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Time to upgrade either processor or video card

G

gizbug

Platinum Member
My current setup is:

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.0GHz
4x1GB Corsair XMS DDR2
Gigabyte EP45-DS3R (F10 bios)
EVGA 8800 GTS 640mb @ 675Mhz (core) / 1512Mhz (shaders) / 2160 (memory)
Auzentech Prelude 7.1 Sound
Vista Home Premium x64 SP2 beta


I am looking to either upgrade to a Q9550 (I am about 50% gaming, 50% apps on my pc. Getting into Dreamweaver and photoshop a lot more these days, and use winrar a lot)....or looking at upgrading an older 8800GTS to either a 4850 512 or a 9800 GTX 512MB.

Main games I'm playing now are TF2, Lord of the Rings Online, COD5, Warhammer Online.

Any opinions? Or would it be more wise to wait a month or two for prices to come down?
 
The HD 4850 and 9800gtx aren't really going to do much for you in terms of gaming, so I'd say CPU upgrade or wait.

Why do you need an upgrade again?
 
Do you have performance issues running any of your games or applications? I'd be tempted to wait a bit, but you can do that indefinitely. I also have an 8800GTS 640 (with an E8400) and am eyeing the GTX 260 when the prices come down another notch. I don't see the 9800 GTX as being enough of an upgrade.
 
Will your e6600 go any faster or is that about the max for it?

GPU upgrade will definitely help gaming while CPU won't much at all.

CPU upgrade won't help you much in Photoshop CS3 (faster dual core is better), I don't know about Dreamweaver and haven't found anything conclusive online after a brief search.

I would probably lean toward a GPU upgrade (but look at GTX 260 or 4870 not a small step to 9800GTX/4850) instead of a CPU upgrade that might not do much at all. An e6600 @ 3GHz is still quite a capable processor, should easily last another year or so before seriously needing to be replaced. Perhaps when Westmere (32nm i7) launches...
 
Let me ask you this. A game I play a lot of is Lord of the Rings Online.
When i exit this game, or say even STEAM, it takes a while (30-40 secs) to fully get into vista desktop and get stuff back running normal.
If I have ventrilo open, after closing the game, there is like lag/pauses with people talking as the game closes down, I get back to desktop, and return to normal vista usage.

Would more RAM fix this? Upgrading the processor fix this? Or is this just how it is? BTW, have 4 gig of ddr2 800 ram.
 
Originally posted by: gizbug
Let me ask you this. A game I play a lot of is Lord of the Rings Online.
When i exit this game, or say even STEAM, it takes a while (30-40 secs) to fully get into vista desktop and get stuff back running normal.
If I have ventrilo open, after closing the game, there is like lag/pauses with people talking as the game closes down, I get back to desktop, and return to normal vista usage.

Would more RAM fix this? Upgrading the processor fix this? Or is this just how it is? BTW, have 4 gig of ddr2 800 ram.
Click to expand...

My CPU is not as fast as yours and I have the same amount of RAM as you - 4GB. I don't have any of those kind of problems. I'm also running Vista64. I would suspect that your problem is not hardware related. What else is running in the background besides vent? Did you have this problem before you installed the SP2 beta?

Before you go out and drop $300 on a new quad or graphics card you owe it to yourself to find out whether that's actually going to fix the problem or not.
 
I should backtrack a second and explain "not hardware related". I don't think it's related to the specs of your hardware based on my own experience. It's possible that something hardware-related is misconfigured.

What's your hard drive?
 
Just in case you're interested...

BFG GTX 280 $285 (after $30MIR + free shipping)

Considering the best deal on GTX 260 right now is $230 (after $50MIR) this is a pretty stunning deal.
 
Those GPUs won't do you much good. At least look at HD4870 or GTX 260 or just wait for the next generation, I think you can manage with your 8800GTS 640 for a few months? If you think you really need a quadcore, wait for the rumored Intel price cuts at the end of January if it'll happen.
 
Yeah, it doesn't seem like your hardware (the capability of the combined performance) is an issue, but rather some kind of software or improper hardware configuration setting. Are your hard disks old? 16MB of cache seems a bit weak, but only at doing certain tasks. The 250GB size is what makes me think they may be a bit older, but not always true. 🙂

I'd say buy yourself a WD Raptor or Velociraptor - it's a performance gain pretty much anyone would recognize. Plus, you can use it on your new computer if you decide to go that route. Either way, it'll surely speed up most things, especially working with RAR archives and other big files, Windows boot times, game and map load times, etc. That said, unnecessary slowing of programs could be a sign of a bad hard disk; either your primary C drive or a failing secondary as well - be sure to keep that in mind!

When was the last time you defragmented? How much free space does your C drive have? One thing I have noticed with Vista is that it's extremely sensitive to low disk space. I have two WD Raptors. (not in RAID) The page file for the OS, Photoshop and Lightroom (I do a lot of photo processing) is on the second Raptor while everything else resides on the primary C disk. If my C drive gets within 5GB of free space, Vista lags quite a bit, similar to what you describe, but only with the typical Windows tasks and web browsing. Additionally, the closing of pretty much any application with your specs should be instantaneous.

Oh, nice sound card by the way! 😀

EDIT: You are running a BETA service pack!!! Do you have an old disk image you can flash back to and see if that helps your problem? Personally, I'm running Vista x64 Ultimate with SP1 installed.
 
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