Bottleneck or Not? And will this hold up?

get an ati 4850 or 4870, they are the same price and imo, better performer

since the GTS250 is 2 gens old at its core, it's been improved with better clock and lesser power use and more/better ram but it's still old.

GTS250 = 9800GTX+ w die shrink = 9800GTX w better clock = 8800 GTS w better clock and ram = 8800 GT w better clock and ram

so if i get a new gfx card will it help a lot? or will my processor and clock speed hold me back?

it is more than enough imo, its not a 45 nm wolfdale but it should still perform well @ 2.66 Ghz.

if i get a new heatsink you think i would be able to oc it to a decent 3ghz? or even go as far as 3.6?

err these suckers have a 8 multi with a 333 clock....

not the best for OCing since the multi is locked and that is a hell of a low multi.

eg my i7 runs on *20 multi with bclock of 133, therefore, with a locked multi of 20 I can push my bclock to 200 (lower than the 333 of yours) and achieve a 4 GHZ OC

and that is why the newer stuff OCs like a king, their high multi with low base clock

in order for your chip to hit 3.2 Ghz you need 400*8 and that is sorta high (not extremely high but meh)


try it, and maybe your chip is a miracle chip and hit 4 as well (there are reports), but 3.0 shouldn't be too too hard since it only needs 375 and that is moderate.

Well first off what psu are you running this off, since your current card requires very little juice, And a newer one would need a lot more.

But if you have the right psu, a4850/70 would b a great upgrade.

And as far as overclocking goes. Im not familiar with that motherboard, but with a ''decent'' motherboard you could hit 3.2 rather easy. My old e6400 (2,13ghz) Did 3.4 so you could probably hit around that, if not higher

But first things first Check your psu

ECS = garbage, they don't have any quality lines afaik.


with the higher bclock of older models, it is usually not the chip that craps out first, its the mobo, and ECS is not a good one for that.