What's the best upgrade from GTX 285?

[sofakng]

Let me start off by saying that I know I already have a good system. However, I have a couple of extra dollars to spend and I'm wondering what kind of upgrades I can afford.

I'm playing at 1920x1200 and I like to get 60 FPS with almost everything turned on. I don't need anti-aliasing but it's certainly nice.

With that requirement the GTX 285 doesn't work with all games. For example, Settlers 7 requires me to turn off a lot of effects and even then I only get 20 - 30 FPS. This is also the case for a lot of other games.

Here's my system:

ASUS P5B-Deluxe (only one PCIe 16x slot, and it's PCIe 1.0)
EVGA GTX 285 1GB
8 GB RAM (DDR2)
Intel C2D E8400 @ 4.0 GHz

What kind of upgrade would give me a decent improvement in framerates? I'm looking at the GTX 480 but it seems to be only a 10 FPS increase (but perhaps minimum framerate is heavily boosted?).

Can anybody give me any advice?

 

[MegaWorks]

If you want a card faster than the GTX 480, then the only choice left is the Radeon HD 5970.

 

[sofakng]

How much faster is the GTX 480 than the GTX 285? (espicially minimum framerates)

The 5970 is out of my price range... (it looks like it costs $700 and is a dual gpu so I'm guessing it might suffer from microstuttering?)

 

[dug777]

lol






EDIT: I would suggest waiting to at least see some legit AMD HD 6000 benchmarks if I was j00, at this stage it would be so easy to end up with heap big buyer's remorse...

 

[Will Robinson]

Let me start off by saying that I know I already have a good system. However, I have a couple of extra dollars to spend and I'm wondering what kind of upgrades I can afford.

I'm playing at 1920x1200 and I like to get 60 FPS with almost everything turned on. I don't need anti-aliasing but it's certainly nice.

With that requirement the GTX 285 doesn't work with all games. For example, Settlers 7 requires me to turn off a lot of effects and even then I only get 20 - 30 FPS. This is also the case for a lot of other games.

Here's my system:

ASUS P5B-Deluxe (only one PCIe 16x slot, and it's PCIe 1.0)
EVGA GTX 285 1GB
8 GB RAM (DDR2)
Intel C2D E8400 @ 4.0 GHz

What kind of upgrade would give me a decent improvement in framerates? I'm looking at the GTX 480 but it seems to be only a 10 FPS increase (but perhaps minimum framerate is heavily boosted?).

Can anybody give me any advice?

Yep,get a modern CPU,mobo and a GTX470 if you must have an NVidia card.

 

[Grooveriding]

How much faster is the GTX 480 than the GTX 285? (espicially minimum framerates)

The 5970 is out of my price range... (it looks like it costs $700 and is a dual gpu so I'm guessing it might suffer from microstuttering?)

I think a GTX 480 is generally about 50% faster than a GTX 285 in averages and around 60-70% faster in minimum frames.

It will give you 60fps at your resolution in a lot of games except for the more demanding games and particularly DX11 games.

AMD's 6870 is not far off now, a couple months. If you can live with what you have for a while, you could wait for a full slew of benches to show up for that card. From what has been leaked it's about 35% faster than a GTX 480 so far and will get you closer to the 60fps mark at your resolution.

 

[Petey!]

Yeah I'd be spending my money on an i5/i7 combo instead of a new gpu right now.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I'm keeping my GTX 285 at least until the next generation of cards are out in the wild. If AMD's HD 6000 series is a smash hit, I'll probably grab an HD 6850 or something along those lines. If they're only moderately better than the HD 5000 series and the pricing isn't compelling, I'll wait to see Nvidia's answer or until mid next year, whatever happens first.

The GTX 285 is still a very capable card today. I have a hard time finding anything it can't play at 1920x1080 without high detail and at least 4xAA. I think Metro 2033 and GTA4 (view distance) are the only games I've had to turn down a few settings in.

The only reason I'm eager to ditch my card is so that I can stop using DVI cables. They're so bulky, but DisplayPort adapters are expensive.

 

[Attic]

You are at a stage with your gaming rig where you need to upgrade the CPU+mobo as well as the GPU if you want to maintain 60fps. The dual core, even at 4ghz, is not going to cut it. You should give consideration to a dual stage upgrade. At this point it is worth waiting for Sandy Bridge on the mobo+cpu front. And it's also worthwhile to wait for AMD's 6000 series before plunking down 400+ bucks on a 480.

Your mobo uses the P965 chipset so you should have support for older Quads (Q6600 + Q6700), and you may have support for the newer Yorkfield quads. I'd do some research and see what your motherboard can support and consider going quad with a nice overclock in addition to a 480 if you want to upgrade now. A 480 or faster video card with a dual core is going to be heavily CPU bound in the games coming out that are making heavy use of quad+ cpu's. Either way, I'd definatly find a way to get a beefier CPU to pair with an upgraded GPU in your situation.

Edit: Some of the P965 mobo's had a hard time pushin quads very high, not sure how the Asus board copes with the task.

 

[Qbah]

You are at a stage with your gaming rig where you need to upgrade the CPU+mobo as well as the GPU if you want to maintain 60fps. The dual core, even at 4ghz, is not going to cut it. You should give consideration to a dual stage upgrade. At this point it is worth waiting for Sandy Bridge on the mobo+cpu front. And it's also worthwhile to wait for AMD's 6000 series before plunking down 400+ bucks on a 480.

