Bottleneck? XFX HD 4850 1GB DDR3

Thanks wdmfiber, you're right and I certainly have no real need to go to the very high-end.

I have always tried to buy at the point on the price/performance curve where I feel I get best value rather than peak performance - certainly a deciding factor in my decision to go with the FX8350 (which I only bought because I got a pretty good deal on it, I had been looking much further down the spectrum to begin with, around the 6100 to 6350 mark) rather than paying more to have one of the Intels that would beat it.

I would do the same as and when I can afford to update the GFX card, so would probably be thinking of going for a middle of the road Radeon next year and planning to crossfire rather than replace the following year or whatever, guessing its definitely not worth saving some pennies by crossfiring what I have?

FYI, ditched the Dell case at the same time as the mobo/cpu upgrade (this was always the plan) now using a Lian-Li Aluminium job, its second hand and quite a few years old, but airflow is ok, and wasn't too bad to build in, though not as lovely as some other 'modern' cases that I've built in for other people

Hi hapkido

Thanks for that, it certainly makes sense as even if the value of crossfire 4850s was comparable to a replacement single card, the replacement single card gives me the option of a much better value further upgrade proposition in the future. So I will look to retire the 4850 next time I have some money to burn on the PC and when the time comes I will ask on here to choose a card that will hopefully still be considered good enough to be worth running crossfire a year or so later.

I should explain my decision not to upgrade video card this time, as I certainly looked into it -

For a long time I have had a cpu bottleneck limiting the games I could even consider running, I bought the HD 4850 3 years ago even though it probably far surpassed the capabilities of the cpu I had, because I needed *something* and it was good value at the time and I hoped it would not be *completely* useless, even if it was very much bottom end, by the time I could upgrade the cpu - time being an unknown quantity.

So I knew when choosing this recent upgrade that the new cpu was going to far surpass the capabilities of the now ageing gpu when it came to gaming, however gaming is (sadly..) by no means my number one priority when upgrading my set up. If I'm totally honest, with our third kid due in December, the chances of me actually getting to play any games are pretty slim!

The whole point of this recent big spend was to secure a cpu upgrade that would see me through for a long while. It is no biggy to upgrade gpu any time if the opportunity arises, whereas a cpu upgrade almost inevitably requires a new mobo, which almost inevitably requires new ram, and often a case as well (as indeed it did on this occasion, especially as when replacing quite *that* much of a computer, it is worth at least considering building a frankensteins monster out of whats left + some spares, to give the kids something to ruin..) - I have waited a long time to justify this upgrade and no doubt will have to wait just as long or longer before I can consider another big one like it, so this one needs to last.

For those reasons I would not have considered watering down the cpu upgrade any further in order to add a video card as well. My ideal price point was around a FX 6300 mark, or a little lower, but I pushed the budget as it just didn't make sense not to go for the 8350 with a relatively small price difference to gain an extra 0.5ghz, and 2 additional cores were just a bonus, I imagine that at least 4 cores will probably spend most of their life idle but on the odd occasion they will be there when I want them the most, and I will be very grateful that they are (and obviously price difference between 6350 and 8350 was even smaller)

Similarly, although I didn't originally plan to get a SSD at all, I talked myself into the idea, then nearly ruled it out as my ideal price point would have got me 120GB and that just wouldn't be big enough for long enough to justify the purchase. But I again pushed the budget because the price per GB was so much lower at 250 than for either 120 or 500, 250GB should be plenty for quite some time, so it just made sense.

Even when I do upgrade the video card, with gaming not that high on my priorities I am unlikely to ever spend much more than your equivalent $100, I paid £69.55 for the 4850 so I guess a little over.
For me upgrading cpu is about getting the best I can *justify*, upgrading a gpu is likely to be about getting the *bare minimum* to run whatever it is I anticipate wanting to run for the next year or so.

So yes I could have dropped the SSD and got an awesome video card instead (ok, for that money I could have got a reasonably decent pair to crossfire!) but really it's a question of priorities and right now, for better or worse, these are mine, and I am certainly happy with how I spent my money.

With that in mind, the real purpose of the thread was to achieve 2 things:

1) getting an idea of future upgrade paths / ruling some out, which you have both hugely helped me to do and I thank you for

and

2) to attempt to quantify just what I *will* and *won't* be able to get out of my current set up (if the chance to play games even presents itself!), as that is what I have and (for now at least) I am stuck with it.

The trouble is '12 tiers down' means very little to me, beyond that there is better out there - there's always better, but do I *need* it?
I mean I drive a 1.7 dti, of course they make a 2.0, and other manufacturers make far nicer cars, but I don't need them.
I view my desktop at 1920x1080 because I can, but its not going to upset me to tone things down to run games I wouldn't otherwise be able to consider, I'm not desperate to "max out" quality settings, aside from anything else I haven't played FPS for *years* (we're talking original Unreal Tournament.....) so even with everything at lowest its probably going to be good enough to impress me! And it'll just be that much more exciting when I get to turn things up further at some point next year!