Upgrade for my RIG (E8400, P35, 8800gt)

[dunce]

I am thinking about upgrading my PC. I have a E8400 on a P35 with an 8800gt. I was thinking about just getting a ATI 4850 or 4870 / Nvidia 260. This should improve my FPS somewhat. But my P35 chipset (GA-EP35-DS3r) doesn't support PCI-e 2.0 or overclock well.

The other option is getting a EVGA/XFX Nvidia 780i and another 8800gt for SLI. From what I see this might be my best option. I have a PC Power and Cooling 750w PS and Coolermaster 830 stacker, so SLI should be no problem.

My questions are, Do most games support SLI? WOW, TF2, CoH, COD4, Supreme Commander? What about Vista 64bit support? Anything I should watch out for?

Also I want to OC better does nTune work as well as Nvidia claims?

Thanks,
Paul

 

[mrmessyhair]

haha, nTune..

I tried nTune on vista 64 bit when I first got my 8800 GTX

I managed to lock my memory and core clock speeds at 0. yes, 0. Had to go through hell to fix it.


I might just be retarded though, who knows.

 

[RussianSensation]

That board and P35 chipset should overclock very well. P35 DS3Rs go to at least 450FSB, which should be good for 40% cpu frequency increase.

In all of the 4 games you mentioned, 8800GT is sufficient and no upgrade is warranted imo (unless you are playing at very high resolutions and AA). I would say way from 780 chipset.

I would upgrade to 4870 if you can sell your 8800GT. Otherwise I would wait until the games you play start becoming too slow for your or you have to drop the image quality significantly.

Any PCIe 2.0 graphics card will work in your board.

You should overclock in the BIOS not use something like nTune.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

You should overclock your graphics card with Rivatuner or EVGA Precision and your CPU in BIOS.