Upgrades

[jebathan]

I am thinking about making a few upgrades to my PC so I can hold off on a more serious upgrade until later on. I currently have and Athlon 64 3200+, 1 gig RAM, and Geforce 6800GT. I was just reading about the 8600GT and Ultra coming out any time now for relatively cheap. Do you think I would see some decent gains if got the 8600 Ultra and added another gig of ram? Also do you think my CPU would become a bottleneck? and if it is, would something like an Athlon 64 X2 be a wise upgrade? I don't plan on buying them all at once either, just looking for some other input on the matter.

 

[Sora]

hrrm that's a tough upgrade choice man. The Athlon's still aren't dead for gaming yet. You can get by for now with one, especially if you OC it just a little. it all depends on your resolution what will be your next upgrade choice. If you play on 1024x864 or so then I would say upgrade to the 8600GT when it comes out OR if you want those most frames just forget DX10 for now and when those come out it will knock down the prices of the current cards. You see...the 8 series cards will be knocked down in performance a bit by DX10 when it comes out while the DX9 cards won't have to use those features. If you play at a higher res then another gig of ram would be needed as it starts to hurt higher than that.


How much are you willing to initially spend? Your in a very tough upgrade decision I think.

 

[jebathan]

Ya I know I'm in a tough spot. I was looking into some options to stretch out the life of my PC for another year or two before I build a new system with all new bells and whistles. So I think my first step will be to get another gig of ram. I mostly game in 1280x1024. I'm not to concerned about DX10, since I have no plans of getting Vista soon, but wouldn't the 8600 provide a lot of improvements in DX9 over my 6800 or would I be better off getting a 7000 series card?

 

[Sora]

I would get another gig of ram and as far as the 8 series cards go we don't know. The 8600GT will be fast in DX9 as well but it supports DX10 so it will be a little more than a an older series card that performs just as well in DX9 for cheaper. It's been stated that an 8600GT will probably be close to the 7900GS in terms of DX9 power but noone knows this for sure as there aren't any benchmarks of them, just specs. So thats all we can do is speculate.
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I would use the athlon you have and OC it if you can or haven't already. Still offers good enough gaming performance. I would go...Video card-> Ram->X2 Manchester

That's just me though.

 

[maroon1]

8600GTS, 8600GT and 8500GT will come out in April 17

 

[andrus]

Is there any word on when the 8900GS comes out?