Another Upgrade HELP! thread, 8800gts 512mb

[bigCM]

Hey guys,

Casual reader who decided to finally register.

I apologise as it is one of those threads again, but I wanted to ask just to make sure as I've been out of the game for a year or two now.

Looking to upgrade from an 8800 GTS 512mb. Honestly,the only real reason I feel I need to is because I want to play Empire:Total War / Napoleon without frame rate issues (and for it to look nice..)

My rig is:

Corsair 620watt PSU
Asus P5Q-E mobo
Intel e8400 @ 3.6ghz
2 GB Corsair DDR2 PC6400 ram
Asus 8800GTS 512mb
WD 250gb hdd
Windows XP SP3

Is it worth it? Should I be looking at other options - like upgrading everything or starting anew?

Appreciate it!

bigCM

 

[happy medium]

Wecolme to Anantech .What resolution are you running at 1900x1080?

This should help you ..........

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...-War-CPU-benchmarks-and-tuning-tips/Practice/

 

[blanketyblank]

You don't need a cpu upgrade. e8400 is fine for something like a 5850. I wouldn't go higher than that without a quadcore though. 5770 is however the sweet spot, but probably about 60% slower than the 5850.

I'd try to get another 2 gigs of RAM, but only if you can find a good deal. Possibly a SSD HD if you have the cash.

 

[happy medium]

Well from reading the article I linked to play Total War you need a good dual core (like you do) and a gtx 275 or hd 5850.<<< I'm guessing this game runs better with Nvidia cards.

If this is THE one game you MAINLY play I'd just find a used gtx 275 for under 200$.
Or you could find a gtx 260 used for under 160$ easily.

I would not go out and buy a 275$ card (5850) to play this game, unless money is no object for you.

 

[bigCM]

thanks for the great/quick responses.

The only other main game I play is call of duty 4 (not the latest) and my pc runs that just fine.

The resolution I'm currently playing at is 1280x1024, constricted by my aging 19" tft that I'm looking to replace with a 22" widescreen (some kind of samsung mostlikely) so 1680 x 1050 would probably be my resolution.

HDD's seem so cheap nowadays that it puts the near 100euros i spent on my 250gb back in the day to shame. So I might look into investing into a better/bigger one as well. But how much of a difference will that make?

Is an extra 2gb of ram worth it as well? If I did get it, what OS should I get with it? Windows 7?

Money is definetely an object! Just trying to maximise how much I can get from what I spend.

At the end of the day what matters most is making the game look pretty and run smoothly.

I'm Dutch and over here, currently the price difference between a 5850 (241euros, $325) and a 5770 (129euros,$180) seems massive. Also found a new gtx 275 for 209euros, $282).

Making a bid for a gtx 275 on a 2nd hand website for 160euros ($216) not sure whether its worth it but I'm in not forced to pay for it if i win so.

Will ponder a little longer, cheers for the replies so far.

 

[blanketyblank]

thanks for the great/quick responses.

The only other main game I play is call of duty 4 (not the latest) and my pc runs that just fine.

The resolution I'm currently playing at is 1280x1024, constricted by my aging 19" tft that I'm looking to replace with a 22" widescreen (some kind of samsung mostlikely) so 1680 x 1050 would probably be my resolution.

HDD's seem so cheap nowadays that it puts the near 100euros i spent on my 250gb back in the day to shame. So I might look into investing into a better/bigger one as well. But how much of a difference will that make?

Is an extra 2gb of ram worth it as well? If I did get it, what OS should I get with it? Windows 7?

Money is definetely an object! Just trying to maximise how much I can get from what I spend.

At the end of the day what matters most is making the game look pretty and run smoothly.

I'm Dutch and over here, currently the price difference between a 5850 (241euros, $325) and a 5770 (129euros,$180) seems massive. Also found a new gtx 275 for 209euros, $282).

Making a bid for a gtx 275 on a 2nd hand website for 160euros ($216) not sure whether its worth it but I'm in not forced to pay for it if i win so.

