Upgrade Question

[NovaColonel]

Hi folks,

I'm thinking about upgrading to a newer graphics card and win 7 to enjoy the shader model 5. I'm currently using a Radeon 4870 which I have since 2008, 1 gig of vram, clocked at 800 MHz, memory at 925 MHz. It's been a decent card for most of the time... due to personal circumstances I can't afford to upgrade anything but the graphics card; for the rest rest of my specs see sig.
Now that's the situation. Here are my questions:
1.) Is it actually worth getting a new card, or will it be bottlenecked by the cpu in regards of Shogun 2 performance?
2.) I've never upgraded my operating system before (currently running on Vista) - will I keep my installed software and the firefox configuration after upgrading to win 7? How long does it take? Will it hurt?
3.) What kind of graphics card would be a good choice? My budget is around 300 € (~ 250 £ or 400 $) and I'm thinking about either a radeon 7870 or 7950. Oh, and there's no way I'm going Nvidia

Thanks in advance for your time and advice!

[Totalheadache]

why wouldnt you go nvidia?

[NovaColonel]

why wouldnt you go nvidia?

It's like a religion thing, just less serious. If you like, you can compare it people who own a Mercedes and would never buy a BMW. Plus, I have an AMD processor, so I like telling myself that there are some mysterious synergy effects.

@Elitewolf: A phenom I X4 @ 2.6 GHz each (see signature ^^). It's also rather old, but decent enough for my needs.

Personally, I'd prefer to build a completely new rig from scratch (safe for the tower), but we're gonna move in a couple of months and so my wife would kick my ass if I spent the money on something else....

[Elitewolf]

It's like a religion thing, just less serious. If you like, you can compare it people who own a Mercedes and would never buy a BMW. Plus, I have an AMD processor, so I like telling myself that there are some mysterious synergy effects.

@Elitewolf: A phenom I X4 @ 2.6 GHz each (see signature ^^). It's also rather old, but decent enough for my needs.

Personally, I'd prefer to build a completely new rig from scratch (safe for the tower), but we're gonna move in a couple of months and so my wife would kick my ass if I spent the money on something else....

It is indeed rather old. But if you're going to upgrade your OS I'd personally prioritize upgrading the CPU. Switching graphics cards isn't a problem, but switching cpu's causes windows to think it's a different computer (which it did with my old rig)

It's why I took an intel 2500 (which is apparently one of the best processors for gaming which I could afford according to the interwebs) but took a medium graphics card (well, for a gaming rig) since I can always upgrade it later. I put my gaming pc together with double your budget. Radeon 6850 and the aforemention intel cpu with win 7(plus a massively overpriced hard disk due to the thailand floods!), might upgrade the graphics card in the future.

Anyway, tl;dr: Upgrade either your cpu and OS or just the graphics card and wait until you have enough to upgrade everything. Otherwise it'll cost you more in the long run.

[Totalheadache]

It's like a religion thing, just less serious. If you like, you can compare it people who own a Mercedes and would never buy a BMW. Plus, I have an AMD processor, so I like telling myself that there are some mysterious synergy effects.

@Elitewolf: A phenom I X4 @ 2.6 GHz each (see signature ^^). It's also rather old, but decent enough for my needs.

Personally, I'd prefer to build a completely new rig from scratch (safe for the tower), but we're gonna move in a couple of months and so my wife would kick my ass if I spent the money on something else....

well that kind of attitude is somewhat silly and there is no magic synergy. an amd chip will work just as well with an nvidia gpu as would an intel with an amd gpu....so sorry to bust that myth.

[Elitewolf]

4870 is old but not that bad. I had a 3850, albeit I had to run everything on med/low

what CPU do you have?

[irishron]

The Phenom you have in your sig will bottleneck the cards you listed in #3.

I have used both AMD/ATI and Nvidia over the years along with a few no longer making cards.

If you want to take advantage of Shader 5, it will take a faster cpu and a 2gb gpu, and a fight with your wife over moving money.

[NovaColonel]

Thanks for the hints everyone!

@Elitewolf: I didn't think of the "new cpu = new rig" formula windows uses. So you're right, I'm gonna go upgrade the CPU first. Which also means having to buy a new board...

@Irishron: You're so right... funny thing is, we don't even have a common account, but I'm going to start a new job next month and we're gonna move there, and she'll expect me to pay my share of the mess. Rightly so, I might add. But it won't hurt anyone if I upgraded my budget to, say, 700 € - that would allow for a board, a cpu and a gpu, right (gpu ~350, cpu ~250, board ~100)?

@Totalheadache: I know that there's no synergy effects, it's just that I've always had ATI cards and AMD processors. That's why I brought up the comparison of Mercedes to BMW - none is clearly better, it's just a question of personal preference.

[Elitewolf]

Thanks for the hints everyone!

@Elitewolf: I didn't think of the "new cpu = new rig" formula windows uses. So you're right, I'm gonna go upgrade the CPU first. Which also means having to buy a new board...

@Irishron: You're so right... funny thing is, we don't even have a common account, but I'm going to start a new job next month and we're gonna move there, and she'll expect me to pay my share of the mess. Rightly so, I might add. But it won't hurt anyone if I upgraded my budget to, say, 700 € - that would allow for a board, a cpu and a gpu, right (gpu ~350, cpu ~250, board ~100)?

@Totalheadache: I know that there's no synergy effects, it's just that I've always had ATI cards and AMD processors. That's why I brought up the comparison of Mercedes to BMW - none is clearly better, it's just a question of personal preference.

