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6 year old gaming rig: upgrade video card or build new?

539 views 10 replies 7 participants last post by  CynicalUnicorn 
#1 ·
Hey all,

I have a gaming rig I built 5-6 years ago:
  • EVGA 780i Motherboard (PCI-Express 2.0 and has tri-SLI support)
  • Q9450 QUAD PROCESSOR 2.66G 12MB 1333MHZ FSB
  • EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX(G92) 512MB Graphics Card (added second one last year)
  • OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 Memory
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (Upgraded to a 1 TB drive last year)
  • Corsair 750W TX750W ATX12V Power Supply

Last year I added a second 9800 GTX for $50 off of eBay (it's why I bought an SLI mobo in the first place. So, I could just add another in the future). However, even now, it's starting to struggle with the latest gen games... I can no longer run games like BF3 on 1080p resolution (even on medium or sometimes low settings!). I usually have to resort to 720p and turning off a lot of effects. Things like occlusion are an absolute no for me.

I am wondering, (I haven't touched building PC's in a while now) if just upgrading the video card to something much newer will do the trick or would it be better to build a new computer entirely. The motherboard is PCI-E 2.0 and I know the latest stuff has support for PCI-E 3. The only difference is bandwidth. I am thinking that if I only have one card, it won't make a noticable difference and that I should go with just upgrading the card.

Thanks for your help!
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#3 ·
You're better off building new. Your processor will hold back a nice strong card, or at least limit the potential.

If you have the money for it, then build new. If not, save and build new. My rig is starting to show its age, my CPU at 3.6 is struggling to keep up with my 580. In BF3 I could gain at least 20 FPS simply by jumping to a 2500k even.
 
#4 ·
You could get away with adding a brand new gpu, but then it will more than likely be bottlenecked by your cpu...even if you overclock that.

If it was me id buy a gpu, see how you fare with your cpu overclocked then if its struggling buy a new cpu/mobo/ram.

The good news is that the difference between say an intl 2500k>3570K/4670K (three different releases) is small, and so you wont need to upgrade the cpu for a while if you do go with one of those.

Hope that makes sense.

If your willing to and budget allows, id buy a new setup entirely.
 
#5 ·
core 2 quads are showing their age. I tried to game on my kentsfield server with my 670 4gb video card and it was laggy. I would keep the drives and do a wholesale upgrade on almost everything else besides the hard drives and power supply and optical drive. as far as a build out for either amd or intel if you need help in a new setup let us know we can help. what kind of case do you have incidently. if you have a fairly up to date case with more then enough room you might be able to keep that too. PCI-E 3.0 is nice, maybe not extremely necessary but nice. you can run a PCI-E 3.0 card in a PCI-E 2.0 slot but it will only run at the x16 speed. I know that the mid to high end amd boards in the AM3+ arena all support SLI or XFire. Should be about the same with intel.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by nothing4me View Post

The case is an Antec 900.

I will just build a new computer next summer (classes are starting soon, so no point in buying now) and sell the one I have on eBay for whatever price I can get it.

Thank you all for the quick responses and help!!!
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I'd suggest selling it in parts, that particular motherboard and CPU are still somewhat popular.
 
#8 ·
that case should be fine for airflow, you could just gut the board, chip, ram and graphics out and sell the parts you don't need and buy a new board, chip, ram and graphics and maybe a new windows license and get back into the game. unless your drives are flashing smart errors or have bad sectors chances are they are still ok
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