs. 285) I'm not sure that the extra frames would be worth the extra $100.00. I can get the 275 for ~$250, while the 285 is ~$350.

I don't think that I could go SLI unfortunately, since I already have 2 graphics cards since I use a 3 monitor setup. But then again, I may not understand how SLI really works. I assumed that in SLI (or crossfire) you had to have the display from the two identical cards going to one monitor. Is that correct?
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well that monitor has a big native resolution, if you want to max out the eye candy on games you´ll need a powerful vid card (or vid cards) in the long run, when new games come out, the 285 will pay off :)

to use SLI you only have to have the same GPU core, not necessarily the same brand or speeds. yep multimonitor is out with SLI, but that option is available with Xfire though
 
leSLIe said:
well that monitor has a big native resolution, if you want to max out the eye candy on games you´ll need a powerful vid card (or vid cards) in the long run, when new games come out, the 285 will pay off :)

to use SLI you only have to have the same GPU core, not necessarily the same brand or speeds. yep multimonitor is out with SLI, but that option is available with Xfire though
Click to expand...

you can use multiple monitors with SLI


Get the fastest card you can afford. Remember, you need to think about the future here too. your native res might be ok now, but a few months it may not be enough.

If you are looking at SLI you are probably better off not doing it as the CPU is just going to hold them back.

Don't look at SLI as a future proofing either. So don't say I'll get one now and one later. It's not worth it by the time you do it. Either get 2 at the same time or don't go SLI.

You could also look for a deal on the older 280s. Newegg has 280s for that same price as the 275s (~269.99). I can't say the speed difference would be much but they also have 1gb of ram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143145 it's a overclocked card as well.
 
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leSLIe said:
has that changed already?
oh boy, in the last SLI setup that i had (8800 GTX SLI) you couldn't do that :(
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Yea, I forget what driver set they added it to but it was with in the last 6 months or so.
 
Bigbacon said:
Yea, I forget what driver set they added it to but it was with in the last 6 months or so.
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I'm nearly positive that SLI multimonitor is limited to TWO so that still wouldn't work for the original poster.

I have a four monitor setup and a 280 GTX I use to drive my 3007 and it works nicely. I would first upgrade your video card and see if you have any performance bottle necking and only after that consider an upgrade to the CPU. Also it seems AA makes much less diffrence on the 30" so you may not necessarily need to crank all of the settings to have a great picture with high fps.
 
Bomber18 said:
I'm nearly positive that SLI multimonitor is limited to TWO so that still wouldn't work for the original poster.

I have a four monitor setup and a 280 GTX I use to drive my 3007 and it works nicely. I would first upgrade your video card and see if you have any performance bottle necking and only after that consider an upgrade to the CPU. Also it seems AA makes much less diffrence on the 30" so you may not necessarily need to crank all of the settings to have a great picture with high fps.
Click to expand...

nm. it was in a further down post.
 
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