upgrading/building my computer

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wh33ls1493

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Hey everyone. I'm thinking about upgrading my current computer to something that can play recent/future games on high settings (my current set-up runs older games great but ones released in the last year run at most on medium settings). I want to try and spend as little as possible and keep some things from my current set up but I'm not 100% sure whether some things will be compatible with a new card, etc. I guess this post is for a little help/advice on what to get since I don't know what cards are good and what aren't.

I'll start off by posting the new card, processor, and my current motherboard:

processor: Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX
graphics card: Newegg.com - MSI N560GTX-TI Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
current board: Asus M4N78 PRO Motherboard w/ AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Processor Bundle at TigerDirect.com

Now, I'm not a computer genius but I do know that my board and the new card are both PCI Express 2.0 so in that sense they are compatible. My board is only DirectX10 though while the card is DirectX11 so I'm gonna go out on a limb and make the assumption that I couldn't use the DirectX11 capabilities with my current board? I'm also not sure if the new processor I'm looking at will work with my current motherboard since it's a motherboard/processor bundle. Basically I guess I need to know if I should get a new motherboard, and if so, do you guys have any recommendations?

Also if anyone has suggestions on other graphics cards and/or processors and any other things I might need to know, that'd be cool as well.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to help me out! :)
 
doesn't matter if that mobo and cpu came in a bundle, you can still upgrade it. for that specific mobo, yes it looks it can support a 955 you just need to update your bios.

yes, you can use that gfx card. pci-e x16 cards are all backwards compatible, you could use a 2.1 card in a 1.0 slot. it doesn't matter what the onboard video is or what it does or doesn't support, you would be running your rig off the gfx card and if it supports dx11, yes you would be able to play dx11 games.

what power supply do you have? do you know the make and model?
 
I don't have it off the top of my head but I'll probably look inside tomorrow to see what it is. But basically what you're saying is I can still upgrade the proc. and gfx card with my current motherboard (ignoring the PSU for now)?

Also I did a little more looking around and found the Radeon HD 5870 (Newegg.com - XFX HD-587X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5870 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity) and was wondering if there's much difference between it and the GTX 560. Some of the details (Core Clock, OpenGL, etc) are diff. but that means nothing to me since I have no idea what exactly they mean. If there isn't much of a difference I'll probably get the 5870 since it's cheaper (after mail in rebate) but I wanna make sure first.
 
yea you can still upgrade your cpu and gfx card.

there doesn't appear to be a clear consensus between a 5870 and gtx 560. in some games one is clearly faster than the other and in others they are about the same. i think you should look over some reviews and see which one is better in the games you play. here's a couple
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti: Upsetting The $250 Market - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1 GB Review - Page 5/31 | techPowerUp
 
Thanks. They look to be pretty close for the games I like. I'm kind of nervous about the Metro 2033 FPS for both cards though. Do you think it'd be worthwhile to just get a GTX 570 and then not have to worry about it? If I don't have to get a new mobo I could use the money I would've spent on that and put it towards the 570
 
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