Does this matter?

[Guest]

Hi there, I'm just wondering about a very simple question. Does your graphics card matter for games, even if you're playing at a lower than "standard" resolution. For example, my monitor is 1360x768. Is it worth me upgrading my ATI 4870? or should I wait until I get a proper monitor with a resolution for, example 1920x1080?

Thanks!

 

[renz496]

if you want it the easy way upgrade your monitor together with your card because you will know which gpu to go with your new monitor. but yes gpu matters even for low res. having excessively strong gpu for liw resolution is not necessarily bad because you can crank up the setting while sti have high frame rates. just be sure your cpu is not bottlenecking the card

 

[Guest]

Thanks Renz. Well, I'm getting the Phenom II X4 965BE, 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz, GIGABYTE GA-970A and I will be keeping my ATI 4870 for the moment. I don't want to spend about £160 on CPU, Mobo & RAM to have hardly any performance boost.

My current rig is
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
OCZ Gold Edition DDR2 4GB
ASUS P5Q Deluxe
ATI 4870HD

 

[renz496]

going from core 2 duo to phenom 2 setup does not increase much performance because they were pretty much equal in clock performance. with phenom 2 x4 the benefit is only obvious when the game can use more than 2 cores. why not consider better cpu instead?

 

[Guest]

What CPU? I'm on a budget, and even the cheapest i5 is a bit above my budget.

 

[bryonhowley]

The Phenom II 965BE is a good CPU plus with the unlocked multiplier you can easily OC it for added performance boost. And you will benefit from DDR3 ram. I would say go for it. And when you can upgrade your GPU so that even playing at 1360x768 you will be able to crack up the graphics settings and then when you get a better monitor you will be able to do 1080p.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Bryon, I'm just going to go for the Phenom II x4, I'm on a budget, and I've always used AMD (The only reason I have an Intel in this machine is because it was given to me).