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Can a New GPU Rejuvenate a 5 Year Old Gaming PC?
MojoKid writes "New video card launches from AMD and NVIDIA are almost always reviewed on hardware less than 12 months old. That's not an arbitrary decision — it helps reviewers make certain that GPU performance isn't held back by older CPUs and can be particularly important when evaluating the impact of new interfaces or bus designs. That said, an equally interesting perspective might be to compare the performance impact of upgrading a graphics card in an older system that doesn't have access to the substantial performance gains of integrated memory controllers, high speed DDR3 memory, deep multithreading or internal serial links. As it turns out, even using a midrange graphics card like a GeForce GTX 660, substantial gains up to 150 percent can be achieved without the need for a complete system overhaul."
this doesn't surprise me one bit.. the GPU does most of the heavy lifting anyway, when it comes to games
still, an i7 will show you substantial performance enhancements
Old news, has been like this for about 10-20 years.
AGP bridges suck.
PCI-E DDR2 rigs aren't even that old or even considered "obsolete" either.
The thing is, most serious gamers willing to plunk down $400 for a video card aren't going to skimp on upgrading the rest of the computer. That's why nobody reviews it: Because you, McThrifty, aren't the target market and nobody's going to send you free hardware to test since your readers are, well... cheap.
Most of those hardware reviews you see online get the newest video cards for free specifically because their reviews are tailored to the guy who has a McDuck-sized vault of cash ready to be spent getting that extra .8 FPS out of Crysis.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is Ric Romero posting stuff to Slashdot? "Upgrading the largest bottleneck for game performance can substantially improve your playing experience!" Whether or not it's worth doing is another matter, but anyone who's built their own computer or even reads websites like tom's hardware or benchmarking sites knows this.
Yes and Now, depends on the old rig's specs, not only the video card! The older CPU _could_ become a major bottle neck, if not multi-core, HT aware. 5 years ago a high end rig could be powered by a decent dore 2 duo CPU circa 2008, or early 2009, which if pretty decent in overlcocked to nice and stable 3.5 - 4.0 GHz. On the other hand an older Single core and not HT aware CPU will be a huge bottleneck even if a modern GPU is put on, for example Barton core Athlon's. (a bit older though) Two older HDDs could also be in a RAID setup, defragmented, so no HDD bottle neck. The FSB and motherboard chipset could be a culprit. The PSU must not be underestimated, especially if the new GPU has a high TDP. Overall my opinion is that it all boils down to what you need and want. If the old rig is not tool old, a newer GPU could be a life saver, but do not expect maxed out eyefinity play on three/six displays.
.... take that money you spend on the GPU, and spend it on a motherboard with i7 and integrated GPU, and you'll likely get a speed up as well. with faster processing for everything else.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
One thing that helped boost my older system was switching the drive to an SSD.
If it's version 1 a high end card will be bottle-necked. If it's version 2 or higher you should be good to go.
get a new mobo and pc with that card it will play all games
toss in 16GB ram and you can do 3d dev too.
get a mobo you can goto 64 gb and have 64 bit win7 and your rocking for making your own games
migrate to a quadro then when you can afford and really take it to the next level
at 900$ for the lowest quadro its more of a price then most pcs
There are several bottlenecks in modern (or not-so-modern) systems. These are the CPU number of cores and speed, the memory and I/O bus that moves data around the system from memoryCPUperipheral devices such as your video card, there is the GPU, and there is raw RAM size. For games, GPU and I/O bus and memory interconnect speeds are key. Unless you replace the motherboard (and CPU) this last item cannot be improved. Given the low cost of some pretty awesome GPU gear these days, that is one way to make instant improvements in gaming performance, especially with current 3D rendering in hardware. Adding memory, and running a true 64-bit operating system (if your system supports that) will also help for an incremental price.
