Video Card or CPU?

[Reliant]

I currently have a Geforce 8800 512mb and a E6600 Core 2 duo with 4gb of ram. I have a 24 inch LCD so I came at 1920x1200. Which upgrade would be better to improve my performance right now? I know my Core 2 duo is getting old, would jumping to a 4800 series ATI card or the Nvidia equiv offer a better upgrade vs a newer CPU + RAM?

What do you guys think? Thanks!

 

[happy medium]

Overclock your cpu to 3.1/3.2 and grab a 4870 1gb or gtx 260 cheap.

 

[brblx]

4850 or less i wouldn't bother, i would agree with a 4870 or 260, at least, to get the latest games running at 1920x1200.

your CPU shouldn't be that much of a bottle neck, and you have plenty of RAM.

 

[OCGuy]

GPU absolutely. Overclock that Conroe to get yourself some free performance as well.

 

[fffblackmage]

Upgrading the GPU is more important than upgrading the CPU. It also yields the greatest increase in game performance.
OCing your CPU to 3.0GHz - 3.2GHz is good enough for gaming. CPU bottleneck isn't such a big deal compared to upgrading your video card.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: Reliant
Which upgrade would be better to improve my performance right now?

Performance in what?

You didn't state any specific games, but I'm going to go ahead and guess you're more GPU limited than CPU limited at 1920x1200.

 

[alcoholbob]

If its just "general" performance I'd even venture to say get a SSD, which would help a lot in MMO's in area load performance and can have a pretty profound impact on minimum framerates in games with large areas.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

At stock speeds that E6600 will be a small-moderate bottleneck for the more powerful cards. I'd say your system is pretty balanced right now. If you upgrade your card I would highly recommend you overclock that processor like others have mentioned. The dual core should last you through this year, but afterwards you should seriously look into upgrading to a quad core.

Honestly, to recommend what would be better, we have to know exactly what you want to improve? What games are you playing now that aren't performing well?

 

[Reliant]

Games that run poorly are WoW, Crysis, L4D has it's slow downs, pretty much anything I play I have to turn the settings down to not get some choppyness.

 

[brblx]

you have other problems, then. i used to run WoW maxed out on a athlon 1700 and radeon 9800...it is not an intensive game.

my setup is similar to yours (e7200, 8800gt, 2gb) and i run all valve games maxed out with 4x AA at 1680x1050, vsync and triple buffering on. no slowdowns.

i might be inclined to run 3dmark and compare to similar rigs, i bet you're going to find you're missing some performance somewhere. 1920x1200 or not, WoW and L4D should at least run good.

 

[Reliant]

Originally posted by: brblx
you have other problems, then. i used to run WoW maxed out on a athlon 1700 and radeon 9800...it is not an intensive game.

my setup is similar to yours (e7200, 8800gt, 2gb) and i run all valve games maxed out with 4x AA at 1680x1050, vsync and triple buffering on. no slowdowns.

i might be inclined to run 3dmark and compare to similar rigs, i bet you're going to find you're missing some performance somewhere. 1920x1200 or not, WoW and L4D should at least run good.

I'd agree about the WoW except in the last half year or so, they've added things like real time shadows that eat up your performance and if I turn those down, I run it ok, but I'd like to be able to max things out again at 1920x1200. L4D I can run at 1920x1200, but I can't really AA or AF much otherwise it starts to get slowed down with a lot on the screen. I'd like to not have it vary so much from the high range to low range.