Upgrading existing gaming system

Whats your psu and budget?

PSU is Thermaltake Toughpower 850W - as an FYI case is Antec Performance One P182 ATX.

Reading some other forums I saw a suggestion of ATI HD 5770 - haven't kept up with the recent or not so recent developments in the industry so not sure whether it is a good suggestion or not. Maybe even get two of these and setup as a crossfire? My mobo apparently supports crossfire.

Open to other suggestions. I'm in Canada and my fav supplier has the card I mentioned for $150 (whether we're talking CAD or USD doesn't matter given the virtual parity in foreign exchange).

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX27397(ME).aspx?curtab=2

A friend of mine suggested Nvidia 580GTX but these are a bit more expensive approx. $530

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX31108(ME).aspx

As for the budget, well, let's say $300. Unless I can get Nvidia 580GTX and extend the life of my computer then I might consider it. But wonder whether the rest of the system would create bottlenecks and prevent the card from performing at its peak.

Thanks

Negative outside 8/8 on PCIex16 v2.0 lanes multi GPU is not recommended

Have a look at the P35 vs X48 column


Elaborate on what games u playing and resolution u taking them up to

Hi, i think at the moment even if you upgrade to something less than a GTX 580 your CPU is going to bottleneck it and CPU's are pretty expensive to upgrade. Possibly get a CPU cooler (should fit on future CPU's) and overclock? From what i've seen online you shouldnt have any problems getting it to around 3.6Ghz with a half decent cooler. That should give it a bit of a push before you can afford to upgrade your CPU. I'd suggest a Coolermaster Hyper 212 because it's a decent cheap cooler. (~$25)

As for your graphics card, the GTX 580 is a great card but i dont see it being worthwhile in this system. I'd suggest a GTX 460 1GB as i have this card and its great (~$190)

As for your mobo, i wouldn't suggest crossfire on that board because one card will run at x4 speed and it just wouldn't be economically viable.

batuchka, guess am rather dense this morning as am not sure what the chart represents - performance of cards given a particular mobo type? P35 is what my Gigabyte mobo is.

jmsellars1, thank you for your insight as well - I see the following candicates at my local store from the card you suggested:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX30030(ME).aspx

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX30252(ME).aspx

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX30253(ME).aspx

Not too sure on how comfortable I am overclocking my CPU - think I'll get one of the cards in the links above and see if this increases my FPS in FPS games LOL

Native resolution of the monitor is 2048x1152 I can lower it to 1920x1080 - it is a 23 inch wide screen. Just for fun used FRAPS and I get around 20 FPS in Crysis and STALKER... we are basically talking the first person shooters here. Want Crysis 2 to run on this computer as well. Far Cry 2, COD series, MOH, ME2, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Oblivion, Metro 2033, FEAR, Singularity... you get the idea...

Thank you for your ideas!

All of those cards will be great, so long as you stay away from the Palit one you should be fine. Thats the one i have, the cooling isn't great compared to other GTX 460's and almost no aftermarket coolers will fit on it, although it is the cheapest. Of those cards personally i'd get the ASUS one but have a look around and see if you can find the Gigabyte one, that one is meant to be good.

As for overclocking i would at least research it before deciding because contrary to popular belief it is difficult to go wrong enough to cause permanent damage. I think the only likely way to do so is to use any extreme voltages. So long as you stay somewhere between your current voltage (usually around 1.35v) and your CPU's safe maximum which i think is 1.5v for the E6850 you should be fine.

IIRC P35 were on 16/4 when in CF and on PCIex16 gen 1.0/1.1 so the interface clearly holds back multi GPU as shown in that table, hence running CF on these mobos/interface is highly not recommended