Should I Buy A New Card

1) Depends what resolutions you game at and what settings you'd like to see turned up in the game. The 7950 is a good card, it is just showing its age now.

2) Why not get an 8800GTS? they aren't much more expensive and even at the stock 650MHZ clock is higher than a GT. Has a better stock cooler to. Your preference though, both good cards.

3) With the x2 4400+ I'd lean toward a new Video Card before a new CPU, Mobo, memory. You will see more results with the video card.

5) You don't need a Quad core, why does everyone want a quad core all of a sudden. Nothing really uses 4 cores besides encoding and number crunching type apps. Some games take advantage but not many. A higher clocked dual core will out perform a quad in 95% of games. Plus it will suck less power.

6) You can always OC the 4400+ you should have some room to boost your performance by doing that. My buddy has the 4200+ and got some nice numbers by OCing.

I would get one of these......
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Faster, runs cooler than the GT. Easily overclocks to 750Mhz with the stock cooler.

The akimbo is a nice card but is expensive. You can get better value with the new dual slot evga 8800gt and overclock it when you run games.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Currently I am playing with 1680X1050. I plan on getting a new montior sometime soon and playing 1920x1200, but not sure how soon.



From what I have been reading the gts has more stream processors (128) then the gt (112). I was thinking the higher clock speed on the GT(720) would be a better upgrade.



This is an intresting suggestion that I haven't really thought about. I would have to buy a card that only uses pci express 1.0 which is why i was buying a new motherboardm and since I was getting anew MOBO I was going to get a new cpu. I saw an article that says that pci express 2.0 is much better then 1.0.



I will certainly look into this



I am not a fan of overclocking, since I have never done it.

Its not that much more $229 after a $20 rebate. I also saw that when you OC a gt you need another cooling source because it runs hot. The akimbo has a duel slot cooling solution.

PCI-E 2.0 is backward compatible with PCI-E. A new card with work in your board.

Mild OCing isn't hard. Hardcore OCing gets tricky. You should be able to get a nice increase with a mild OC. It takes a little research but would give you a little more UMPH! with your current setup.

Correct. If you get a GT make sure it has a better cooling solution, there are several offered out there. The stock GTS cooler is great, which is why you don't see any aftermarket or upgraded stock coolers for them. I have a 750MHz OC on my GTS and I could probably go higher, 750 was a nice round number and it was rock solid stable. To me the GTS is work the extra small cost, but if you are watching pennies a GT with better cooling is still great. Most of them are OCed already.

You know what, my ECS 8800gts works great (for 159.00 after rebate too...I got an extra 10 off...lol) that is 70 bucks cheaper and it'll oc too if I want.

I've seen mixed reviews showing the differences between 512mb and 1gb cards (the 1gb never outperforms the 512). But I bought a 1gb Palit card because of the BIG 2 slot cooler on it. If you want to OC your card, get one with a good cooler like the Palit. It runs @760mhz like a charm without overheating.

In case I'd just get the GTS

dont get those no names like ecs. msi is okay. i would just get a xfx with a free call of duty 4 game worth $50 which makes it cheap as well. cod4 is a great game, on and offline. i would know, im a cod4 addict on 360, my k/d ratio is 1.62

- ECS is not a no name brand. Look at the reviews on NewEgg, people have rated them pretty high. They have just not been in the higher end market very long. Give them a break

- MSI is more than ok. They are pretty good actually. Just don't offer the warranty that XFX or eVGA does, but it keeps the cost down.

- The free COD4 offer is REALLY sweet, if you don't already own it. It's a fantastic game. I find the single player short though. Still good and a nice storyline. It really just ramps you up for online play though.

- You don't know, unless you play COD4 on PC. Big difference, PC is much faster paced. We have a group of about 6 in our IT department that play on 360. I always tease them that they don't know what they are missing. 360 you can only play 6 on 6 in Team Death Match. PC you can play up to 16 on 16. HUGE difference. You really don't know what you are missing. Plus we all know FPS games are way better on PC. 1.62 Kill/death ratio? I am taking it you don't use the shotgun much or get in close. I would almost guess you snipe alot. Those people tend to have high ratio's. I have the Gold Shotgun, if that tells you anything.

Could I use the stock cooler to OC my amd chip or do I need a better cooling solution? I wouldn't mind doing a small oc increase and holdoff on buying a whole new setup.


From what I have been reading the 8800gts sounds like the better buy right now. Has 128 streaming processors and could be OC'ed to 750mhz with its current cooling soultion. Also its a little cheaper then the oc'ed akimbo.

^
A mild OC the stock cooler is fine. The stock cooler is usually fine until you start having to increase the core voltage. More voltage = more heat = need for better cooler. You can get a decent cooler for like $25-$30. Arctic Cooler has a decent one.

^
Right on the money with the 8800GTS. You will be happy with an 8800GT but you will always wonder if you should have payed the Extra $20 for the GTS. So just do it and be happy.

Im playing age of conan at the moment I dont to be honest think you will gain anything going quad core. My wife and I play our games on identical rigs, We have the E8400 processor and 8800GTX graphics cards, my rig the graphics card and processor is over clocked I seem to remember the graphics card core was running near ultra speeds on the core and a bit lower on the memory and the E8400 is overclocked to 4ghz. The difference in frame rates between our two rigs is a matter of a few fps, not worth talking about really  

Ive never been a fan of overclocking, as Ive always tried it and never found it made a big enough difference at levels where the computer was rock solid stable. However I went throught the normal playing stage with the E8400 and got to 4ghz, from 3ghz whilst actually being able to drop the voltage BELOW stock... Heat doesnt seem to be a major issue, running a passive cooler on the processor, inside my p180 case and after a whole day spent playing Age of conan on high settings the temperature doesnt get above 45c. Age of Conan doesnt seem to gain much from the overclock, although some general windows stuff seems to respond better for it.

I think the main limitation on age of conan once you have a decent dual core processor is the graphics card, and Id be tempted to see what happens with all the releases next month as it is a while yet till they give us dx10.

With my E8400 and 8800gtx I dont drop below 30fps with graphics set to "high" and 4xaa @1680x1050 I get times where I run at 60-70fps but the low end is around mid 30's where I believe my wife with the same settings gets low 30's at the lowest. so all the overclocking seems to have gained 1-2 fps average, although havent dont a fraps benchmark on it yet- been to busy playing  

Also worth noting that age of conans "instances everywhere" most likely means you wont be running into large mobs of players everywhere slowing things down. so far I have yet to experience any major slow downs.

well....that card itself is fine for gaming, but depends on ur res. Only you can answer the question....just see if it lags your games. If it does then yes u need to change, if it doesnt then u dont.

However seeing as u want dx10 you dont really have much of a choice but to change  

whats your budget??