My rig:
eVGA 680i SLI nForce board (purchased 6/2007)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (upgraded to it in 4/2010 from the E6600 I got w/the mobo in 6/2007) - not really OCing but have tinkered with it a bit, up to 3.0 but EVE doesn't seem to like when I OC.
XFX Radeon HD 5850 (purchased 4/2010) - tinkered with OCing to 850/1200, the improvement didn't blow me away
6GB OCZ Platinum DDR2 @ 1066MHz
1920x1080 LCD (only 'cause the x1200 one was just too pricey when I bought it 3 years ago)
Its job:
Mostly graphically-rich RPGs like EVE, The Witcher 2, and Skyrim (neither of the latter have I played yet but I doubt my rig would be able to handle them in all their glory smoothly). My MP FPS days are pretty much over, I just can't keep up; my peak was BF2142, every title since then has been slightly less interesting and slightly faster-paced, leading me to mostly abandon competitive FPS (BF:BC2 was my last, didn't even buy BF3 or MW2/BLOPS/MW3) in favor of the above.
So the big question for a gamer on a budget is where would a few hundred bucks be better-spent:
- replace mobo, CPU, RAM (thinking Z68/1155/Core i5)
- replace GPU (really like the GTX680, a little pricey but I'm intrigued by the "set target FPS and let the clock auto-adjust" feature, like cruise control!)
Assuming I've got ~$400, maaayyyybe $500 to spend I can't replace everything and make any significant headway (at least given the benchmarks I've seen for the sub-$200 GPUs relative to the 5850), so I've gotta pick one. It would do me no good to drop $400-500 on a top-shelf GPU if the Q6600 is what's holding me back.
Can anyone recommend some steps I can take to determine if my performance is being throttled by the 680i/Q6600 (given that it's older than the 5850), or vice versa? If I can determine one or the other that would in all likelihood make my decision for me, as I would obviously replace the bottleneck with something new.
Thanks!
JT
eVGA 680i SLI nForce board (purchased 6/2007)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (upgraded to it in 4/2010 from the E6600 I got w/the mobo in 6/2007) - not really OCing but have tinkered with it a bit, up to 3.0 but EVE doesn't seem to like when I OC.
XFX Radeon HD 5850 (purchased 4/2010) - tinkered with OCing to 850/1200, the improvement didn't blow me away
6GB OCZ Platinum DDR2 @ 1066MHz
1920x1080 LCD (only 'cause the x1200 one was just too pricey when I bought it 3 years ago)
Its job:
Mostly graphically-rich RPGs like EVE, The Witcher 2, and Skyrim (neither of the latter have I played yet but I doubt my rig would be able to handle them in all their glory smoothly). My MP FPS days are pretty much over, I just can't keep up; my peak was BF2142, every title since then has been slightly less interesting and slightly faster-paced, leading me to mostly abandon competitive FPS (BF:BC2 was my last, didn't even buy BF3 or MW2/BLOPS/MW3) in favor of the above.
So the big question for a gamer on a budget is where would a few hundred bucks be better-spent:
- replace mobo, CPU, RAM (thinking Z68/1155/Core i5)
- replace GPU (really like the GTX680, a little pricey but I'm intrigued by the "set target FPS and let the clock auto-adjust" feature, like cruise control!)
Assuming I've got ~$400, maaayyyybe $500 to spend I can't replace everything and make any significant headway (at least given the benchmarks I've seen for the sub-$200 GPUs relative to the 5850), so I've gotta pick one. It would do me no good to drop $400-500 on a top-shelf GPU if the Q6600 is what's holding me back.
Can anyone recommend some steps I can take to determine if my performance is being throttled by the 680i/Q6600 (given that it's older than the 5850), or vice versa? If I can determine one or the other that would in all likelihood make my decision for me, as I would obviously replace the bottleneck with something new.
Thanks!
JT