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Upgrading from radeon 4670 to geforce 550ti?
ultrastoat
Member Posts: 172
in Hardware
I'm considering buying a new GPU, and the ZOTAC geforce gtx 550ti card caugh my attention. It's just in my price bracket and looks like something of a budget dream come true.
I jsut got a new PSU capable of handling newer GPUs, and the rest of my system is as follow:
AMD Athlon64x2 at 2.10ghz
Corsair DDR2 2GB x 2
500w 80% rated PSU with 48amp on the 12+volt rail.
What kind of performance gain would I see by getting this new GPU?
Comments
You would see almost no performance gain. The 550 Ti is not a very good card.
At that price range, you'd be better off getting an nVidia 460 SE or 460 768M card, they run faster than the 550 Ti for about the same price.
Also, if you consider switching to the ATI side, the ATI 5770 can be found for cheaper, and will run faster than a 550 (but not as fast as the 460).
Although honestly, none of these cards are really going to beat out that 4870 by any huge margin. The only thing you'd gain is DX11 compatibility, and none of these cards can run DX11 features terribly well. In order to see a big jump in performance, your going to need to bump up to around the $200+ price point, and start looking at the 560 Ti (and up), or the 6850 (and up). The 4870 was a fairly high end card when it first came out, and it's still fairly competitive today.
You'd probably see a better return on your investment by upgrading your CPU, it's getting longer in the tooth than your video card is. That same ~$135 can net you a Phenom II X4 955 at 3.2G stock with room to overclock, and if your motherboard has a BIOS update to support AM3 processors (that's a big IF you need to check out, or post your motherboard model for us to look at), will drop right in and really let your 4870 stretch it's legs.
I understand that the 4870 was high end but I have a 4670
Why a GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and why Zotac in particular? Zotac isn't a bad brand, but it's not one that people usually look for specifically.
A GeForce GTX 550 Ti typically performs about the same as a Radeon HD 5770. The Radeon HD 5770 tends to be significantly cheaper, and uses less power, making it usually a far better options, however. Either of those cards should typically give you about triple the video performance of a Radeon HD 4670.
That doesn't necessarily mean triple the frame rates, though. A 2.1 GHz Athlon 64 X2 will struggle with a lot of newer games. Very nice processor back in 2005 (2.4 GHz was the top bin then), but it's not 2005 anymore. You may be better off replacing the computer outright than just upgrading the video card.
My mistake, I misread it. Most of that advice still stands though. I would still get a 5770 or 460 over the 550 Ti, but it would be a tossup as to if I would upgrade the CPU or GPU first.