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Need some upgrading advice

A

AZBOOSTIN

Gawd
Joined
Nov 20, 2005
Messages
890
Hey guys helping a friend upgrade and older machine, he is wanting to play some games smoother it does not have to be 100 fps but he does play at 1920 res

games like the new sim city, wow and diablo 3 anyways here is what he has

AMD phenom II 945 cpu...
8gb ddr 3
nvidia gt520 video

right now his video card is the bottle next and thats all he wants to upgrade, and maybe the cpu not the mobo at this time...

would a couple/three 5870's help.. or something like a gtx 580... looking for best way to get the most out of the system thanks.
 
If your friend wants to upgrade only the video card, then either the GTX 660 or the HD 7870 would give him a noticeable performance boost without emptying the bank account.

What power supply does your friend have? How old is it?

If you friend wants to try some of today's first-person shooters or other graphically demanding games (like Skyrim with multiple texture packs), he'd be better served with a complete system overhaul.
 
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I will find out but its a newer thermaltake he had to replace it not to long agao....


is there any cheaper ATI cards running 2 or 3 of them that would match a gtx 660?
 
you can LOL... sorry I don't keep up on gaming stuff nor care you could help... trying to help a friend guess I came to the wrong place
 
You don't need a dual-card setup to play SimCity, even at a 1920x1080 resolution.

How much money do you have to spend on the video card?

What's the specific model of your friend's Thermaltake PSU? Again, how old (weeks/months/years) is it?
 
other games will be played too.

$400 dollar limit waiting, all I know is its a 800watt psu will get more info on it
 
The two cards I recommended are each around $200. If you or your friend wish to play some first-person shooters in addition to the previously mentioned games, I recommend spending at least $300 on the video card. You should be looking at either the GTX 660 Ti or the HD 7950.

Don't keep the GT 520; the cards I recommend are each chosen to replace your current card.

On another note, if you feel that your processor may become the next performance bottleneck, I suggest that you start saving money now for a platform upgrade (of the processor and motherboard). Intel's current lineup, including the soon-to-arrive Haswell series, outperforms AMD in most gaming tasks.
 
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AZBOOSTIN said:
you can LOL... sorry I don't keep up on gaming stuff nor care you could help... trying to help a friend guess I came to the wrong place
Click to expand...

Sorry, man. I didn't really mean to offend.
Why it's funny is because the 5xxx radeons have had a lot of multigpu issues and on top of that they still have a market with mining and thus haven't had a significant drop in value.
Along with being hot and power hungry makes them a particularly inefficient pick.
 
Stick to 1 card, regardless of brand or series. Especially at 1080p. SLI/CF should only be considered for 1440p+. Otherwise it's just going to make his PC much less efficient for no noticeable gains and add a bunch of multi-GPU quirks.

Just because you're a member of this forum does NOT mean that SLI/CF is necessary.
 
AZBOOSTIN said:
, all I know is its a 800watt psu will get more info on it
Click to expand...
Unfortunately Thermaltake has a lot of low quality PSUs even at the 850W range. Hence why we are trying to find out what TT PSU your friend has.
 
How many monitors does he have again?

How recently did your friend buy that power supply? Who suggested it to him?
 
See if he can return that PSU as that PSU is overpriced, overkill, and totally unnecessary.
 
The monitor alone changes the video card recommendation. Go for the newly-released GTX 770, which is essentially a cheaper, rebranded, GTX 680.

I second Danny's recommendation to return that PSU. Even if you wanted to pair two GTX 770s together for SLI, all you really need is a PSU along the lines of the Corsair HX750.
 
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AZBOOSTIN said:
7850x2 or 7950
Click to expand...
I would not recommend Crossfire off the bat in this case. As for the HD 7950 3GB, it'll be ok for that resolution but 2560x1600 is just a high resolution that you're going to want as fast a card as possible thats within budget. So definitely aim for the GTX 770.

Also return that PSU: your friend got tricked pretty badly.
 
7970, 7970 Ghe, 680, 770, 780, Titan, or wait to see what AMD is bringing to the table September/October timeframe. 770 is the real sweet card right now really, 680 performance for less and the good cards can nail 780 performance, but if you really want the best performance 1600p and beyond then 780, 690, 7990, Titan are the best bets(for now)

You need fast gpu with a wide bus for higher res and if they do not have enough shader horsepower among other things then they will not play a stinking high resolution very well(for most games) even the mighty Titan has shown on a few games that it might be wicked powerful but even it can be tamed.
 
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