I've been out of the hardware loop for awhile and I am seeking some upgrade advice. My system is slowly aging and I was hoping to breathe new life into it. I am a heavy gamer playing everything from Crysis to Empire Total War. Currently I have about a three year old machine with the following specs.
Board: EVGA 680i
Memory: 4GB of DDR2 800
CPU: E6700
Video: EVGA 8800 GTX (768mb)
Power: 850watts
I am not getting the FPS I want anymore to play games (Like Empire Total War) and it seems like 2-3x less the FPS than my friends are getting with similar cpu/mem, but diff video cards.
Some people tell me that my CPU is a bottleneck an that 8800 GTX is still a beast, that cards have not improved much since it. Others tell me the opposite and that my 8800 should be used to level a table.
I've ran some bench marks myself and looked at others around the web and have come up with mixed feelings.
I have about $300 to spend max, I can drop it on a new video card or CPU, but I'm not sure what route to go, but I am tending to lean more towards GPU than CPU at the moment.
Any advice?
Board: EVGA 680i
Memory: 4GB of DDR2 800
CPU: E6700
Video: EVGA 8800 GTX (768mb)
Power: 850watts
I am not getting the FPS I want anymore to play games (Like Empire Total War) and it seems like 2-3x less the FPS than my friends are getting with similar cpu/mem, but diff video cards.
Some people tell me that my CPU is a bottleneck an that 8800 GTX is still a beast, that cards have not improved much since it. Others tell me the opposite and that my 8800 should be used to level a table.
I've ran some bench marks myself and looked at others around the web and have come up with mixed feelings.
I have about $300 to spend max, I can drop it on a new video card or CPU, but I'm not sure what route to go, but I am tending to lean more towards GPU than CPU at the moment.
Any advice?