Worth upgrading graphics card?
- Thread starter Punkid
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Leeky
Posts: 3,357 +116
Yeah, thats a wise decision. Given your system specs i would recommend 550w or above, of good quality from a known manufacturer.
If your thinking longer term (e.g. your next system), I would go higher still. FYI, a 650w PSU could handle twin GPUs upto GTX 460/HD6870, and the latest CPUs as well. 700-750w in my opinion is the sweet spot and would enable you to run virtually any single GPU and computer setup you could care for long term.
If your thinking longer term (e.g. your next system), I would go higher still. FYI, a 650w PSU could handle twin GPUs upto GTX 460/HD6870, and the latest CPUs as well. 700-750w in my opinion is the sweet spot and would enable you to run virtually any single GPU and computer setup you could care for long term.
Hi Punkid,
I recently upgraded from a 8800GTX to an HD5850 card.
This was with a Quad core Q6600.
Given the 8800GTX is a higher performance card than the 9500GT and not that many games make use of more than 2 cores I think it's safe to say upgrading to a HD6870 or GTX460 will give you quite a big improvement in games, even more than the one I've seen.
I recently upgraded from a 8800GTX to an HD5850 card.
This was with a Quad core Q6600.
Given the 8800GTX is a higher performance card than the 9500GT and not that many games make use of more than 2 cores I think it's safe to say upgrading to a HD6870 or GTX460 will give you quite a big improvement in games, even more than the one I've seen.
cool, that was the answer i was looking for, thanks
Just note that obviously a more powerful processor would get you better performance out of the new graphics card, but your current graphics card isn't limited by your CPU, so the new one will give you a significant boost. Although this boost might be better graphics quality settings or ability to play at a higher screen resolution rather than just going from 30 FPS in a particular game to 130 FPS
For a platform(motherboard, processor + ram) I'm waiting for the Sandy Bridge i7 processor next Q1 year, even though it isn't the high end stuff (socket 2011 quad channel memory) which will come Q3/Q4 2011, it should still be quite a significant performance upgrade over the 3+ year old Q6600 processor I'm using now.
Archean
Posts: 5,660 +112
In addition to Arris's very informative comments at # 8; I'd like to add just one more thing, games which are CPU intensive will see 'less' of a performance boost, whereas, games which are not CPU dependent will get higher performance boost.
Good plans Arris, I am thinking about upgrading my system as well to i7 2600, not that I need it frankly; I guess because I'm bit annoyed with this motherboard which can only take in 4 GB of ram (the original DP35DP died, went back into warranty, died again, and then they made me buy a miniATX board as full ATX for LGA775 were no longer available).
Good plans Arris, I am thinking about upgrading my system as well to i7 2600, not that I need it frankly; I guess because I'm bit annoyed with this motherboard which can only take in 4 GB of ram (the original DP35DP died, went back into warranty, died again, and then they made me buy a miniATX board as full ATX for LGA775 were no longer available).
Leeky
Posts: 3,357 +116
You'd want ideally to be aiming for full HD 1920x1080/1200 resolutions if your using the HD6870/1GB GTX460. It will of course run fine at 1440x900 resolutions, but you might be "wasting" the throughput of the GPU when comparing it with the price of cheaper GPUs capable of playing games at the same resolution.
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