I've been down this road many times having worked in a AAA game studio as IT Manager and here is what I've found. Most newer cards with the desirable features consume lots of electricity and at this point in time actually as much as a refrigerator it would seem. They also generate an excessive amount of heat as well. Before purchasing make sure your power supply is up to the task or you will be in store for some interesting side effects. For example a newer card shoehorned into an older Dell desktop at times would actually melt the card and cause fires (I'm looking at you Unreal 3 engine) depending on how untested the combination was. Other times it worked great, ran great and you save some money. Just dot your "i"s and cross your "t"s and you'll be fine. Also newer cards tend to have extra power connections that just aren't available in the older computers. Sometimes older games ran great, other times they locked up the CPU thanks to drivers from the newer cards or questionable graphics extensions being used in an unfamiliar context. Hopefully this advice will save you some $$$ it has saved my friends some $$$ many times there is nothing more exacerbating than buying a graphics card that just doesn't work.
i put a 9800 GSO in a old sony vaio that was new enought to be first gen PCI express.. its single core 3.2 ghz with hypthread P4
its got 1.5 gb ram (i added extra gig, it was hard to find old ram but you can). since the card was going to be a strain on the power supply i pulled everything like floppy tv tuner lots of crap. it runs sims 3 and minecraft smoothly for my 1st grade son. good computer now and the PSU hasnt burned out!
it can be done!!
see if you can upgrade all the parts you can: ram, cpu, and video card (even upgrade the PSU if its not proprietary like the sony)
the prices might be dirt cheap for obsolete parts (if you can find em)
What is the amount of waste? putting in 600's card over a 200's will certainly improve things, but what is the utilisation of the card?
CPU/RAM combo needs to be fast enough to move data between GPU and main memory, if it is not quick enough, the card can not do any more work E.g. $200, ~80% busy, 40fps
Could one get away with buying a 500's card with only marginal FPS loss but nearly half the cost? E.g. $120 95% busy, 37fps
Some games hit the CPU much heavier these days than they used to. Many games really don't perform well if they aren't given multi-core CPUs with reasonable speed.
So how much upgrading a given component makes a difference depends on what else you have in your computer. If your system has a CPU that was top of the line 5 years ago, but an integrated GPU, then ya a new GPU will probably be the best use of money. However if the CPU is underpowered, then a new GPU will do little if anything.
Also you are right in that integrated GPUs have gotten way better. Time was, integrated Intel GPUs sucked even at desktop operations. Back in the P3 days I recommended a discrete GPU to everyone because the integrated ones were that bad. Now with Sandy/Ivy Bridge they are quite good. You can game on them, even new games. No they don't do as well as a discrete GPU, but they really are more powerful than you might think.
I have a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz and paired it with a cheap 5870. I'm still able to play most games at high settings, even at 2560X1600. IMO it is one of the 'best' CPU's ever made. Will be somewhat sad to upgrade when IvyBridge-E is released. I would have liked to have seen the same benchmarks with the processor overclocked too but nice article. Q6600 FTW!
Games are still using DirectX 9. Even the most budget of GPUs today can handle these graphics demands. (Thanks consoles!)
Thanks consoles, or thanks Windows XP?
SSD only improve startup times. It doesn't improve runtime performance, even on I/O intensive applications.
A newer/better GPU can indeed improve the graphics and gaming performance of an older computer, but it won't make it perform like a newer machine with other superior hardware. Duh.
It seems like perfect common sense, but obviously not everyone gets it so I'll state it like this: If you took a shiny 2012 BMW V8 engine and plopped it into your rusty 1982 BMW 733i, your car would be faster and more fuel efficient (assuming you could even mount the new motor and get everything hooked up), but it wouldn't automatically handle like a 2012 or have bluetooth or a navigation system, and you'd eventually run into unforeseen problems if you really got on it and tried to drive it like it was new. Straight line acceleration would be fantastic (like running certain benchmarks on a new GPU in an old machine) but real world drivability would be more lackluster.
Driving isn't all about raw horsepower, just as PC gaming isn't all about the graphics card. If you have a 5400 RPM hard drive, maybe even an ATA one, with 2 GB of DDR2-667 and a a single core Pentium, you might not want to play the latest games, even if they technically will run on your rig. I DO have a 5 year-old desktop at home (among other machines) and I have vowed not to spend another cent on it. It works fine for basic stuff, but at some point you just need to think about starting over.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Most software .... and games are so poorly written, that you can have 1000000 cores and it will peg only one.
Here, have a look at this Anandtech E-350 review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4499/fusion-e350-review-asus-e35m1i-deluxe-ecs-hdci-and-zotac-fusion350ae/15
They pair very low-end AMD CPU with best GPU on the market at the time. Results: the CPU does affect the performance. No suprises there..
You need to be more specific with your hardware.
Also, take a look here:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/48
Buy a gaming console instea of playing then on your PC.
If you do get a new video card, make sure that it has drivers for XP [or older] as well so that you can play your old games in a virtual machine.