(...)

This :thumbsup:

 

[Caribbean Geek]

Great post Attic!!

 

[Golgatha]

Get a quad-core i5 system and a GTX 470, then sell your leftovers. That should give you 50% or more performance across the board and not break the bank.

 

[zagood]

Upgrade CPU/MOBO/RAM first. Wait 6 months and upgrade GPU. Use your newfound computational power to come up with new acronyms for me to use.

 

[TemjinGold]

OP: Settlers 7 is choking because of the lack of cores on your cpu, not because of your gfx card.

 

[toyota]

How much faster is the GTX 480 than the GTX 285? (espicially minimum framerates)

The 5970 is out of my price range... (it looks like it costs $700 and is a dual gpu so I'm guessing it might suffer from microstuttering?)

I guess 6 years on a tech forum has not taught you to look at reviews??? in any case there are some newer games where your cpu will certainly not keep with a gtx480 or faster.

 

[sofakng]

OP: Settlers 7 is choking because of the lack of cores on your cpu, not because of your gfx card.

Really? Does Settlers 7 use all four cores? Can you point me to an article about that?

I thought most games (all except GTA 4?) pretty much only use two cores (ie. two threads)...

 

[toyota]

Really? Does Settlers 7 use all four cores? Can you point me to an article about that?

I thought most games (all except GTA 4?) pretty much only use two cores (ie. two threads)...

plenty of games use more than 2 cores. also an i5/i7 cpu is a better architecture and will deliver better performance in many games even compare to the Core 2 quad. in other words just because a game doesn't fully max 2, 3 or 4 cores doesn't mean it wont be faster and or smoother with an i5/i7 quad. your cpu is fine for the most part but there are some cpu heavy games where a gtx480 is going to need more.

 

[sofakng]

Yeah that's what I've been trying to figure out.

For example, how much faster is an i5 or i7 than an overclocked (4.0 GHz) Core 2 Duo? When I last looked for information it seemed like the difference was "not much" but I don't know...

 

[toyota]

Yeah that's what I've been trying to figure out.

For example, how much faster is an i5 or i7 than an overclocked (4.0 GHz) Core 2 Duo? When I last looked for information it seemed like the difference was "not much" but I don't know...

well they are fairly close in most game but the more gpu power you have then the better the i5/i7 look. a game like GTA 4 is way faster with an i5/i7 than Core 2 dou or even quad with just a mid range card though. Ghostbusters, GTA 4 , Prototype, Red Faction Guerrilla, Bad Company 2 and some others really need more cpu power than a dual core can provide with trying to push a high end card.

 

[sofakng]

That's my dilemma

Upgrading the CPU, MOBO, and RAM will cost quite a bit of money (especially for 8 GB DDR3 alone!) so I'm trying to decide what's best for now and then upgrade the rest of the system later.

I'm leaning towards the GTX 480 for now, and then upgrade the rest of the system later. I wouldn't think that I would get a big boost in FPS if I kept my current video card and only upgraded the system right now. (and I don't have enough money to do both)

 

[toyota]

That's my dilemma

Upgrading the CPU, MOBO, and RAM will cost quite a bit of money (especially for 8 GB DDR3 alone!) so I'm trying to decide what's best for now and then upgrade the rest of the system later.

I'm leaning towards the GTX 480 for now, and then upgrade the rest of the system later. I wouldn't think that I would get a big boost in FPS if I kept my current video card and only upgraded the system right now. (and I don't have enough money to do both)

yes overall you will get the biggest boost in most games by upgrading to the gtx480. I personally would not want to spend all that money and have to put up with the heat, noise and power consumption if I wasn't able to get close to 100% of it in ALL my games though.

 

[tweakboy]

Go GTX 470 or 480. AMD go with 5870 gl,

 

[sofakng]

Speaking of the i5 and i7s... what would be the next step from my overclocked E8400 (4.0 GHz) in a quad-core i5 or i7?

The i7-950 is $299 and clocked at 3.06 GHz. Would this be faster than my E8400? (not counting the fact that the i7 is quad core and mine is only dual)

 

[CurseTheSky]

The Core iX architecture is a bit faster than Core 2, so I would estimate ~3.5-3.7GHz to be roughly equal to yours at 4.0. However, like you said, you'll be upgrading to a quad core which will benefit some games and allow the OS to offload tasks like virus scans and other background programs to other cores when a game is running (since many games take advantage of at least two cores these days). You'll probably still want to overclock the chip a bit to take full advantage of it. An i7-930 should hit 3.5-3.7 GHz with virtually no effort, and 4.0 should be fairly easy as well.

 

[Caribbean Geek]

plenty of games use more than 2 cores. also an i5/i7 cpu is a better architecture and will deliver better performance in many games even compare to the Core 2 quad. in other words just because a game doesn't fully max 2, 3 or 4 cores doesn't mean it wont be faster and or smoother with an i5/i7 quad. your cpu is fine for the most part but there are some cpu heavy games where a gtx480 is going to need more.

BFG has an article on Appoppin's website that shows that most games runs well enough on a Dual Core processor, considering that he's not going to a multi GPU solution and has a heavily overclocked CPU, a nice GTX 470 or HD 5870 will do the upgrade, but I think that he should wait more, the GTX 480 isn't twice faster than the GTX 285.