Graphics card update - worth it on an old system?

Hello all,

My system is to the left, but to save you the trouble of clicking...

AMD 939 4400X2
A8N32 - SLI
2* 7800GTX
4Gig RAM

I'm currently playing Empire Total War, it's the best game I've played in a very long time, however it is kicking it out of my system.... making it unplayable on occasions.

My question is: is it worth buying a graphics card to replace the two I have (I feel I can't justify a full system upgrade at the moment). Or, with the comparatively slow system I have, would this be a false economy?

Thanks
MB

PS - if it's worth it which should I go for?

Well, your graphics cards do look like they are your bottleneck, so I would say yes replace them.

In addition, an upgraded graphics card can be used if you upgrade the rest of the system so it isn't money wasted.

OTOH, I gather those dual core 939 chips fetch a fair penny on ebay, and modern CPUs are sooo cheap atm!

Anyway, what is your budget?

Most games are mainly GPU dependant....which means that as long as the CPU isn't too slow, then a gfx card upgrade will still give the biggest possible gains.....there is of course a point where the CPU cannot supply data fast enough to the GPU but that shouldn't really effect you unless you buy a complete beast of a card and run it at a super high resolution.

Some games do buck this trend though and use the CPU heavily........and coording to this Total War does heavily load the CPU!

Take a look at the charts.....

Yep, E:TW is a bad one for the CPU - I would wait for a full system upgrade.

But a full upgrade would involve a new GPU, which if funds are not permitting for the full upgrade then the GPU can still happen now.

Is the current CPU overclocked btw?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

Is the current CPU overclocked btw?

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No it's at stock

Budget for a new GPU would be around £100

Or hold off to the new year (feb/march) - and have a budget of £500 for a new system

Do you play anything else?

If E:TW is your main poison, then maybe a new board + CPU now, with a new gfx card in the new year?

I almost can't beleive you have DDR1 RAM! If it was DDR2 at least, you could get an AM3 CPU + board for < £100.....but 4GB of RAM (DDR2 or DDR3) is ~ £70 at the moment :S

A secondhand socket 939 X2 4400+ is going for between £60 to £100 on Ebay. My advice would be to sell all the bits while you can still get a good price for them and upgrade to something a bit newer.

Regarding the GPU the best one for under £100 would be an HD4870 512MB although it consumes a lot of power.

OTH,an HD4770 would be a decent and relatively cheap upgrade for around the £60 mark:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179285

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173741

Those 4770 cards are a good price, but won't they only be about 50% faster than a pair of 7800GTX in SLI? Depends on how shader heavy the game is I suppose.

How about a 5750 for £91.52?

You might be interested in this Tom's Hardware review - it's for the HD4650 AGP, but it demonstrates a very clear and consistent CPU bottleneck across virtually all games, using an Athlon X2 3800+. I'm not convinced that it's the 2x 7800GTX that are bottlenecking your gaming performance here, I'm afraid...

I think your best bet is to hold off for the new year, sell off all the s939 kit, and put the funds towards a new build. As CAT says the s939 CPUs can fetch a lot, and your 7800GTXs should raise about £20 each... Also 4GB of DDR400 should get you some decent money too...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Do you play anything else?

If E:TW is your main poison, then maybe a new board + CPU now, with a new gfx card in the new year?

I almost can't beleive you have DDR1 RAM! If it was DDR2 at least, you could get an AM3 CPU + board for < £100.....but 4GB of RAM (DDR2 or DDR3) is ~ £70 at the moment :S

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E:TW is my main poison, I play Day of Defeat and a few other online FPs games occasionally... which my system handles capably.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

Those 4770 cards are a good price, but won't they only be about 50% faster than a pair of 7800GTX in SLI? Depends on how shader heavy the game is I suppose.

How about a 5750 for £91.52?

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

You might be interested in this Tom's Hardware review - it's for the HD4650 AGP, but it demonstrates a very clear and consistent CPU bottleneck across virtually all games, using an Athlon X2 3800+. I'm not convinced that it's the 2x 7800GTX that are bottlenecking your gaming performance here, I'm afraid...

I think your best bet is to hold off for the new year, sell off all the s939 kit, and put the funds towards a new build. As CAT says the s939 CPUs can fetch a lot, and your 7800GTXs should raise about £20 each... Also 4GB of DDR400 should get you some decent money too...

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Thanks for the link - I too am a little surprised that 2x7800GTX can't cut it anymore: I mean I know it's old technology, but I still thought there was enough boot there to see it through to next gen. Looks like the CPU is stifling me.

That said the main issue I have with E:TW is the rendering of the armies - it's like the system just can't hack it so takes to displaying non-poly bitmaps if there's too much on the screen...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by M0nkeyb0Y

That said the main issue I have with E:TW is the rendering of the armies - it's like the system just can't hack it so takes to displaying non-poly bitmaps if there's too much on the screen...

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That could just be the CPU failing to feed enough geometry into the GPUs though. The problem you'll have is that a CPU upgrade on s939 is gonna cost! Could you move to a moderate cost newer SLI solution? For instance, here's an MSI Socket AM3 750 SLI mobo, which would give you the choice of any AM3 processor and a jump up to DDR3 memory, while keeping your existing 7800GTXs. This wouldn't be cheap, but you could probably keep the CPU mobo and ram to ~ £200 and it should give you a boost across your whole system, not just in games...

If you are holding off Napoleon TW will be out early next year. There was alot of people angry about the specs needed for ETW which they may clean up in the next one; It may also suppport multiple cores.

Being able to play at high/ultra settings is still difficult for high end rigs. My S939 3200+ and X1950pro couldn't really handle the campaign map. Medium/small battle settings with almost everything turned off were okay though.

It just about runs in high on my new rig with alot of stuff turned down, crawling to a snails pace when you zoom it. It does look lovely though!

I though that SLI and Crossfire had more CPU overhead than single card solutions TBH. This is why I suggested ditching the 7800GTX cards as they will pay for some of the cost of an HD4770. Also the HD4770 has more video memory too.

Another fact is that it is possible to do an upgrade with a Phenom II X4 925,MSI 770-C45 AM3 motherboard and 4GB of DDR3 for around £250.