I've lately upgraded the GPU every other generation (i buy mid range cards like the 660) and the CPU every 4 years or more. It's been fast enough for my purposes.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Bad answer. They only tested one system. Not exactly statistically (read scientifically) interesting...
Of course, the real answer is the dreaded 'depends'. Still inquiring minds would like to know WHAT it depends on and HOW much.
If card A has a performance of x (which I'll define as 1) and card B a performance of x+2, wouldn't that mean it's two times better?
The article keeps saying three times better, but wouldn't the correct way to phrase that be "It's three times as good?"
Similar things with percentages. If something has 200% the value of something else, it's twice as valuable and not two times more valuable, right?
I notice similar things in German, which is my main language. Am I just a grammar Nazi (badum-tis) or does that bother you too?
I'm running a new-ish HD5970 card on a five-year-old Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.66GHz. Over those years I've also added an SSD (boot + apps), some extra hard drives, and an extra monitor. The machine is very reliable and quick enough that I really don't need to upgrade. Although I definitely will upgrade this year; five years is really old for a PC.
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If you have an old computer you should use settings in games to match that even though you've bought yourself a shiny new gfx card. Going for HQ and 4x MSAA in BF3 is just plain stupid. There are countless guides out there on which settings to tweak to get the settings that matches your setup. Nvidia has a great guide that explains all settings and their impact on the FPS and suggests what to set depending on your setup. Using MSAA for example is one of the best way to ensure you get low FPS and most guides suggest you turn it of an use FXAA to get better FPS. While in whine mode I'll add a few more things. What resolution was used? A comparison on what FPS to expect when; buying a GTX 660 for your old computer VS buying a new mid range MB/CPU and a GTX 660. An analysis on whether the CPU was the bottleneck for these games and if so, by how much? Is the GTX 660 at $220 the card to get when upgrading a 5-6 year old computer or will a GTX 650 TI for $150 give you the same result? All in all I appreciate that he wrote the guide as I'm sure many people are asking themselves the question whether to do a full upgrade or just upgrade for example the gfx card. But at the same time.. a job worth doing is worth doing well.
I have AMD Opteron 185 2.6 Ghz, Socket 939 and eVGA GeForce GTX 260 SuperClocked, 3GB RAM and WD Raptor HD
I can play StarCraft 2, Call Of Duty 5 on my 1680x1050 monitor.
The computer is also my development machine and for this task it's OK.
Do you think upgrading to more powerful video will allow me to play Latest Call Of Duty with max settings?
But I can emphatically say: "no". Excuse my grammar. I have a P4 HT clocking around 3.4ghz. I would overclock it if the mobo wasn't an HP OEM and what-have-you. I also have a 1Gb Nvidia card. My point is that my computer meets the minimum specs for prettymuch every modern game sans the CPU. You simply can't run a newer game on a single core machine without serious gameplay consequences. If I had even a core 2 duo, the rest of my setup would beat the shit out of games like crysis. So, once again: a new GPU will only make your textures look really awesome at 3 FPS.
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
I did this and it's not a good thing to do. PC parts must always be chosen with respect to each other: otherwise when you put on your brand new VGA you'll find your PSU to be insufficient, forcing you to disconnect the DVD drive to make the HDD spin up.
Anyone look at those framerates? I sure wouldn't want to play those titles with those numbers. Not to mention that I'm sure they didn't play through the entirety of the games they reviewed; later in FPS games there are more enemies, later in RTS there are larger battles happening. Performance degradation will become a real problem by then.
I think the main reason this isn't usually done is because it's so cheap now to buy a component that is basically state of the art; for ~$800 you could build a system that can game 95% as well as the most expensive ones. The market has stabilized, and massive spending is no longer necessary to achieve noticeable gains, but this is just the dark side of penny pinching.
I'll bet anyone that uses a rig like this to game might be happy with it until they try their friend's modern system, and then they'll never want to go back.
Just install a 10 years old OS and games. You'll be blown away by the performance :P
I had an Intel Q6600 system (quad 2.4Ghz cores), and it wasn't able to keep up with some new updates in games my son wanted to pay. Bought a new GPU, and now I can play what he wanted to play (WoW) at maximum settings, no problem. Your mileage may vary, but it worked for me.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I think one of THE biggest bottlenecks for any computer is insufficient amount of RAM in the computer.
