What to upgrade next

whpz87

Distinguished
Apr 3, 2009
7
0
18,510
I built a new rig last Christmas. The important specs are:

nForce 680i mobo
8800GT's in SLI
Q6600 proc - slightly OC'd
4GB RAM
Plenty powerful PSU

I play Age of Conan daily and with the new DX10 patch, I find I just don't have the horsepower to play it comfortably. I have to run in DX9 mode.

Also, it'd be nice to finally be able to play Crysis with all settings maxed (most specifically AA).

My monitor runs at a native 1440 x 900, and I have no desire to go beyond that.

Should I wait for a new generation of cards? Should I pick up a 295? Should I upgrade my proc? ...should I do anything?

This was the setup of setups about a yearish ago, but I feel like Im falling behind :)
 

singingigo

Distinguished
Aug 13, 2007
281
0
18,790
The Q6600 G0 stepping can easily OC to 3.2 GHZ with a decent heatsink/fan. That would be one option.

Also, the Geforce 260 sp216 in SLI should kick out quite a bit more FPS than your current setup.

At that resolution however, your bottleneck is *most likely* the CPU.
 

megame255

Distinguished
Jun 24, 2006
264
0
18,780




I'd suggest overclocking your CPU too. The only problem is that the nforce chipsets are known for their poor overclocking ability with any core2 setup. But yeah, 2 8800 GT's should still be good for your setup.

You didn't say what the slight overclock was, but a Q6600 shouldn't be too much of a bottleneck for any GPU at your resolution. If you're willing to pay out for a GTX 295, why wouldn't you get something bigger with how cheap bigger monitors have become? With your current res, you might be just as happy getting a GTX 260 or 4870 1GB for much less if you really want to buy something for a slight increase in performance. Just keep in mind that a single, more powerful card will generally beat out any 2 lesser cards in any SLI/crossfire setup though.
 

whpz87

Distinguished
Apr 3, 2009
7
0
18,510
I see.

I'm running the Q6600 at 2.8Ghz right now, I think stock is somewhere around 2.6. The temp is right around 60 degrees C at full load so I don't really want to go much above that, but who knows maybe I could push it. I have a gigantic heatsink sitting on top of it so my ceiling might be higher.

As for the monitor, I'm in a dorm room with super limited desk space so I don't want to get anything too gargantuan :)

Is it safe to say that no one can run AoC in DX10 no AA with much more than 20ish FPS? Any AoC players comment?