• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Upgrade or New Build?

B

beelzibub

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
153
I'm on the fence and looking for some help/advice from you guys....I'm contemplating either upgrading my video card and possibly memory or waiting a few months and starting a new build. My current build is listed below in my signature. If I upgrade, I'm looking at replacing the 8800GTX with a 6950 2GB, 570, or 560 Ti video card and maybe increasing my memory to 8gb. The problem with the memory upgrade is that DDR2 is tough to find nowadays, especially at a decent price! Would upgrading my video card and memory help enough to give my system a little more life and power? FYI, I game at 1920x1200.

If I go with the new build path, I'm looking at an i5-2600k and a higher end ASUS or Gigabyte motherboard,12gb or more memory, and likely one of the video cards listed above. Of course, this list may change in the next few months depending on what is released. Any recommendations are welcome on components as well!
 
Upgrade your video, do not upgrade your ram & then save till june or july & build whatever is better bang for buck of Sandy bridge or Bulldozer
 
^ What he said.

Upgrading your RAM at this point in time would be a really really poor plan.
 
Ok, I guess I'll skip the RAM upgrade....just thought it might help a bit being that my system seems to always be using around 75% or more at any given time. Now I need to decide on a video card! I've read some contradictory information regarding if it's really possible to buy "too much" video card for my processor. Some information says buying something like a 570 with my current processor would severely limit the GPU and be a waste, others say to buy the best you can afford. Anyone have any insight on this?
 
But the best you can afford. Especially with a complete build in the works. Would suck to spend anything on a video card now & have it be a major bottleneck for the rest of your system in a few months.
 
Regarding your processor, if the C2D Q6600 is overclocked to above 3GHz, you shouldn't suffer from any significant performance bottleneck. Your performance may not be as great as, say, a system with a Core i5 or Core i7 processor, but the processor won't kill your video card.

That said, the GTX 560 is the bare minimum I would recommend for 1920x1080 gaming. And the GTX 570, at around $350, isn't the best bang-per-buck card available with the HD 6950 performing nearly as well for under $310 (for the 2GB model). Add in the fact that the 6950 can be softmodded to run as the $370 6970, which can beat the GTX 570, and the GTX 570's true performance value diminishes even further.

The long story short is that you should consider the HD 6950 unless you plan on running Linux or a program that takes advantage of Nvidia's CUDA technology (like the Adobe CS5 programs).
 
beelzibub said:
Ok, I guess I'll skip the RAM upgrade....just thought it might help a bit being that my system seems to always be using around 75% or more at any given time. Now I need to decide on a video card! I've read some contradictory information regarding if it's really possible to buy "too much" video card for my processor. Some information says buying something like a 570 with my current processor would severely limit the GPU and be a waste, others say to buy the best you can afford. Anyone have any insight on this?
Click to expand...

Your current CPU would be a limiter of sorts for the 570 but not actually that severe due your CPU being OC'd to 3.4Ghz. So an upgrade to the HD 6950 2GB would not be a bad idea in your case.
 
Looks like the search for a good deal on a 6950 2GB is necessary! Thanks for the advice guys! :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top