That's why I've always suggested that if you can afford it, install the maximum RAM allowed by the motherboard. Most motherboards that support CPU's with x86-64 instructions can support 8 GB of RAM, and with 8 GB of RAM, the performance improvement can be quite high since 1) you no longer need to use the hard disk as virtual memory and 2) programs have more "breathing room" to run.
I used to run a computer with Windows XP Home (SP2) that only had 512 MB of RAM--gawd, did the hard drive grind away like mad. But once I upgraded it to the 2 GB of RAM allowed, the performance improvement was _dramatic_--the hard drive ran a lot less, and programs in memory ran very smoothly, to say the least.
My gaming machine is actually 5 years old - built in 2008, it originally housed a Geforce 9800GTX. The CPU is an intel Quad core Q9300 - pretty low end at the time, plus 4GB of DDR2 RAM - very old, very out of date.
On that machine, I could play the likes of BF3 on low settings reasonably well. I swapped the graphics card for a Geforce 560 Ti and now I can play BF3 on med/high at 1920x1200. Nothing else has changed, same old CPU, same DDR2 RAM.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
This varies on CPU in use. If the machine is not CPU bound, then a new GPU will work. If its already CPU bound in some games then while I don't doubt you'll get some improvement - you're already on the limit.
A new CPU and motherboard is often cheaper than the GPU upgrade, so its something you could factor in later. Call it your personal Tick/Tock in line with your gaming :)
We`re all equal
Seriously, CPU performance doubles every 18 months.
(5x12)/18 = 3.3333.
So a new CPU would be 3x faster than that CPU from 5 yrs ago. Actually, depending on the specific CPU, it could be 20x faster.
In terms of performance impacts:
1) SSD
2) new, current, MB+CPU combo (faster RAM is not important)
3) new GPU
SSDs still have issues. Failures. Longevity issues. Be surprised if the SSD lasts over 2-3 yrs.
You can get a new SSD for $100.
You can get a 3x faster CPU/MB for $250-$1000
You can get a newer GPU for $50-$500.
I just went through this very decision process, but for a desktop machine, not a gaming system. I picked up a Dell Optiplex 755 with a decent Core 2 Duo CPU at a surplus sale. I upped the RAM to 8 Gigs and was quite happy, but then I started thinking about the graphics subsystem. This box had integrated Intel graphics, and that left something to be desired under Windows 7. So one quick trip to local computer store later, and for less than $40 I dropped an HD6450 in it and am quite pleased. The system now supports DirectX 11, everything seems very 'snappy' and I'm quite sure this box could handle Windows 8 for general desktop use., adding a couple more years to it's useful life.
Ken
When you want to toss an upgraded GPU in an older system, keep an eye on the PCI spec level, no sense buying the latest whiz-bang video card if your system only has a first-gen PCI Express slot.
Another concern will be power - many older systems have smaller power supplies or power supplies that provide just enough power for power-hungry older system components.
Ken
But the fastest ATI contemporary isn't still usable. Compare the Radeon X1950 XT, released just weeks later - roughly the same caliber of performance at launch, but the 8800 still supports almost every game, while the X1950 will flat-out refuse to run stuff that's too new. I know - I have an X1900 XT.
The main secret behind the 8800's longevity is that it was the first "modern" graphics card, which ironically enough means it doesn't, at the hardware level, do "graphics". It's all shader cores doing rendering in software. Whereas the X1900s were still trying to take a dedicated rendering pipeline and tack on as much configurability and programming as possible.
The 8600 or 8800 is still commonly listed under "minimum hardware requirements", because it acts much like a modern card, just slower and less efficient.
About a year ago I stuck a GTX 550 Ti in a machine that was at the time pushing five years old.
I generally upgrade video cards at least twice after the initial build of my computers, every 2 years or so. My needs for upgrading other components are generally low, because...really...who needs a top of the line processor? I generally stick to the top of the mid tier and it does anything I might need done for the next 5-6 years. As far as RAM goes, whenever I get a new motherboard I just put as much RAM as it supports in it, and have been known to spend more on RAM than CPU when building a computer.
I just recently rebuilt my computer (new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and a second GPU) for about $550, and that got it to a point where it can play Crysis 2 with max settings. I expect it will be able to play any game the makers throw at it for another two years before performance starts to become a real issue. Maybe longer, because it seems to me that game-makers are getting better at building games that still run (albeit less prettily) on older hardware.
