I was thinking of getting a 5870 since it looks rather impressive my only question would be would my system be a bottleneck for it? I also need a new PSU should I go for the corsair 750 tx, 850 tx, or 850 hx I'd like to be able to upgrade for a while so that must be kept in mind. I'd love to just get an i5 but of course don't have a grand laying around to catch up on all parts.

With that mobo you should be able to overclock your cpu near the 4ghz range that will help stop the bottleneck a lot,also upgrading the ram will help.

I'm curious though in what resolution are you gaming? If it's not anything above 1680x1050 then I'd hardly consider that an upgrade since the 8800gt from experience does tremendously well in current games at highest of settings. Remember, you can only perceive few frames.

Well the ram is not an issue it just doesn't detect 4 gigs in xp but I will go windows 7. As for the OC it really can't go over 3.5 stable with my Coolermaster Gemini 2 cooler.

Unless you can get over 3.5ghz+ you'll have a bottleneck. Personally upgrading right now is probably not the best time. Wait and see what happens once the new ATI and Nvidia cards are out! You'll be glad you did. The 8800GT is good enough for the games we have now anyways. If you want a super cheap upgrade that will blow that 8800GT away and don't care about DX11, go for the HD4870, I've seen them as low as $120 and they'll double, possibly triple the performance of the 8800GT.

DO AS MICHAEL C SAYS. HE KNOWS EVERYTHING. ASK HIM ABOUT LIFE TOO

IF you have the money mate I would deffo get the new ATi card is a stonking piece of kit. And its priced well but should drop in a month or so, and I cant see nvidia having a better single GPU solution or we would be hearing about it BIG TIME.

I agree that you should really clock that CPU to get the best out of a new GPU as the stock speed would not benefit the new card. Again depends on the Res you play but as the overlclock is free why not!

Also you could wait for the reviews of the 5750 which is also gonna be a great card and cheaper. I dont think nvidia will have a comeback card until the new year so you should get the ATi card mate.

What PSu do you have at present.....if its a lowish wattage it still might do the job as long as its a good brand....all you might have to do is buy a new pci-e connector to power it.

Michael C said:


Michael,

A 8800GT is not good enough for todays games....unless he is gaming on a 17" CRT monitor.......where do you get this stuff......*Rolls Eyes.

I would love to see a 8800GT run ArmA II on even medium settings thats playable..never mind at my res!

Just drop a penryn quad (q9x50 series) in your system to complement the 5870 and you should be fine.

You would still see a huge performance gain in games going from a 8800GT to a HD5870, but yeah to take full advantage of the card a faster clocked chip would help significantly. Dropping a Quad Core in isn't gonna do much for you in terms of games. Personally I'd to a safe overclock of your CPU to around 3.2Ghz with a solid air cooler (with 120mm fan). The E6750 isn't gonna overclock much past that. For 3.5Ghz to 4Ghz on air you would need one of the 45nm chips. Seeing as your board is an older P965 chipset, I can't remember if the newer 45nm chips are even compatible with it (but possibly with a BIOS update, though you may want to check on that). Still I'd just overclock the chip you have as good as you can.

Exactly.

You will get a very good clock on that with a good ventilated case and a high end HSF...does that board have a PCI-e Rev 2 slot?

If that chip was at 4Ghz it would be ideal for gaming...with the high freq. it running at.

First of all Meats suggested keeping the 8800GT. I don't suggest buying the first thing you see, such as the HD5870. Perhaps the prices will drop majorly when these new cards come out and you can get a GTX275 for like $140 or something. Maybe someone would go for that.

This guy didn't even state what resolution he's running at but yet you guys are throwing the HD5870 at him. I'm sure that will be a worthy investment running games at 1280x1024...

Well I game at 1680x1050 and I like to max out with filters and such of course if some games are not well optimized like NFS Undercover my card can't really hack it even overclocked about 12% I have an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2 Passive VGA Cooler along with a 120 mm AC fan and it stays around 44c idle and 50 on full load. It's not that I can't play most games I can but of course a poorly coded game will challenge my card. Do you guys think I should stick with the 8800gt for now and instead upgrade the other parts to an i5 board and such or AM3 since phenom 3 will catch up to i7 eventually although I'm hesitant due to USB 3.0 and such coming out soon.

