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Rig be okay for DX11 Upgrade?

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New to forums long time Tom’s reader :hello: 

1)My major question is will this system be a bottleneck to a modern adapter such a GTX460 or maybe a HD 6950 if were getting fancy.(upon further searching I guess its not but what about the DDR2?) :whistle:  Will I need to OC to stay relevant?
2) Is DirectX 11 worth spending $180 right now?
3) I’m not super interested in going beyond the 60fps mark but I do like running games at the best resolution available with visual effects turned up.

PSU: Cooler Master 650
MoBo: EVGA 780 SLI
http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=132-CK-NF78-a1
CPU: Core Duo E8400 3.0 (ZALMAN CNPS9500 Cooler)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
RAM: Corsair XMS DDR2 PC6400 8GB Total
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Video: EVGA 9800 GTX 2x6pin giant card
http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/512-P3-N871.pdf
and assorted consumer HDDs
LCDs: 1680x1050 23” and 1400x900 19” as an extended
Win7 64bit
Currently no Overclocking is going on. I tried clocking the RAM to 1000~1100 but upon trying to install Win7 PC continually blue screened/restarted. So I set it back to stock 800 haven’t fiddled with it since.
I can post better CPU-Z specs when I return home.

I built this system in 08. To my satisfaction it does everything I have needed it to do flawlessly for the past 2 years. Recently thanks to some Steam sales I put a few new games in my collection. Such as: Mass Effect 2, Black Ops, AVP, Civ 5, and possibly HAWX 2. Yes, I did have some major stuttering with Black Ops just like allot of users but with some config file fixes I was able to get it to run quite well at 1400x900. I am not a WoW player.

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The main limitation in my opinion would be your CPU, it may be a lil too lowend to feed frames fast enough to a current GPU like the 460 and up.

Your current setup is a bit matched in a way due to the CPU and GPU.

My CPU is a Q8300 2.50GHZ, my previous GPU was a highly OC'd 9800GTX+ Using a 1920x1080 32" HDTV.

My current GPU which i just got a week ago is a GTX460 SE 1GB that i super overclocked.

With both cards everything evens out in my opinion, i had no issues with either card maxing games on this res nor my previous of 1680x1050 on a 22" monitor.

All in all though you really shouldnt have much of a problem with a new card, a better CPU at some point would help as well though imo.

GPU: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/8acmv/

System: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1565020

As far as DX11 goes, Civ 5 uses DX11 Tesselation and makes a very big difference in quality, nVidia cards are better at Tesselation then ATI cards are, thats been said pretty much every where.

While the ATI cards are excellent in their own right, it really comes down to preference and whats better i suppose.
Graphics card Master

An e8400 can feed a pair of 8800GT's just fine and performance wise they are on par with a GTX280, so with a GTX460 being about the same as a GTX280 I think the CPU is OK for a single 460 it may even be good for a couple but I guess I'll know for sure when the GTX560's become available.
Graphics card Master

Mousemonkey said:
An e8400 can feed a pair of 8800GT's just fine and performance wise they are on par with a GTX280, so with a GTX460 being about the same as a GTX280 I think the CPU is OK for a single 460 it may even be good for a couple but I guess I'll know for sure when the GTX560's become available.


true story, but in games that practically require a fast quad such as bfbc2 or black ops you will be held back by your e8400, although this value is hard to quantify since there are many games that only use 2 cores.

but to the op you will be fine running anything up to a gtx 470 a would say on a strong dual core, but in my opinion the 6950 would be a waste, go for a gtx 460 then sli them down the road when you upgrade your cpu
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Graphics card Master

jjb8675309 said:
true story, but in games that practically require a fast quad such as bfbc2 you will be held back by your e8400, although this value is hard to quantify since there are many games that only use 2 cores.

but to the op you will be fine running anything up to a gtx 470 a would say on a strong dual core, but in my opinion the 6950 would be a waste, go for a gtx 460 then sli them down the road when you upgrade your cpu

The days of every game needing a quad core are still some way off and whilst some gains with a quad BFBC2 still runs at 60+ fps with an e6850 and a pair of 8800GT's.
Graphics card Master

Mousemonkey said:
The days of every game needing a quad core are still some way off and whilst some gains with a quad BFBC2 still runs at 60+ fps with an e6850 and a pair of 8800GT's.


wow that is very respectable coming from the amd side of things I had to get a 955 and oc it to 4.0 ghz and run a 6870 to get 60 plus, just goes to show how strong the e6850 was and still is. Do you have any overclocks on your system to achieve this? How are your minimums though in that game, that is mainly where I saw an increase when going from a dual core to a quad in my experiences.

your homepage is amazing btw very nice

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Graphics card Master

1) Yes you will need to overclock for some games. You probably didn't change your RAM timings when you overclocked the RAM and thus it wasn't stable. Loosen the timings as much as you can and add a little extra voltage when you are going to overclock your RAM.

2) No, the visual benefit of going from DX10 to DX11 is currently pretty small. Of course this was also true of DX 9.0b and DX 9.0c (with shader models 2.0 and 3.0 respectively) in the beginning but changed as time went on. As for the performance benefit though $180 bucks can give you a nice upgrade over your current 9800GTX+ :D 

3) You have an SLI motherboard so I say use it and add another 9800GTX+ card (you should also be able to use a GTS 250 since you have the GTX+ card and not the older GTX card). That should be enough for a 1680x1050 monitor in most games. You can probably get one off eBay cheap enough. As for DX11 cards I say get a GTX 460 1GB or a Radeon 6850 and over clock it. An overclocked GTX460 comes close to the Radeon 6870 as well as the GTX 470 in performance. An overclocked 6850 doesn't do too bad either ^_^

The quality differences between DX9-11 on BFBC2 are quite obvious actually, large amounts of details are added with DX11 compared to 9 and 10, as such a decent CPU is usually more helpful in those cases.

Same goes with DX9-11 quality differences in Civ 5. The differences very noticable.
Graphics card Master

jjb8675309 said:
wow that is very respectable coming from the amd side of things I had to get a 955 and oc it to 4.0 ghz and run a 6870 to get 60 plus, just goes to show how strong the e6850 was and still is. Do you have any overclocks on your system to achieve this? How are your minimums though in that game, that is mainly where I saw an increase when going from a dual core to a quad in my experiences.

your homepage is amazing btw very nice


The 6850 is in my friends machine and I don't think it OC'd at all but as I don't have BBC2 I can't tell you what it runs like on an e8400 at stock or OC'd speeds. I'm glad you liked Valentino in Crimbo elf mode though. :) 
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