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Upgrading PC...Keep the old video card???
Upgrading in a month. Here are my current specs. Question.. Is my video card still good to keep with upgrade?
Antec P182 gunmetal case
Antec true power trio 650 watt PSU
Evga geforce 470 GTX 1280mb video card
Gskill 4 gig ddr2 1066 (8500) memory
AMD phenom II X4 945 deneb 3.0 Processor
Asus M4N82 Deluxe AM3/AM2+/AM2 Nvidia 980 sli Motherboard.
Razer Barracuda AC-1 gaming audio card
Western digital WDC WD64001aals-00l3b2 (640 gig Hard drive)
Maxtor Hard drive 160 gig as a backup (secondary)
Windows 7 64 bit
This is what Im upgrading to.
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s
Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG-900 900W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900C
AMD FX-8150 Zambezi 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8150FRGUBOX
Comments
I'd question why you're looking to upgrade that system at all. If you've got an itch to upgrade, then grab an SSD and call it a day.
been almos 3 years. I get the green light from the wife around that time.
I HIGHLY recommend you "upgrade" to an i5-2500k processor. Yeah you can keep the old video card, & if you want a significant and noticeable upgrade grab an SSD too.
Your video card, processor, and OS didn't exist three years ago. So the computer can't be that old.
But again, why are you looking to upgrade? Is there some particular purpose for which it's too slow? Some feature you need and don't have?
I just went from twin 260's to a GTX 580 and I have to be perfectly honest I can't tell the bloody difference other than the 580 is loud as all get out, and cost $500.
Personally if I was you I'd wait for a bit they are releasing newer video cards every week lately, I'd hold off and wait for a game that really needs a new card.
Then instead of buying the newest card out, buy one build back for half the price of the newest card.
I could have gotten the 570 for $150 less, the 560 for $200 less...
The way cards are coming out we will be seeing 900's by the end of the year Im betting.
That's more of a side-grade really.
Sure, the new motherboard will have DDR3, and SATA3 - but it won't be that noticable of a difference.
The FX won't be that much faster than your Phenom X4 (if at all) - the extra 4 cores won't do anything for games at all. In fact, you could reuse your Phenom in a new motherboard and just wait on the CPU if all you want is faster RAM/SATA.
The 470 is roughly the same speed as the 560Ti or a 6950. And any of the 3 are going to run a single display with pretty well everything except the silly options maxed out. To answer the original question - yes, the video card is still plenty powerful enough.
If you have some money to burn and just itching to upgrade - I agree, go Intel. You will notice the jump to an i5 2500 (although, any way you look at it you'll be able to hold 60FPS in pretty well every game with most every option on).
And the SSD idea - that would be quite noticeable, and likely make you more happy with your computer than a new CPU would.
Imo unless you lack power for some certain games or programs atm DO NOT upprgade now.
AMD is slowly releasing new graphic cards, Nvidia is about to do same, Intel is few months from releasing new line of CPU's, SSD should get big price drop in second half of 2012.
Wait ~ 6 months are monitor prices & trends. Will be much better deal and equipment avabile then.
been almos 3 years. I get the green light from the wife around that time.
Your video card, processor, and OS didn't exist three years ago. So the computer can't be that old.
But again, why are you looking to upgrade? Is there some particular purpose for which it's too slow? Some feature you need and don't have?
OSand video card not 3 years old. Everything else upgraded June if 09
Your video card is fine. If you do upgrade you can also consider getting another of the same card and going SLI.
I personally would just stash the money away and wait a bit. What your upgrading to isnt that much better than what you have. IMO if you are going to build another system, get an I5 instead. Throw another video card for sli in it and that should do you for another 3 years.
Going from what you have to what you listed is not worth it IMO. And like the others have said, unless you are having a particular problem / reason you want to upgrade then your better off waiting for a bigger upgrade than the minor one your wanting to do.
Best of luck.
ok then, what setup with the I5 core 2500k would show me a significant change. looking around 7-8 hundred dollars with keeping the video card.
would like an ASUS board,
Antec PSU
I think you'd be disappointed in the results of a processor upgrade. Sure, a Core i5 2500K is a very capable processor, and definitely the thing to get in a new computer on a $1000-$2000 budget. But if it's the difference between 150 frames per second on the new processor and 100 on the processor you have now, then a benchmark can easily tell you that the 2500K is faster. Back in the real world, that difference doesn't matter, though. And that's even assuming that the processor is the limiting factor, which it may not be. If your video card caps you at 80 frames per second, then upgrading the processor changes nothing.