I say sell the 8800GT for as much as you can and buy a HD4870 for super cheap, it will do what you need to do. A 5870 is overkill for that system imo. If you had an i7/i5 I'd suggest otherwise though.

FatalStar64 <a class= said:

If thats the case then there are some situations where you will benefit from a faster card.



Because you are in a situation where you have a board that can take the higher Core 2 Quads swapping out your motherboard/RAM/CPU is a waste of money. Dispite what some people keep believing multi-threading in games has reached a level of maturity where more than 2 cores has been showing benefits in games...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280-10.html

Put a high clocked quad core in your system (Q9550 or higher) and drop in a shiny new HD 5870 you'll need the extra CPU power to help your new card stretch its legs and you should have enough computer to allow you to skip the current Core i7/i5 and Phenom II offerings without giving up anything in games.

Also... Don't bother with any of the HD 4xxx series cards now that the 5xxx series are available, you'll limit yourself to DX10.1 and miss out on the huge leap in speed.

sure a 4 series card is fast enough for whats out now but what about in 6 or 8 months? Not too far down the road it will be under powered and lacking in the compatibility department when it comes to new titles. The prices on all the last gen stuff is going to fall through the floor very soon because retailers and board partners are going to try and dump their inventory on every sucker they can so they don't have to eat all the obsolete hardware in their inventory.

if the 5870 is too expensive wait a week or two the 5850 is coming.

the same goes for any nVidia 2xx series GeForce cards.. they're obsolete and limited to DX10, and completely out classed by the 5 series radeons.

Michael C,

Well put it this way...he did not state what res he was play at and peeps telling him that his 8800GT will do when it wont...the guy is a gamer...how do I know. He is looking for at the 5870 when its only out. Therefore he wants good performance.....and TBH the 5870 is a great card to upgrade to...even better will be the 5850 when out in Oct. Its smaller, 100 bucks cheaper (apprx) and only a slight drop in performance.

MrBungle said:


Have to disagree with the last quote Bungles...if like me and you have a GTX295 then its no good upgrading to the 5xxx series...but I would certainly not buy one today.

The GTX295 is a better card...especially the single PCB format. And the prices are dropping alot...the 5xxx series is faster in the odd game but hell even the 4870x2 was faster in some games. Thats a driver issue not perfomance issue, but the 5xxx series will only get QUICKER with mature drivers. As reviewed by alot of sites the 5xxx series give 90% the perfomance of the GTX295.

Plug & Play said:

Plug,

I probably wouln't spend the cash to swap out a GTX295 for a HD5870 either... now a 5870x2 that might be a different matter but thats not an option till next month...

That aside my comments were directed toward the OP and coming from a 8800GT the 200 series GeForce cards are a bad choice if you're shopping for a high-end video card... even though the 295 is faster in most games its not by an enormous margin and its not like the 5870 is turning in less than playable numbers. If ATI's past history is anything to go by they will likey sqeeze 25% or so more out of the 5 series before its retired... and in cases where the game being played doesn't scale with SLI the 5870 is going to run circles around the 295. Add the price difference into the mix and the I just don't think a strong case can be made for it.

Alright Thank you guys for all the advice I think I'll get a 5850 when it comes out so I can spend some money on an 850w corsair PSU. I'll just ask my gf to buy me this around december for my birthday
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041 my cooler is even compatible with it so I don't have to buy any additional cooling. This way around december my card can be used to it's full potential while still giving me benefits now. My only concern now is can a Q9950 be used with my mobo?

FatalStar64 <a class= said:

Here is the CPU support list for your motherboard:

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=YwIVDOTcvIMHZdTy&templete=2

You can use pretty much any intel socket 775 CPU you want if you're using the newest BIOS.

The last of the high end Core 2 Quads (the Q9550 and Q9650 ) are on the list.

Yeah just update the bios to use the latest Quads....and do not do it in windows!!!