Upgrade Advise

[Wildcat66]

Would lilke some help on my video card upgrade.
Built my system two years ago:
MSI K92A Platinum MB
Amd Athlon 64X2 6000+ cpu
500W PS
4GB ram
2WD 500 gb HD, 3 DVD Drives
ATI Radeon HD 4670
Running WinXP Pro SP 3.0

Would like to keep the cost under $200. Which I believe would get me
into the midrange cards.

Appreciate any advise.

Thanks !!

Nick/West Virginia

 

[Rhezuss]

With that CPU you won't get much out of the current GPUs...but i'd recommend a GTX 560 (non Ti) or a HD 6850.

BTW, what's your resolution?

 

[DominionSeraph]

Are you GPU bound? The 4670 should pair pretty darned well with a 6000+. (I have a 9600GT with a 5200+ and I'm generally CPU bound)

Run a game with GPU-Z running and logging. Alt-tab out and check to see if either the GPU load or memory controller load were near 100%. If not, you're CPU bound. (Or you have VSYNC on and are easily running at refresh)

 

[Wildcat66]

Not having any probs with system or display.
Would like to play some new games and alot of them are showing
newer cards as the requirement.

You guys lost me on the cpu bound thing.
Do you mean than by dual core would bottleneck any increase
I should get with a new card?

 

[Wildcat66]

Sorry Rhezuss, I'm currently running at 1680X1050 Resolution.

 

[DominionSeraph]

You guys lost me on the cpu bound thing.
Do you mean than my dual core would bottleneck any increase I should get with a new card?

Yes.

 

[Wildcat66]

Thanks guys.
You saved me a few bills.
Guess I'll have to wait a while for the next
upgrade which it looks like is going to be a major one.

Nick/West Virginia

 

[cusideabelincoln]

You have an AM2+ board, so you can pop in an X3 or X4. Now the 4670 is still going to hold you back in newer games. You really need to upgrade both, and with a $200 budget you can easily do so.

An Athlon X3 OEM is $65 new. You might be able to find an X3 or X4 cheaper if you go used.

And that leaves you room to get an HD 6770, GTX 550 Ti, or HD 6790.

However, if you could step the video card up to an HD 6850 or GTX 460 ($160->$130 after mailed rebates), then that would be ideal and give you good performance. So if you can do the option of picking up an HD 6850 first, and then saving up for a CPU upgrade or waiting for the rebate, you'll have a pretty balanced system overall. You should still get a performance boost over the 4670 without a CPU upgrade, but quite a few games will still suffer.

 

[Wildcat66]

That sounds better than what I was thinking.
I thought that I would have to replace the mb, memory, cpu, and vidcard.