Help with graphic card upgrade.

Whats your budget?

What is your current configuration? (cpu, ram, power supply, etc...)

Those two cards you have should make most games playable quite nicely. I do need to know what else you are running and what games/res you intend to play to make an educated suggestion...

I've got the same setup and have had the itch to upgrade, but when I look at charts, I feel like I should hold off a bit and wait for a more significant upgrade.

Thats my initial thought on this as well since two of these cards SLI'd give a medium high performance for gaming I can't find a good reason to upgrade other than less power draw and heat issues that plagues the 8000 series cards...

STOP SPAMING YOUR GRAPHIC CARD   its a rip off price anyway and there are plenty out there to buy in stock for $350-$370 dollers

 




Shame on you...  

I don't see any in stock anywhere at the moment but thats beside the point. You don't "need" this card anyway. This isn't the fix for your issues. Anyone that posts a 400.00 video card when someone asks if they should buy a new cpu OR a video card isn't in the market for a 400.00 video card and would be much better off buying a 200.00 cpu and a 200.00 video card, at least in his case anyway, is spamming his own card for sale. On Ebay? Please...

Here's what i have on my machine.

EVGA 780i mobo - q6600 - 8GB RAM - 800 watt PSU - Windows 7 64 bit.

I would like to keep it under $400 if at all possible, but willing to go up if the improvement is really substantial.

thanks for the replies

I'd definitely get a 5850 or even a 5870-- if you can find one under 400. And you should overclock your CPU to avoid potential bottlenecks.

Cheers.

In about 18 months pci-e 3.0 is supposed to come out. All things being equal it's 2x as fast as the current 2.0.

You can certainly spend a lot of money and get an improvement now, but maybe you should hold off for a couple of years and then get something really fast. Keep in mind you would have to get a whole new system or replace a lot of the parts. Just something to consider.

Hold off for a couple of years? LOL   There will ALWAYS be something better a couple of years later... Maybe you should wait forever and never upgrade anything?

Two 8800GTS 512 equal about the same performance (or a little above) as one GTX 285. You don't need to upgrade really. I would wait until NVidia releases their new series, even though it may be a while. Regardless, even if it sucks, ATi prices will probably see a decrease. That is unless it's really bad, they may stay the same, but we'll assume the former.  

Thanks for all the advice. I'm going to stay with my 2 cards for a while longer and see what the future holds. In any case, i'll probably be back here asking the same question after 6 months.

thanks to all.

@sirkillalot & englandr753, lets not help the troll rip off fellow members eh.  

I understand what you're saying, but he has something pretty decent right now and it's not asking too much to live with it for a while longer. In theory, the difference in performance isn't going to be the typical two cycles of video card upgrades, it's going to be huge. I expect video gains up towards 5x faster when taking into account technical advancements in addition to a much faster bus.

CHEERS to the mousemonkey! I'm glad you took out the troll, lol!