GPU upgrade with older CPU

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Graham

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Okay, so I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 @2.8 GHz with DDR2800 2 gigs ram on windows XP....

Bad Company 2 runs pretty decent at full blast at 1920x1200, but I would like a little more fps as my 8800 GT is hurting!

I don't have a PCI express 2.0 board, but will only be using one graphics card.

Would purchasing something like a 4890 or gtx 260 be wise, or will the cpu bottleneck out? Bad company 2 is the only game I am really playing spare starcraft 2 when it comes out (dobut that will push my current system) so I don't want to drop the $1500+ for a system quite yet!
 
I think you'll be fine with either the GTX 260 or a 4890. Even if the cpu is a bottleneck you'll still get better performance, it just won't perform as well as a system with a stronger cpu.
 
I would look at a 5770 which performs very close to a 260 with dx11.
or a 5850 if budget allows.

As well as what Slay said about bottlenecking. For fun I put my gtx260 in a skt 939 pci-e 1.0 w/ a 4000+ (definite bottleneck) and while it could not touch performance with my i7 is was a huge increase from my old card and made games like crysis playable at 1920x1200.
 
Nice! Sounds good! I just can't justify buying a whole new PC for a game where I get minimum around 30 fps at full blast at high res....

Thanks guys!
 
If you have a second PCI-E slot you could use your 8800 GTS as a dedicated PhysX card I think, after you buy the 5770?
I'm not 100% sure though.

(You'll have to do a workaround to make PhysX work with the ATI card, but it's possible.)
:]
 
It's the old chipsets that only supported either SLI or Xfire, so that wouldn't work unfortunately = (

And mine happens to be a Xfire board bllahhhhhh!
 
Okay, new idea:

Core 2 quad socket 775 and new GPU

Recommendations based on the power supply I have in my signature? It does have two pciE 6-pin connectors and a converter for the 8-pin, although I doubt I'll spend more than $400 total on this upgrade...
 
mmmmm those prices for those socket 775's are definitely not worth it when a 1366 i-7 920 is only a tad more....

I just want to avoid a new build.... really not worth it at the moment and want to wait a year or more for SSDs to go down a tad and more USB 3.0 support

also PCI-E 3.0 is on the horizon...
 
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