Next step?

[BlueMagician]

Hello all..

I'm getting the upgrade itch once again - to be fair, it's about 23 months since my last upgrade..

Simple question - do you think it's worth my buying a nice new shiny 8800GTX to replace my SLI 6800GT pair, along with maybe another gig of RAM?
Or, should I go the whole hog, change the mobo/cpu and go to Vista in one go?

I primarily like to game at 1600x1200 with all the goodies, and my current system doesn't cut it anymore. Am I naive to think a simple (yet expensive) GFX hardware update will solve my problems?

Cheers in advance for your opinions,
S.

[Clunk]

how much do you have to spend?

[BlueMagician]

how much do you have to spend?

Good question. I don't really have an answer tho - sounds stupid I know.
I guess I'll make myself afford whatever is a sensible upgrade for what I currently have.

If a new £350 GFX card will give what I've got a good kick up the bottom for another year or so, I'd rather not spend £150 on a new mobo + £250 on a new CPU.

I'm just in a bit of a gaming lull at the moment. I just bought Splinter Cell Double Agent and was thorougly disappointed for so many reasons. I need a new configuration to lift my spirits and stop me from considering the purchase of an XB360.

Cheers,
S.

[WLC-1989]

It'd probably be cheaper if you did buy the Xbox 360 instead.

Your processor would be a bottle-neck if you bought the 8800, but I wouldn't advise you to buy one of those anyway. Driver support seems rather flimsy to say the least; I'd wait maybe until the 2nd or 3rd DX10 release, and at the very least, until the AMD/ATi equivalent comes out.

[Clunk]

Agreed on the processor being a bottleneck, you could stick a dual core 939 chip in there and that would give you some extra grunt, but it will still be the thing that chokes it.

You could also pick up an x1900xt or similar for quite cheap now, which will run the stuff at those resolutions and will work well with your setup...and it will tide you over until you upgrade the rest of it.

Or, go Core 2 Duo right away, you wont regret doing that and you will see a large bump in speed, also stick in an x19xx card and save the cash for the 8800 card until a new revision comes out maybe.