Will I get anything out of a VC upgrade only

[Ike0069]

Current system specs below. I'm still on single core CPU and DDR RAM, but it is nicley OC'd.

I never really have liked this X1900XT, but it has been fine until recently. For several months now I have had minor artifacting in games when the card temps get high from extended gaming. Then today I loaded up Assassins Creed and it quit on me. I lowered all graphics options to minimum and it played, but looks like crap.

I do not plan to do a new system build right now, so I guess I have two options. I can upgrade my VC to an 8800GT/GTS (definitely will be going back to nVidia), or just leave it as is and game with my current system for a while longer.

Do you guys think upgrading to 8800 would give me much benefit, or I am I too limited with my current CPU/RAM?

 

[Sylvanas]

Depends how much you want to spend and want games with what settings/res you want to play. In the mean time I'd pop the heatsink on your X1900XT, reseat it with some quality thermal paste, reinstall with latest drivers (8.4's)- that should solve the overheating (artifacting is generally caused because of overheating).

 

[biostud]

might want to wait until the next generation is out, it should be just around the corner.

 

[myocardia]

Actually, he most likely just needs to blow all of the dust out of his X1900XT's fan & heatsink. Ike, you're already CPU-bound in most games right now, unless you're gaming at really high resolution, or trying to max out AA, or both.

 

[sgrinavi]

To answer your question. I was running an x2 4200 @2.5 with 7900GS's in SLI. I went to an 8800 GTX and saw a HUGE performance increase.

I would think an 8800GT @ $160 would be a reasonable expenditure to cover you for the next few months. When, and if, you want to upgrade to the next gen cards you'll be able to ebay the GT for AT LEAST $100

 

[Ike0069]

I know Assassins Creed tells me that my CPU is not sufficient and I'm guessing that is because it's only single core. It does run the game, but just not very well. Of course I do know that my card quit (screen went black while the sound still played) when I was just setting the options. Didn't even start playing the game yet. The resolution was defaulted at 1680x1050, so after I lowered it to 800x480 and settings to low, it played but still had some minor artifacting.

I will eventually build an entire new system when I'm ready to go Vista/DX10, but I'm not sure when that will be. I guess I'm just looking to extend this system's life a little longer. I'll try cleaning and reseating the HSF on my card and see if that helps. If not, I'll probably upgrade and see what happens. From reading around different forums, the opinion seems split on whether an upgrade will really do much good with my older hardware.