8500 upgrade to 8600?

[xdanxx]

Hi guys I just built my first box, I use it for casual gaming and I put a 8500gt asus silent video card in it to save on money. It has no fan and only a heatsink and idles at 67c and when I play cod4 it gets up to 90c according to everest. Right now im mainly playing source games and I get a pretty good fps around 60, but I have been wondering if I put in an 8600 gt will I see much of a performance gain? The games run pretty smooth on all high settings I would just like to see performance gains as in being able to see if its an enemy or friendly from far away, etc. Also when my card gets hot for to long it starts lagging and I gota shut it down and let it rest. So my question is will I see much of a performance gain upgrading to an 8600 from an 8500, or should I not bother? Right now I dont want to fork out for an 8800. Thanks.


Sys specs:

E4500
1 GB kingston ram
GA-EP35-DS3L
ASUS EN8500GT SILENT MAGIC 512 MB
Monitor Name NEC 1740CX LCD

 

[angry hampster]

What IS your budget? If you can afford $90, get this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121251

It's got an excellent cooler and it's extraordinarily powerful for the price. Seeing as how an 8600GT is only about 20 bucks less, it should be a no-brainer. You'll get double or even triple the performance in some games with the 9600GSO.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

You would see a drastic improvement if you put that 9600GSO/8800GS, but my first priority would be to get another GB of RAM as well.

 

[Zap]

Yeah, a second GB RAM should help overall. I've noticed especially reduced loading times in games.

With the video card, the 8600GT definately outperforms the 8500GT, however the difference is closer to "incremental" than "substantial." I'll second angry hampster in recommending that if you get anything at all, aim for an 8800GS/9600GSO as the minimum.

BUT, before you do that... what power supply do you have? The 8500GT and 8600GT do not take much power and thus can be run on just about anything. The 8800GS/9600GSO require more power and a PCI-E 6 pin power plug.

 

[xdanxx]

450 watt xion powersupply that was built into my case
http://www.microcenter.com/sin...tml?product_id=0255735

Do you guys think I should upgrade my monitor aswell? Its more then a couple years old and uses vga not dvi, and ive noticed while adjusting brightness in source games it gives the, clearly visible, slight visible, and invisible text lines to adjust to, and i have source cranked up to as bright as it goes and the clearly visible isn't as visible as i'd like it to be. My brightness on the monitor is at 55% so I wouldnt want to go much brighter. The monitors stats say
brightness - 270 cd/m2 typical
Contrast - 500:1 typical
1280X1024 native resolution

should I upgrade the monitor or just worry about the video card and ram? Is my power supply sufficient for the 9600? Thanks for all the input guys.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
What IS your budget? If you can afford $90, get this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121251

It's got an excellent cooler and it's extraordinarily powerful for the price. Seeing as how an 8600GT is only about 20 bucks less, it should be a no-brainer. You'll get double or even triple the performance in some games with the 9600GSO.

Might as well get this since it comes with free shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130332

 

[xdanxx]

should i upgrade my monitor aswell as the video card or is it good enough and not make a difference?

 

[BlueAcolyte]

What do you mean good enough? If you think it's good enough, don't buy something else you don't need.

 

[xdanxx]

well im not necessarily happy with the picture when im playing video games, but I dont know if its all the videocards fault or partly my monitor. What Im asking is are the specs on my monitor acceptable? Is it worth putting money out for one? Its more then a couple years old.

 

[Klinky1984]

It would really depend on what you mean by making your games look bad. I think it's both the crappy video card and your monitor. Are you running games @ the native 1280x1024 res? Are you using a DVI connection? Do you see ghosting or blurring when playing games? Do you run your games at really low detail settings, as I'd imagine you'd have to so as to get anywhere near decent fps on games? The monitor looks to be a TN w/8ms response which probably isn't that great for gaming.

I'd invest in a new video card first and then run @ native res on a DVI connection and see if it still looks bad. If it does then it's time for a new monitor.

Also putting in an 8600GT would be pretty pointless. Get an 8800 or a 9600.