Will ponder a little longer, cheers for the replies so far.

Bigger hard drive won't matter, but faster hard drive can. SSD is the fastest kind of hard drive now so your games and stuff will load much faster.
To make games look pretty graphics card is the most important. At your intended resolution (1680 x 1050) a 5770 or GTX 260 should be enough. What other cards can you get over there and what are the prices? Here 5770 is like $130 on sale so it's the best bang for the buck card at the moment.

4 gigs of RAM requires a 64 bit OS so either vista 64 or Win 7 64 is required. Otherwise you can have at most 3 gigs. It can make a big difference in games or no difference at all depending on how the game is programmed. For Total War it makes a big difference.
2 gigs probably isn't enough for that game so you're likely getting massive slow downs as the game has to hit your hard drive instead of the RAM. (Faster hard drive could improve performance in these situations as well).

I'm willing to bet that RAM is actually your problem since 8800 GTS 512 is still a very good card for 1280 x 1024.

 

[bigCM]

1280x1024 you reckon its my ram? I don't know why but the game seems choppy when I have most settings on High (not ultra).

My CPU is clearly still a good'un that should be dishing out enough power right?

SSD harddrives are very much out of my price range unfortunately.

In terms of RAM, to be more precise I have 2x 1gb corsair xms2 pro sticks. Would it be okay if I just got 2x 1gb corsair xms2 sticks? the pro one's are ridiculously over priced atm.

Okay prices look like this (i've converted it all to dollars to give you a good indication - even though it may seem more expensive to you the price differences hopefully help!)

I can give more data on specific cards if you would like.


Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 - $66


Sapphire 5850- $325

Sapphire 5770- $180

Sapphire 5750 - $130



ASUS GTX 285- $405

ASUS GTX 275- $283

XFX GTX 275 -$282

SPARKLE GTX 260 - $220

XFX GTS 250 - $155



Thanks

BigCM

 

[happy medium]

For your needs and budget I go for the 5770.

 

[blanketyblank]

1280x1024 you reckon its my ram? I don't know why but the game seems choppy when I have most settings on High (not ultra).

My CPU is clearly still a good'un that should be dishing out enough power right?

SSD harddrives are very much out of my price range unfortunately.

In terms of RAM, to be more precise I have 2x 1gb corsair xms2 pro sticks. Would it be okay if I just got 2x 1gb corsair xms2 sticks? the pro one's are ridiculously over priced atm.

Okay prices look like this (i've converted it all to dollars to give you a good indication - even though it may seem more expensive to you the price differences hopefully help!)

I can give more data on specific cards if you would like.


Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 - $66


Sapphire 5850- $325

Sapphire 5770- $180

Sapphire 5750 - $130



ASUS GTX 285- $405

ASUS GTX 275- $283

XFX GTX 275 -$282

SPARKLE GTX 260 - $220

XFX GTS 250 - $155



Thanks

BigCM

Non pro RAM is fine. you just need to make sure it's rated for or can clock to 800 to match your current RAM. I'm assuming you'r doing something like 400 with a multiplier of 9.
Timings really aren't that important since from what I've seen difference between case 4 or case 5 in benchmarks is like 1-2&#37;.
From the article HappyMedium linked to it does say "Napoleon: total War also requires a lot of system memory. For Windows 7 and Vista you need 4 GiByte and for XP 3 GiByte.".
8800GTS 512 is basically the equivalent of a GTS 250 (250 is overclocked a little) so at 1280 x 1024 which you are running at it's unlikely to be the cause.

Also out of all of those cards the 5750 and the 5850 are the most reasonably priced since that's what I'd have to pay here in the U.S for one.

5770 is about $40 too high. GTS 250 is about $55 too high.
The other NV cards are also way too high though that's sort of normal since the stock is drying up. Their performance doesn't justify their cost though since 5850 is a good deal faster than GTX 285, and 5770 is about the same as a GTX 260 (varies about within 10% of each other).