upgrading, opinions needed

[slifer2790]

Please help me decide what to upgrade.

My current system - amd 955, asus m4a79xtd-evo, 4 gb ddr3 1600, 5850, xigmatec dark knight cooler, intel 120 gb ssd, 750 gb hd, 750w antec trupower new, windows 7 64 bit.

I play mostly fps games (1920 x 1080). Planning on buying another 4 gb ram and another 5850 to crossfire. If I oc my 955, will it be adequate or still too much of a bottleneck? Basically I'd like to know what you would upgrade if you had my system. I'm willing to spend up to $600 or so if it would be a worthwhile upgrade. Thanks

 

[T_Yamamoto]

You could just switch to intel

 

[lehtv]

Overall, an X4 955 + 5850 setup isn't bad at all. And you have an SSD too. I'd wait until Intel Ivy Bridge to be released, then upgrade to

Unlocked i5 Ivy Bridge ~$200
Mobo $100-150 (probably the new chipset to be released with Ivy)
2x4GB DDR3-1600 $40

I don't think there are any single GPUs worth paying for, coming from a 5850... So if you can find a cheap used 5850, that'd be pretty good. The 955 won't really bottleneck it, maybe in some games, but you'll still get a big boost although you'll run out of VRAM with ultra settings in some games. Another option worth considering is to wait for NVIDIA Kepler to be released in 4-5 months then upgrade to a $200-250 GPU. With that plan, you'd do the whole upgrade at the same time as Ivy will be out in April-May as well.

 

[slifer2790]

Wow you guys are fast. I think I can find a good used 5850 for around $150. $30-40 for another 4 gb ram. I think I will wait awhile longer, then switch to ivy bridge. Thanks again

 

[lehtv]

You probably don't need the extra RAM. DDR2 is more expensive than DDR3 anyway... unless you know for a fact that you would benefit noticeably from more RAM, better save it for that upgrade later on.

$150 for a used 5850 sounds kinda high. You can find a faster 6870 new for that price - if you could sell your 5850 for $150, it'd make much more sense to switch to brand new 6870 crossfire. I'd pay $100 tops for a used 5850. Preferably less...

 

[slifer2790]

Reason I plan to add ram is because I've noticed when playing Battlefield 3 I'll be using 3.5 gb out of 4. Another 2x2gb ddr3 1600 ram like I have now is only $30 on newegg, I figure it cant hurt, right?

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...GD5-CO&cat=VCD

New 5850 for $150, 1 yr warranty. Never bought anything from that site, anybody have anything to say about them? 6870's would be nice but I'd rather not have to deal with selling mine 1st.

 

[lehtv]

Wouldn't pay $150 for a new 5850... It just doesn't make much sense. Used 5850's sell for about $110-140 on eBay. Even that's a bit steep IMO, I'd rather sell the 5850 and upgrade to something new. Here:

HIS 6870 $150 ($130 AR). Your 5850 will buy you one and it'll already be 10% faster. Add another and you'll have about 100% faster setup than with one 5850, or around 30% faster than 5850 crossfire would be - for about the same price. (6870 crossfire scaling is better.)

Personally I wouldn't go Crossfire at all though. If I wanted better performance now, I'd sell the 5850 and buy a 6950 2GB for $250 AR, overclock it a bit and enjoy my +30-40% performance increase and extra VRAM, without having to worry about noise/power/temperature, driver issues, unstable framerates or microstutter.

 

[slifer2790]

I appreciate the advice lehtv. A 6950 would be nice, but I'm also curious to see how much 7950's will be selling for.

 

[lehtv]

around $400 probably

 

[monkeydelmagico]

You are at end of duty cycle on AM3 board. I'm in a similar boat. 955 is still good for current games. Wait until you can get a used/refurb 5850 for around $80.- I predict that will happen mid to late 2012. Crossfire and OC your 955. Game on through 2013 then start fresh build with new OS Win8.