Upgrade 8800 gts 512 or cpu? both?

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speedball614

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Jan 5, 2010
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Hi guys, Im wondering what would be my best bang for the buck upgrade.
I play WOW and Eve online. Will probably give the new star wars mmo and Starcraft2 a try when they come out but most my time is just on the two games listed.

I have a 8800gts 512 currently with a E6850 cpu 4gigs ram. 1680x1050 resolution
The 5870 driver issues don't leave me warm and fuzzy lol

Running xp64bit but have the win7 waiting for when I decide on an upgrade.

From what I understand wow is more cpu driven than video card..dunno about the other games though. I assume Starcraft2 would be cpu as well like all the others of that game type before.

Quad core?
Overclock friendly dual core?


Im thinking a cpu upgrade and video card later when everything is sorted out driver wise for win7...dunno

Not the most hitech guy but enjoy gaming.. I used to keep up on all the current hardware software but I fell behind the times over the last year and a half.

Thanks in advance.
 
Is your Cpu overclocked? And if we know more about the rest of your system (board, PSU etc) we can help more :)
 
For the video card I would look into a 5850 if that is in your price range. A 5870 is overkill for a 1680x1050 monitor. I cannot say I know of any major issues with the 5000 series drivers either. If it is the common "Nvidia makes better drivers. ATI's are crap." that is not the case. No problems switching from a 8800 GTS 512 to a 4770 last year for me anyway.

For a CPU that E6850 is clocked at 3GHz. Are you overclocking it at all? I honestly don't know of much of a improvement you would see moving to a new CPU. If you must have one I would go for a Q9550. A 2 core cpu would just be a waste of money to spend on these days in my opinion. I saw some gaming benchmarks that had a AMD three core taking on Intel's new 2 core cpus in multithreaded game when similarly clocked if that tells you anything. Do you take advantage of any software that handles more then 2 cores? If so a quad core could be of great use to you.

Go to 7 as soon as you can as well. It is a great OS!
 
My vote is for both. A new gpu would probably be bottlenecked by the weaker processor(not overclocked im assuming). Grab a q9550 and a 5850 or 5770 if your on a tight budget.
 
Solhokuten said:
My vote is for both. A new gpu would probably be bottlenecked by the weaker processor(not overclocked im assuming). Grab a q9550 and a 5850 or 5770 if your on a tight budget.
Click to expand...

If he doesn't have the correct board, a Q9550/Q6600 won't work ;)
 
I would say the CPU, 8800GTS 512 is really identical with 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, GTS 250.
 
PSU corsair hx 620
mb is the abit ip35pro
heatsink=Thermaltake Big Typ VX(big ol thing)

All good stuff when it was new lol
 
the games I play don't make use of quad cores from my understanding. Although starcraft2 might?? dunno
I'd like to go no more than 420 total to my door. less is better though lol

I loved my previous ATI card. 9700pro. It had a long lifespan
 
I just want to keep my current system going until I have to upgrade and then it will be a very big step up in performance. If that makes sense..I have 4 pc's that just sit form when I used to upgrade pc's every year it seemed.
 
xBanzai89 said:
For the video card I would look into a 5850 if that is in your price range. A 5870 is overkill for a 1680x1050 monitor. I cannot say I know of any major issues with the 5000 series drivers either. If it is the common "Nvidia makes better drivers. ATI's are crap." that is not the case. No problems switching from a 8800 GTS 512 to a 4770 last year for me anyway.

Go to 7 as soon as you can as well. It is a great OS!
Click to expand...

I was reading the Hard review of this card. It says a street price of $259 but newegg shows it over $300?? demand raising price?
 
The main reason for that was there was a huge shortage and high demand. Prices went through the roof as a result. 300 is the new street price as of right now. Perform better then a GTX 285 and its way cheaper, so its still a good deal.
 
I play World of warcraft and Eve online.
cpu is not OC'd but the heatsink is more than capable of keeping it cool as well as the motherboard and ram.
 
ok, I checked cpu-z and it shows me at core speed 2040 multiplier at 6 bus speed at 340

I thought this cpu was 340 x9 ? is the system under clocking it or a bug with cpu-z?
In the bios it says 340 x9..strange

I guess this is the throttling from the bios when not used?
 
Last edited:
rmfa said:
What games do you play? What do you do on your system?
Click to expand...

can you not bother to read threads?????

yes the speed drop is intel speed step, when not under load.

Do you notice lag in your games, is this why you want an upgrade, your CPU is old and with new WoW add-on packs the game gets more and more demanding.
 