700 should be enough indeed. Although you should also keep in mind that you're going to need about 100 for a new windows. and make sure the power thingy is enough to supply the added demand (wth is the english name of those things?)

[irishron]

I prefer Fords over Chevys even though I've bought and driven both.

I'll let someone else come up with a build.

[NovaColonel]

I prefer Fords over Chevys even though I've bought and driven both.

I'll let someone else come up with a build.

The Chevy's we have here are just rebadged Daewoos, so I'll join you on the Ford side

@Elitewolf: According to my trusty olde online dictionary it's the power supply unit (which actually makes sense, since it is a unit that supplies power to the system ). Mine has 1 kW, which should suffice. And the Win 7 I already have since early 2009 when I bought the heavily discounted version for students (it was around 30 bucks for 64 bit home premium) - just never installed it out of fear that I'd loose data.

Anyways, I did a quick search and now here's what I have in mind now:

new cpu: AMD FX 8150 (4 x 3.6 GHz) - 212,77 €
new gpu: Radeon HD7870 - 306,41 €
new board: Gigabyte GA880-GMA (AM3+, USB3.0, etc.) - 88,90 €

That's 608,80 € without shipping... do these choices make sense?

[A Barbarian]

FX processor isn't any good for gaming, esp. for S2 since it's single core performance is pretty bad and there are even compatibility problems with S2. The one you mentioned, the FX 8150 also has 8 cores, not four. But 7 cores of it will be idling while playing S2. With an Intel 2500k, which is also cheaper btw, you will get about 50% more performance in games. If you HAVE TO get an AMD processor, get the FX-4170 for 120Euros. It has four cores which are clocked higher than the FX 8150. 8 cores are only good for video encoding, scientific stuff or 3D modeling.

But an Intel i3-2100 with 2 cores for 100Euros would still be faster in most games and there would be no compatibility problems.

Here is a list of S2 CPU benchmark scores. The important part is the minimum framerate. Note that an FX processor is usually a tad slower than an X6 1100T with a single core:
(here is the link to the review)



Also, I think you might need new main memory if your old one is DDR2.

[Elitewolf]

FX processor isn't any good for gaming, esp. for S2 since it's single core performance is pretty bad and there are even compatibility problems with S2. The one you mentioned, the FX 8150 also has 8 cores, not four. But 7 cores of it will be idling while playing S2. With an Intel 2500k, which is also cheaper btw, you will get about 50% more performance in games. If you HAVE TO get an AMD processor, get the FX-4170 for 120Euros. It has four cores which are clocked higher than the FX 8150. 8 cores are only good for video encoding, scientific stuff or 3D modeling.

But an Intel i3-2100 with 2 cores for 100Euros would still be faster in most games and there would be no compatibility problems.

Also, I think you might need new main memory if your old one is DDR2.

I agree on the intel 2500 thing. I did a lot of research into cpu's for gaming (I was originally planning to buy an AMD bulldozer line, thankgod I didnt because apparently those dont work well with shogun 2)
If you have the money, get either a 2500k or 2600k (paying attention to the k) and the right motherboard (I'm not sure which, but I believe it was the Asus P8P67 according to a website.

Reason being, 2500 processor is ridiculously fast. By getting the K version and the right motherboard (and a good fan) you can overclock it to insane levels. from 3.7 Ghz to 4.5 or something. As far as I know, intel 2500k plus the motherboard are pretty much the best cpu you can get for gaming.

Hell, I couldn't afford the motherboard (the k version is 10 euros more, but the motherboards are 50/60 more I believe) but I can still run S2 on ultra size with no lag at all. I wonder how far up you could go with a killer graphics card and an overclocked CPu

[A Barbarian]

If you want to do some overclocking (which can be pretty easy nowadays) I would also go for an ASUS board. They are simply the best atm, imho. For example I had an ASRock P67 board but had a number of problems with it. Then I got an ASUS Z68 board and it runs much smoother and overclocking is more comfortable (almost everything from Windows possible without reboots) and the same CPU also went higher on the ASUS board (compared with the ASRock board). Currently I would recommend a Z68 chipset which has a few features more than the similar P67 chipset, costs almost the same and is also rather mature (compared to the brand new Z77 chipset).

Gigabyte was great a few years ago but they lost a bit of their edge in the last 2 or 3 years from what I have seen.

[Totalheadache]

what size resolution are you planning on using op?

and i agree with the above post. and avoid bulldozer...

and even with say a mid range card like a 7870 you want a decent overclocked quad min to go with it.

[Elitewolf]

what size resolution are you planning on using op?

and i agree with the above post. and avoid bulldozer...

and even with say a mid range card like a 7870 you want a decent overclocked quad min to go with it.

7870 is a midrange nowadays?

[Totalheadache]

7870 is a midrange nowadays?

well call it what you want mid to high then..7970 is def the high end single gpu.

[NovaColonel]

Thank you all for your helpful posts! It saddens me to see how AMD failed to provide a decent gaming processor, but I'll go Intel now. Two cores seem enough, afaik nothing I use utilizes more than two cores.

@Totalheadache: 1440 x 900 (native screen size)

Do I really need to upgrade my RAM, though? Hell it's 4 GBs!

Back in the day I had a K6-2 with 400 MHz, coupled with a whopping 256 MB of RAM (SD-RAM...) and a really sucky GPU (can't remember which one). It was a beast!