Should I upgrade from GTX 260 to HD6950?

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LucasG

Gawd
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Jul 2, 2004
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Hello,

It's been a while since I've upgraded my desktop PC, so I was hoping I could get some help. I've been reading about this new release from AMD which is said to be quiet good for price/performance ratio.

My current desktop PC specs are on my signature, would upgrading to a card like that be limited too much by my processor/RAM/hard drive?

Help is greatly appreciated.
 
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Hmm not to much you should be ok, regarding the processor. Maybe some small bottleneck, but as long as you keep it at 4ghz you will be ok.

The 6850 is like 2x faster then the GTX260, i would say go for it. Worth to note that this cards unlock into 6970 pretty easy!
 
+1 for having the same issue:) Have a 260 too that works ok, but wondering if it's time to upgrade.. Are there any games you have had issues with? What res are you at?

At 19x12 most of the (admittedly older) games I play run ok though. It was just BC2 I got last week that shows some pop-in, etc. Just not sure it's worth to upgrade quite yet. If you get a new card I'd be interested to hear if you think the improvement is worth it..
 
I'll let you know if I do the upgrade soon. Would love to have no lag at all and play everything at max in World of Warcraft on a 25.5 monitor.
 
Don't play Wow myself, but I would think for that game at least the 260 should be plenty at 1080 res..?

Personally I'll probably wait till the initial rush on the 69xx cards slow down, and maybe some 3rd party cooling/overclock designs come out. Hopefully maybe a month or so, but I don't really know what's normal.
 
It's a 1920×1200 resolution, and with the higher rendering engine they implemented to WoW with everything at max I can find some heavy lagging areas. :) Also BF:BC2 is also kinda laggy so I have to play it without anti-alias and stuff. I enjoy playing games at their best though, maxing everything.
 
The 6950 would be much more powerful than the 260 but you definitely need a quad core for games like BC2. I would consider using the upgrade funds on a Sandy Bridge setup as it will likely do more to eliminate the lagginess.
 
I would grab a Quad and another GTX260 to SLI. Yes, SLI works great on a P45 chipset. I bought two ASus HD5850 TOP few days ago for my second computer. They easily overck to HD5870 clocks and for $330 it does not get better.
 
Right now I don't have enough money to do a complete upgrade, so I am only planning on upgrading my video card for now... but from what I've seen it is worth upgrading the card, thanks.
 
You know, I have very similar specs, and just bought a 6950. I can tell you in a few days how it's going.
 
I had dual 4870's, and just made the jump to a single 6970. Substantial jump in performance, so moving to a single 260 to a 6950 would probably be an even bigger jump.
 
LucasG said:
Right now I don't have enough money to do a complete upgrade, so I am only planning on upgrading my video card for now... but from what I've seen it is worth upgrading the card, thanks.
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As I said, buy another GTX260 216 for $90 and you will be happy. I play at 2560x1600.
 
Likwid_Nitrogen said:
You know, I have very similar specs, and just bought a 6950. I can tell you in a few days how it's going.
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Installed my new 6950. It's a great upgrade.
Went from ~10k in 3dmark06 to 16897. 3dmark11 = 3992. Very noticeable difference in Just Cause 2, Dead Space, Crysis Warhead, Dirt 2 - running 1920x1080, 16x aniso, 2x AA at least - runs well in all of them. Just Cause 2 runs really inconsistently but I think that's a CPU bottleneck.
 
Likwid_Nitrogen said:
Installed my new 6950. It's a great upgrade.
Went from ~10k in 3dmark06 to 16897. 3dmark11 = 3992. Very noticeable difference in Just Cause 2, Dead Space, Crysis Warhead, Dirt 2 - running 1920x1080, 16x aniso, 2x AA at least - runs well in all of them. Just Cause 2 runs really inconsistently but I think that's a CPU bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Nice results, mine arrived today as well. What drivers are you using?
 
Not knocking your rig, but you should shift your upgrade path to a i5/i7/SB (when it comes) to unleash that 6950. My e8400 @ 4.5 bottle-necked my 4850 CF pretty hard, going to a q9550 then i7 was night/day difference each time. So when you do decide to upgrade your cpu/mobo - your GPU will feel like a whole new card.
 
I just replaced my gtx 295 with a 6950 (flashed to 6970 @ 940/1450Mhz) and I got a huge improvement in WoW running a Dell U3011 @ 2560x1600. Capping at 60 fps v-synch everywhere on max, sans Org with 2000 ppl flashing their dragonmounts.

WoW ain't (or atleast wasn't) that great to scale with dual GPU's like the gtx 295, so I guess I wouldn't see the same amount of improvement in more recent games, but w/e, I'm glad to get rid of the dual GPU setup ;)
 
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