Yeah, in raids the framerate is horrid. Raids are all I do and arena.. This led me to believe a cpu upgrade would be something..but if I can OC and get results I need then Im all for it.. I tried a couple new games but my system couldn't handle the demands. 15fps or lower

OC and install win7 and try that is what I am getting out of this thread atm..If still not acceptable look at vid card upgrade or MB/cpu vid card...I think the cpu/mb was from 07ish? so it does have a couple years on it lol..didnt really think about the time I had on the gear until now.
 
OP,

I'm in the same situation. My current rig is an E8400 with a non-sli or xfire P35 mobo, and one 8800GTS G92.

Since my cpu is nicely O/C'd to 4Ghz, I find that this is plenty of CPU for most games I play at 1680x1050. So the route I took was:

1.) Purchased used 790i ($150)
2.) Purchased 4gb DDR3 ($100)
3.) Purchased used 8800GTS G92 (for SLI - $70)

So total spent is $320 - and yes, I know what some of you may think. If I'm swapping out mobo and ram, why not get i5 or i7. Well - going that route will still be more expensive for overall gain. My plan is to upgrade my CPU to a Q9650 in about a year or two - having that at near 4Ghz will be plenty. I'll eventually ditch the 8800GTS SLI but for now it'll be just as fast as an O/C'd GTX260 and sometimes faster depending on app.. which are going for $200. I'll probably end up replacing the 8800GTS SLI with GTX275 in SLI down the line.
 
speedball614 said:
Hi guys, Im wondering what would be my best bang for the buck upgrade.
I play WOW and Eve online. Will probably give the new star wars mmo and Starcraft2 a try when they come out but most my time is just on the two games listed.

I have a 8800gts 512 currently with a E6850 cpu 4gigs ram. 1680x1050 resolution
The 5870 driver issues don't leave me warm and fuzzy lol

Running xp64bit but have the win7 waiting for when I decide on an upgrade.

From what I understand wow is more cpu driven than video card..dunno about the other games though. I assume Starcraft2 would be cpu as well like all the others of that game type before.

Quad core?
Overclock friendly dual core?


Im thinking a cpu upgrade and video card later when everything is sorted out driver wise for win7...dunno

Not the most hitech guy but enjoy gaming.. I used to keep up on all the current hardware software but I fell behind the times over the last year and a half.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...



What 5870 driver issues?? since i bought the 5870 3 months ago i still havent had any "issues" even in Crossfirex..besides that only one game came to mind, and its borderlands..
and even that was recently fixed.

even in 3way mode its runs great! and getting only faster...

i havent seen any problems with drivers at all...the 9800 gtx 3 way sli setup i had was plauged with problems unlike these..
 
5870 would be pointless for you at the moment. 5850 will easily see you a while. Hell, a 275 or a 4890 will still do you a while if you're on MMORPGs.
As for CPU, get that thing at 3.6 and you'll be laughing.
 
speedball614 said:
none of the games I play make use of quad. Even Starcraft2 wont make use of quad and I will replace my pc long before something I play uses 4 cores.
Click to expand...

You know it won't?

If you know none of your games won't need a quad why bother asking if you need a quad? Like..
 
Duel core for gaming. Quad is only really useful for certian PC tasks or if your one of those guys that likes to do 20 things at the same time. Even the most die hard quad core fans here know that a fast dual core is still the way to go for gaming....
 
TomGreen321 said:
You know it won't?

If you know none of your games won't need a quad why bother asking if you need a quad? Like..
Click to expand...

I didnt know until I researched it more on the quad core thing.
I overclocked the cpu today and it's currently at 3.4 and temps are fine...Game runs better..will try 3.6 as long as cpu temps stay low.
 
do you ever do any video encoding? then you may as well upgrade to a quad, they help a ton for that.
 
maleficarus said:
Duel core for gaming. Quad is only really useful for certian PC tasks or if your one of those guys that likes to do 20 things at the same time. Even the most die hard quad core fans here know that a fast dual core is still the way to go for gaming....
Click to expand...

Not really, especially if you play Valve games, Tf2 anyone.... L4D and L4D2 anyone. they both uses about %70 - %80 of my Q9650 @ 4.1Ghz at times running 1920 x 1080 with a 4890.

games are going for more cores, other games like GTA IV, sure not well optimized but ate dual cores for lunch.

Quad is the way to go, period, a dual at 4Ghz or a quad at 3.6 is going to kick butt really, but if you don't upgrade for 1-2 years, quad is the way to do.
 
Wait for Fermi to make prices go down. NVIDIA promised a Q1 release date so that gives them to the end of March to get them out. For your CPU go for 1156 or 1366 depending on funds. If you want to go cheaper just get a quad core used (Q6600 for ~$100) from marketplaces on forums or eBay.
 
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