Advice needed please on upgrading

[SteveUK]

Hello all sorry for starting a new thread firstly. I am looking for a bit of advice if thats possible.

I have a 4 year old system thats runing XP SP3 with a nvidia Geforce 6800 LE and athlon 64 3800+ processor.

My question is what is the best way to improve the graphics (if there is any) having become addicted to SH4!

Would getting another 6800 and running SLI be any good or should I look at getting a new graphics card if so which one?

Full system specs are as follows -

AMD Athlon 64 3800
XP SP3
3 GB RAM
ASUS A8N-SLI deluxe motherboard
Nvidia geforce 6800 LE
251GB Matxtor harddisk
creative Audigy sound card

Buying a new system is out of the question unfortunately so upgrading could be the only way to go.

Thanks so much for any help or advice you can give.

[AVGWarhawk]

If you have a PCI mobo get a better video card. There is not much more you can upgrade on your system. If you get a new vid card make sure you power supply can run the card. :salute:

[SteveUK]

Ok thanks yes have pci motherboard and 550W power supply. Was thinking that if I had to get a new one maybe a 8*** or 9*** do you think that would be ok?

Sorry for all the questions :)

[AVGWarhawk]

Stay away from the 8 seriers. Get the 9. :03:

[Arclight]

Stay away from the 8 seriers. Get the 9. :03:
Gee, thanks. :roll:

But yeah, if you're in the market, 9 series but be the way to go, unless you want to make the jump to GTX 260 core 216, or radeon 4870 1GB.

[FIREWALL]

What makes you think he can even afford those cards.

To little info as usual.

[AVGWarhawk]

He should be able to get a nine series for a song. The others...well maybe a song and a dance. :O:

[SUBMAN1]

I'd disagree with any of these recommendations. The 4770 is the card to get for the $99 range. The 4870 can even be had for $170. So it depends on how much money you want to spend.

You only problem is, you would be CPU limited so your video card will be starved for something to do, so I'd forego getting anything better than the 4770.

This should tell you what you need to know. It is faster than a 9800GT for only a double digit price:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3553&p=5
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/4770launch_042709223456/18961.png

This article from Tom's will help you pick a card for a 'price range' - either NVidia or ATI depending on what you want to spend:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-graphics,2296-2.html

Remember that there is no NVidia board that supports DX10.1 yet. They barely do more than DX9 since MS had to break the cool features of DX10 to support what NVidia can't do. All the recent ATI cards do however with full DX10 and DX10.1 support and they even have tessellation built in (A DX11 thing) - something NVidia still can't do on any of it (They are in trouble BTW). NVidia tries to make up for it by offering physics and CUDA, but both are worthless because no programmer will write for proprietary code unless NVidia pays them a boatload of money.

So take your pick.

-S

PS. This article will spell out from a technical perspective the bad position NVidia is in - http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137261/nvidia-spin-borders-truth

[Arclight]

What makes you think he can even afford those cards.

To little info as usual.
What makes you think he can't? :D

You can find something for any budget in the 9-series. If you have the money to spend, go higher. Don't need to know much more than that. :hmmm:

Anyway, Subman is right. Jamming in a monster won't do you any good if the system can't keep up.

[SteveUK]

Thanks so much for all the info guys :)

I know that the processor will be the thing that is holding me back but will try for a new card most likely a 9 series.

Once again thanks so much really appriciate it.

[SUBMAN1]

Well, the king for The $200 range is 2 x 4770's. So buy one now, and get one later on when you get more CPU. 2 x 4770's in Crossfire is even faster than 1 single 4890 that would cost more than the 2 x 4770's! :D ATI only realized their mistake on this one after they started to release the 4770. They tried to raise the price to $110 a board to compensate, but no one is going for it. It is being sold for $99 or less everywhere.

-S