Will upgrade old system to ATI 5850 - need to upgrade MB/CPU/RAM?

[mistermat]

Hi everyone,

I have a three year old PC, and I want to buy a 24" monitor, and an ATI 5850 to drive it.

My question is whether I really need to upgrade the rest of my system. Yup, it's old and creaky but I'm wondering whether it will be a serious bottleneck for the 5850?

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz
Memory: 667MHz DDR2
GPU: ATI Radeon 1950 XTX
Motherboard: ASUS P5W DH Deluxe

Thanks

Matthew.

 

[WR2]

What power supply will you be using?

 

[mistermat]

It's a Thermalright, 650W if I remember correctly. Don't have the exact model to hand.

 

[WR2]

Maybe Thermaltake?

There is always a bottleneck somewhere. Right not its your video card.
E6600 is still a decent CPU. And with the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe you can probably overclock the CPU some.
Will it be a bottleneck? Possibly. Will your gaming performance increase substantially? Yes.
You could get the 5850 (if you can find one) and enjoy an improvement in your gaming experience till you're ready to replace the rest of your system. The 5850 will migrate nicely into the new system.

 

[mistermat]

Sound advice thanks WR2