Yes, Another upgrade thread

[shaneinsane]

Hey everyone I recently upgrade my system a litle bit and this is my rig so far

HAF 932 case

Asus p5k se motherboard

Intel core 2 duo e6750 overclocked at 3.2GHz

Evga 9600 gt

4gb ddr2 ram

250 gb hard drive

Corsair 750Watts PSU

Now I was thinking of moving to a better video card I game at 1680x1050 So I don't need to fork over cash for a overkill card like the 4870x2 or the gtx 280 I was thinking the 4870 1gb card would be great for adding AA in games and kind of future proof in a way for a little while at lest and I am going to get 64 bit version of vista to utilize my 4gb of ram and also I was thinking of getting another hard drive

Id love to hear opinions thanks

[Alaron]

If you're looking for eye candy in games, the video card upgrade is a good idea. Hard Drive is also a good idea if you're running low on space. I'd make those upgrades before changing the OS, that won't really change performance much.

Need a budget to give any detailed recommendations though.

[Doom]

If you like nVidia, you can always look at the GTX 260. It's performed well in surveys at www.tomshardware.com and is a significant upgrade from your current card, but it doesn't run as expensive as the GTX 280.

If you haven't been to www.tomshardware.com yet, I highly recommend you go there and check out the ratings of cards. That's how I make my decisions on where to balance price and performance. Essentially, I'll set my hard budget before I check the site. Then I'll look at the rankings, checking the price of the best card and comparing it to my budget. Too expensive... then I go onto the next card. That way I find the best performance for my price. I'll also check out a couple cards lower. If the difference is $100 for only about five frames per second... the price may not justify the performance.

I think it's important to set the price limit BEFORE you do that however. Otherwise you could find yourself spending more than you want.

[Doom]

By the way... here's the direct link to the most current graphics card charts.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...hmarks,30.html

Good hunting.