Graphic card upgrade advice

[Gorse]

Hello all, first post hope one or more of you can help.

Current system :

Athlon 64 - 4400x2
Mobo - Asus A8N-SLI
3gb RAM
nVidia 7800GTX 256mb
PSU 550W
Soundblaster Audigy 2

Use it mainly for online game playing.

System is about 3 years old now so yes it's getting a bit long in the tooth, but can't afford a complete upgrade or replacement. Noticed some games starting to struggle a bit (Warhammer Online for one).

Have recently bumped up the memory from 1gb to 3gb and this has had a big improvement. Now wondering about upping the graphics card.

Would I see much of an improvement if I replace the nVidia with an ATI 4850-512mb or 4870-512mb ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[meat_helmet]

Yep. You should see a big difference. Possible double the frame rate on your system. It may be slightly bottlenecked, but yeh it will be good.

 

[mahiv87]

i believe you'll get a bigger difference with 4870

 

[FBR_BDavis]

If you plan to keep that computer (motherboard) for a while, you may want to consider an nVidia-based card since that is a SLI motherboard.. This will allow you to have some extended upgrade options down the road (A 2nd nVidia card for SLI).. However, the ATI cards are quite nice themselves.. You just won't be able to Crossfire them on that particular motherboard..

 

[meat_helmet]

Hmm, i didnt see that 4870 there the first time. It is a better card than the 4850, but not by a huge margin - the 4850 is the best price/performance card out.

 

[Gorse]

Many thanks for the speedy responses.

Am going to go for the 4850

 

[NightSurge]

That is probably your best choice Especially given your PSU is only a 550W which may not have the connections or the power for an HD 4870 depending on what brand/model your PSU actually is.

There shouldn't be much bottleneck if any.

Also, for an aged SLI board, I would suggest not even considering SLI It's always best to just get a good single card solution over 2 cards in SLI/Crossfire because both will have certain drawbacks.