Upgrade advice

Forum Graphics & Displays : Graphics Cards Upgrade advice

Hey everyone,
Its been a while since i've played the upgrade game, and even longer since i built my own pc (mostly out of pure laziness), anyway I was wondering the opinion of everyone out there as to which components of my pc i should be upgrading first. I use it mostly as a gaming rig and play in 1280x1024. Thanks for the help!

Current system:
MB: EVGA Nforce 680i SLI
CPU: Core 2 Quad 2.40 ghz Q6600 8M 1066Mhz
Ram: Hynix 4GB DDR2 PC2-6400 (4 x 1GB stix)
HDD: Seagate HDD 250GB SATA 7200RPM 16MB
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8800GT 512 MB PCI-E x2 (sli)... (although i think one of them may have just bit it)
PSU: 750 Watt OEM ATX PSU

Message edited by cloak1981 on 11-22-2009 at 12:02:26 PM

Reply to cloak1981

get an ati 5850 with a 1tb hdd if you want

Message edited by obsidian86 on 11-22-2009 at 12:02:19 PM

Reply to obsidian86

I recomend u to Change ur Processor to Quad Q9650 3.0Ghz, If u are a extreme gamer and goin to oc ur processor then go for a Core 2 Duo E8400 and oc it to 4GHz or more!

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Aneesh@4GHz

Aneesh@4GHz wrote :

I recomend u to Change ur Processor to Quad Q9650 3.0Ghz,

According to the eVGA website, the 680i does not support the Yorkfield quad cores. I think they are right, because mine didn't. That's why I moved to Gigabyte motherboards.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to jsc

jsc wrote :

According to the eVGA website, the 680i does not support the Yorkfield quad cores. I think they are right, because mine didn't. That's why I moved to Gigabyte motherboards.

Thak u for that information,I dont know that!Thanks
and sorry for my wrong reply!

Reply to Aneesh@4GHz

i looked it up.. it says my mobo can support the E8400. how does that compare to the q6600 i currently have and is it a worthwhile first upgrade?

Reply to cloak1981

Your processor is fine. You may want to OC it but beyond that it's about the last thing I'd recommend upgrading.
As to what you should upgrade your resolution says your monitor is the answer as 1280x1024 is quite low end these days. SLIed 8800gts should do well at resolutions much higher than that so you may not need to upgrade anything else.

Reply to jyjjy

isn't running at higher resolutions harder on your videocard(s)? If i'm wanting better performance why would i up the size of my monitor just to downgrade the performance i'm getting. Forgive me, I don't know too much about monitors and how they work.

Message edited by cloak1981 on 11-28-2009 at 10:00:07 AM

Reply to cloak1981

I assumed you wanted a better gaming experience in general. If you don't want to get a better monitor then I don't see any reason to upgrade anything really. The performance of your current setup should be fantastic at that res. Is there a reason you are looking to upgrade?

Reply to jyjjy

I wasn't happy with the performance i've been getting in games like crysis and to some extent even WoW.

Reply to cloak1981

There are no "games like Crysis", only Crysis itself and that game is just a bitch on high settings/high AA. Even Crysis Warhead is significantly more forgiving to hardware. As for WoW if I had to guess it's giving you problems only with massive mobs onscreen and OCing the processor would probably help clear that up more so than a new video card I believe. Get a decent cooler, should cost about $30 and give it a go. That chip OCs very well.
Really though I stand by upgrading the monitor. That's a very low end resolution at this point and a larger high res monitor would definitely be the best way to improve your gaming experience in general. Of course with a new monitor you will likely want a new video card... and for better performance than your current setup at your current res you'll probably need to look at an HD5850/70 so it would be quite an investment.

Reply to jyjjy

Thanks so much for the advice, its been very helpful and i appreciate it. Any recommendations on a new monitor that would match my current system fairly well still (perhaps with oc'ing the cpu).. i've always been partial to samsung displays.. but again.. its been quite a while since i've bought one.

Reply to cloak1981

It all depends on what you want to spend really. I'm not an expert on picking out monitors but Samsung is still a decent brand. This deal looks pretty good;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824001338

And I've heard good things about this;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824236059

Reply to jyjjy

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