Thinking of upgrading my graphics card, is it worth the money?

tripolitrx

Hi guys, I have a quetion about a GFX card update, im planning a mini upgrade soonish to basicaly let me play most of the more modern games at good res and good detail.

Currently Im running a Core 2 Duo 6320, 2 gig OCZ DDR 2 PC6400 Ram and an Asus Radion 3650 on Vista Ultimate 64. Games are currently sluggish. However i havnt gamed on a PC in ages as I have a PS3 which kind of stole my gaming attention, but there is some cool stuff around for PCs now, and Im not really sure of the sort of gaming quality I can expect. I am getting some new ram regardless, 4GB worth of Crucial Ballistix to take the system to 6GB, should give the system a wee prod performance wise, and would like to know if it would be worth upping the game quality with a new card also. If it isnt at least similar to PS3 quality, i doubt i would bother attempting an upgrade.

I dont have much cash to spend, probably £150ish. Is it worth upgrading the current radion for something else, or would i not see much benefit from the card? ie extra ram making a difference. I guess the stumbling block would be the processor...Hard to guage really. So any advice is welcome.

Full Specs are below, I would like to be able to play the new COD and be able to play new games for a time at least without loosing too much quality, just a averageish card to play recent games i spose...Only stipulation is must have HD out, and has to be Radion for Theater Mode on other screens. It is my understanding Nvidia ditched this? Been a while since i looked at GFX cards....

Asus P5NESLI board, OCZ 2GB DDR2 800 6400 CL4-5-4-15 (soon to have) Crucial 4GB DDR2 800 6400 CL4 4-4-4-12, Asus HD3650 256 DDR3 PCI-E Hiper 580W Type R Modular PSU Antec Gamer 1200 Case, 1x1TB Seagate 2x500GB Seagates, 1x500GB WD 2x300GB Maxtor HDD, Startech SATA Controller, Creative SBLive Plat EX, Samsung Syncmaster 24" FullHD monitor & 32" LCD TV, Vista 64 Ultimate. Currently running 1920x1200, not hoping for that in games given my budget, but something close would be nice:)

As i said guys any advice welcome, its ages since i properly looked at GFX cards, i was purely after HD outs buying the Asus card for movie playback, all i can say about them now is they have gotten alot bigger and alot more expensive:) Apparently some need a special power plug now? (incidently would my PSU cut it?) The only card that I have noticed is Asus HD 4890 1GB as it looked cool and has pretty good reviews, or is it overkill? I would prefer an Asus card if im honest, but its not the end of the world if i dont get one.

Thanks for your time guys

Trip

lordbean

The increased RAM will definitely help your system cope with more modern games. Vista basically needs a minimum of 4GB to make gaming hiccup-free.

As for graphics suggestions, I'd advise you to look into a Radeon 5750 or 5770, whichever seems more affordable. They're part of ATI's newest generation of cards, and so will give you DirectX 11 support and pretty good bang for your buck.

Edit - yes, your power supply should be big enough. That's a lot of hard drives, but AMD's 5700 line does not consume much power.

Obsidian

lordbean wrote:

The increased RAM will definitely help your system cope with more modern games. Vista basically needs a minimum of 4GB to make gaming hiccup-free.

Uhhh... no. Even on Vista the performance gains after 2GB are basically non-existent on the grand majority of games. If you want absolute perfection then sure, you might want to get more RAM, but it is far from necessary. Put all your money into the best graphics card you can find (probably the HD 4890 or 5770) and you'll be able to play most games on high at your native resolution.

By the time you really need more RAM for gaming your CPU will probably be completely incompetent, you'll want to do a complete rehaul, and you'll have to buy DDR3. I'm assuming you won't listen to this advice because of the way you worded your first post though. You may want to get an aftermarket cooler and overclock your CPU to increase the lifespan of your system.

Also, your PSU is plenty powerful enough for any single GPU card.

Cliff_Forster

The biggest gain will come from the graphics card, but I can point to hard evidence that will show 4GB is almost necessary for a number of modern titles. When you swapping out the highest texture settings between the hard drive, the system and the graphics, having more helps level the frame rate avoiding dips. We are talking modern graphics intensive titles with the high settings enabled. Take Crysis for example, you may not gain an average frame rate that will be head and shoulders better by adding ram, maybe gaining just a couple frames, but your low end dips during heavy action will level nicely. On the low end you can expect as much as a 50% improvement in the most intense scenario's.

I agree with Beans assessment on the 57xx cards, in fact I think the 5750 provides plenty of value for your particular set up.

Thrax

Obsidian wrote:

Uhhh... no. Even on Vista the performance gains after 2GB are basically non-existent on the grand majority of games.

As you would say: Uhhh... no.

That is not true at all.

Sledgehammer70

If it is a 32bit OS than 3GHz or is it 3.1GHz is the cap but yeah to hit that you need 4GB.

lordbean

Sledgehammer70 wrote:

If it is a 32bit OS than 3GHz or is it 3.1GHz is the cap but yeah to hit that you need 4GB.

Even on a 32-bit OS, he should see significant gains from having 4GB of RAM installed. Vista eats its way through 1.2-1.5GB just loading up the OS, leaving you with not a whole lot left out of 2GB to run large applications (aka games).

With 3.2GB of usable RAM, you still have a good gig and a half to stuff games into. Unless the mem usage code is really bloated and inefficient, most current games won't have a problem with that.

tripolitrx

Thanks for the speedy responces guys, much appreciated and very healpfull, I will most likely go with the 5770, found it at ebuyer for £118. Less then i was expecting:)

Trip

tripolitrx

Vista does munch the ram, it sits ideling using 40% of it, I can finally afford an upgrade though!:) Would go with Windows 7, as i do prefer it, but it really doesnt like my aging soundblaster...so Vista it is

jared

that's strange. If it works in Vista I don't know why it wouldn't work in Windows 7.

tripolitrx

Technically it does work in Windows 7, however it refused to produce DTS and Dolby Digital, no matter what filters/codecs were used aswell as never ending Driver conflicts which results in constant lock ups, breaking up of audio (mp3s), high pitched static, basically just making the system very unstable, spent the best part of 2 days fiddling with it, just wasnt worth the hassle in the end....

Thrax

The joy of Creative's fuckawfulbad drivers.

Obsidian

Thrax wrote:

As you would say: Uhhh... no.

That is not true at all.

Uhhhh... yes. Even in your three year old benchmarks there are instances where 2GB's of RAM completely outperforms 4GB's for whatever odd reason. Obviously I'm not going to say less RAM is better but many of the performance gains shown are very minor. Personally, I'm going to stick with sights I've actually heard of and games that I actually play.

Fallout 3
Modern Warfare 2
World of Warcraft
Crysis Warhead
Farcry 2

lordbean

I can tell you from personal experience that there is a HUGE difference in quality of gameplay in Fallout 3 and World of Warcraft between 2GB and 4GB of RAM on Vista. World of Warcraft spends far less time churning, and fallout 3 just behaves less burpy in general when 4GB is installed.

Tim

Obsidian - you're wrong. More RAM is better. 4 GB plays games better than 2 GB.

Obsidian

You resurrect a long dead thread purely to tell me I'm wrong? That's cool bro

Tim

Didn't notice the date of the last post.