What to upgrade, pc/mobo or gfx card?

velvta · Post by **velvta** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 3:53 pm

I have an Athlon 64x2 3800 CPU at stock 2.1 ghz. My gfx card is a geforce 7800gt.

I am looking to upgrade to a Radeon HD6850 gfx card but wondering if on modern games if I'd see less benefit than if I kept the very old card I have now but upgraded the mobo/CPU.

It's really one or the other for me money wise right now.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 4:27 pm

The parts you have now are about equal to each other.. and I'd stick with Nvidia but that's me.

If you're going to upgrade you may as well save up a bit more and do everything not to mention a Power supply will be important for any new graphics card. If you go higher on say the 400 series or 500 series cards they will require a good deal more power than you're 7800GT but you will obviously notice a big different in performance. If you just change the card and you're lucky with having a good enough PSU for it you will be bottle necked by the other stuff.

velvta · Post by **velvta** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 4:41 pm

curious to know your reasoning for Nvidia preference.

My PSU right now is 500w, I realize I'm cutting it close if i dont upgrade that along with the card. If the card upgrade right now will even increase performance in games by half until the bottleneck with the CPU is fixed I'd be happy really. I bought Wither 2 and cant play it at all right now. I have very little money to save away towards PC parts, so saving for a new CPU/mobo/ PSU all at once also is like another $400 and that would take me 4 months probably to save for, so if I can eke by with a new card during the next 4 months till I can afford those new parts, I'm OK with it. Make sense at all?

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:11 pm

velvta wrote:curious to know your reasoning for Nvidia preference.

My PSU right now is 500w, I realize I'm cutting it close if i dont upgrade that along with the card. If the card upgrade right now will even increase performance in games by half until the bottleneck with the CPU is fixed I'd be happy really. I bought Wither 2 and cant play it at all right now. I have very little money to save away towards PC parts, so saving for a new CPU/mobo/ PSU all at once also is like another $400 and that would take me 4 months probably to save for, so if I can eke by with a new card during the next 4 months till I can afford those new parts, I'm OK with it. Make sense at all?

Well the Nvidia choice is due to driver support..seems Nvidia has a leg up on the drivers they have been putting out here lately along with a higher freq of driver releases. You're PSU may be 500watts but make sure you look at the 12+ rail requirement the card needs vs what you're PSU gives to make sure you have a little room to operate. I tried running right on the mark with a 570 and even though the PSU was the best 500-600watt pSU on the market it still didn't sustain it so I had to upgrade PSU too. If you under power the video card it could harm the card thus causing you to RMA it or replace it early.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 7:09 pm

Depends on the games you play...the CPU and whole motherboard system is a few generations old now.
I used to prefer nVidia...back when ATI did suck for drivers. But that was back in the Win9X and earliest XP days...they did a promise to release driver updates monthly and they've held to that. I started noticing that image quality seemed better on ATI cards. But that can also vary on which game(s) you play..some perform better on one, others on the other brand.

But...I'm really leaning towards "keep saving and get an all new system". I think getting a higher end card now...it will be too bottlenecked on your current system.

velvta · Post by **velvta** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:08 am

k guys thanks