Now, if you're playing some game where your processor limits you to 30 frames per second, and you want something faster than that, then sure, a Core i5 2500K together with an Asus P8P67 Pro or some such makes sense. But that's why I asked why you want to upgrade. If the old computer performs flawlessly, then the new one can't beat that.
You would notice a big difference from getting a solid state drive, though.
Hey quizz i dont understand the ssd. Why are they so small GB wise? Do i use this in conjunction with my main drive? Or does is become my main drive? Will my current board support it? What is a good suggestion as to buying one.
and what are you talking about 1000-2000 budget. I have everything else.All I need is the board..processor
..psu..memory. I don't get your 1k to 2k analogy.
Of course your 470 is still very good! No doubt.
Personally I just got my "old" 570 again. Which will aprox be up2date for at least 3-5years from now.
You dont have to upgrade your video-card that often as the companies release their new products and want to make you believe. Most of the time, there are no significant upgrades chip-wise and so on. Pure cash making.
Stick with your 470 imho!
SSD's are small, but very fast. They work just like a normal hard drive as far as installation and use in your computer goes.
Typically you do use them in conjunction with a larger hard drive. You make the SSD your C: drive, with Windows and your most commonly used apps and games on it. You put everything else (your music, videos, not often used stuff), on the larger drive.
Still, a SSD and a bit more ram is really all you need right now.
Wait a year instead.
Of course you could change MB and CPU as well, a I7 2700K i9s really nice but I don´t think it is worth the price.
The SSD for the system drive is however a huge upgrade and I think it will do more than any processor.
was thinking about getting that cpu, then I saw this: AMD Phenom II X4 975, Black Edition
Wich would be a better choice? Right now Amazon has them for $144.00. They normaly go for $209.00.
Wich would be a better choice? Right now Amazon has them for $144.00. They normaly go for $209.00.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Core-i5-2500K-vs-Phenom-II-X4-975-BE-CPU-Review/1163/16
Check that out, direct comparison between the two CPU's in question.
Nice read and thanks. I have a concern tho. The author brings up a good point, "There is still one important question to be considered. Who buys a USD 200 CPU to run integrated video? Usually people that need processing power but won’t be playing games anyway."
"We were satisfied with the overclocking capability of the Phenom II X4 975: we could easily put it to run at 4.26 GHz, an 18.3% increase above the CPU’s standard clock, which is a very good mark for an AMD CPU."
I will be playing games and I also will be buying a mid to high end graphic card. Do i really need such a powerful cpu?
With a good gpu, and enough ram i shouldn't I be able to run games for the next 2 years?
Good question.
Both CPU's will run games now. The Intel is faster, no disputing that. So for today, it's a matter of playing a game at 80FPS or 120FPS - which for all intents and purposes is no difference - most people don't care about anything above 60FPS, and almost all of that is hinged on your GPU, not your CPU.
The kicker comes in thinking about 2-3-4-5 years from now. If games start to require more CPU (and they have slowly), then the Intel will last longer than the AMD because it's faster to start with.
The AMD may be fine for another year, or two years, possibly even three years; the Intel another 3 years, 4 years, maybe even 5 years - before you start to see your CPU bottleneck your gaming.
And in that time frame, there may well be something better or different out anyway that makes us want to upgrade (new motherboard features which would require an updated CPU, new power management techniques, something).
So it's more a matter of pay me now, or pay me later.
Cool, thanks for all the feed back.
Also my apology to the OP. I didnt mean to take over your thread. I hope you got your answers because i certainly got mine.
Normal Television (pre HDTV) ran at about 30 fps. HDTV runs at about 60 fps. I honesly do not think the human eye will notice any significan change in FPS past 60fps. I would sugest getting a vid card that will consistantly give between 30-60 fps andy more and its wasted money.
I don't know anything about your current vid card and what games you play or the fps you get but if its between 30-60 fps you don't need a new vid card.
If you are getting the performance I suggest above with your current vid card you might want to research processor, memory ssd upgrades instead.
I did not see any mention about your monitor. If you have a crap monitor no upgrade will make it display bettter. I revently bought a flat panel 27" monitor and upgraded my video cable to Digital and it made a huge diff in what I see onscreen.
AMD Phenum II x4 3.6Ghz 975 black edition
8 gig Ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
The GTX 470 is a great card and theres no good reason to change it.
Great pick on the motherboard btw. The Sabertooth cards are amasing!
But i cannot stress this enough that you should change to a i7 proccessor! AMDs arent keeping up the pace anymore and the i7's are simply amasing and thats coming from a overclocking maniac that only used AMD's for over 10 years!