If it hadn't been for some recent hardware failures I'd probably STILL be rocking the last machine, which would be over 6 years old now. I just didn't feel like throwing money down the drain buying a replacement motherboard that used and old-ass socket.
I think the only reason to buy absolute top-of-the-line hardware these days is to stroke your e-peen.
Porquoi?
I'm using an Intel i5-2400/16GB RAM with two GeForce 9800GTs for dual-head. Older tech, but only one year old to me. Why? For a bargain price, it works great for me and was a significant improvement over the AMD Athlon XP-3000/Geforce 6200 I was using.
Latest/Greatest hardware is nice, but expensive. I also tend to play older games like Quake, Unreal, COD, MOH which run great on more modern hardware.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I threw a GTS450 into my socket 939 board with an AMD Toledo Athlon X2 and 3GB of dual channel, low timing DDR1. It was faster than my Geforce 8600 but not by much. I brought my 450 over to my new i5-2400 system and it was like night and day. This thing tore my games a new ass framerate-wise. It would seem the x16 PCI-E slot was holding it back on my old board compared to the new x16 2.0 or 2.1 slot or whatever. Plus, the PCI-E controller is in the i5 itself if I'm not mistaken. So as long as your board has a PCI-E socket with a modern level of bandwidth and a nice controller, you should see very close to the same impact as in a modern system since the cards are basically standalone computers.
...what you think it means. Choosing a single test platform seems pretty arbitrary to me. A more reasonable test for new peripheral hardware is to test it on a number of platforms, with most chosen to reasonably reflect what's in use by your target audience.
My gaming PC (including its video card) is more than five years old and I have very little trouble running modern games. Seems pretty obvious that upgrading the GPU would only help, but "rejuvenate" implies the thing should be near dead and it's not -- my 5 year old PC does just fine. And, by the way, I didn't go nuts building it. It was not the #1 top of the line system when I built it, it was just solid.
Face it, the hardware lifespan is longer now than it was a decade ago. You don't have to buy a new system every year or two to keep up anymore.
ram disk with 256gb ram? it's faster then ssd
Anybody who has tried it knows this is true. I game on Pentium 4 (circa 7 years old) with a newer card (Radeon HD 5450 and GeForce GT8800). GTA IV, Crysis, Crysis 2 all play perfectly well.
you had me at #!
If you have an old Core 2 Duo, an SSD and graphics card upgrade is a huge boost. I still play games well on my old quad core machine, as long as you have a motherboard with PCI-Express and SATA you are safe for just upgrading GFX and SDD.
I'm still running an E5400+945GC+Radeon 4770 Setup. It's somewhere between 4 and 6 years old (Part of a piecemeal upgrade from a Single-channel DDR/DDR2 Via mobo and an E4300, followed by an HD3650 after purchasing the 945GC). Long story short, with careful overclocking it's STILL running almost any game out there, at 1600x900. The only things giving it issues being crappy GFWL games (Juiced 2 Demo, GTA4 Demo), and PhysX apps (almost none of which actually use it for anything worthwhile to begin with. Mostly just secondary ragdoll effects. See STO, NFS:Shift Demo, etc.)
Honestly the only currently NECESSARY reasons to upgrade are how slow the PhysX stuff makes such games running under wine (I still use XP for gaming.) and support for VT/SVM and IOMMU for doing legacy OS emulation for stuff that straight up won't run under either wine or post-ME windows versions (Which is half of my gaming collection now and likely to stay so between steam and really nasty online authentication/DRM schemes that seem to be becoming ever more prevalent with each passing year.)
Furthermore, has anyone else found it funny how id released the full source code for the Doom3 BFG edition, but if you go and buy a legal copy of it either online or in a store you have to install it under windows (after creating and agreeing to a steam account) in order to get the datafiles in order to use it under your operating system of choice, with the source code they gave out that would allow pirates with just rips of the datafiles to play it easier than you, a legitimately purchasing customer?
I think that last complaint combined with the general consolization of the PC gaming industry really explains why shit is as messed up as it currently is. I mean the brand spanking new WiiU is only using an RV770 core, which is approximately the performance of my aforementioned 4770, and that card isn't even supported by ATI's current catalyst drivers anymore (This is somewhat ironic since they are *STILL* selling IGPs based on even earlier R600 cores in stores, right now, but no longer offer driver updates for them. Catalyst 12.6 is it. And on linux it's a frickin BETA of catalyst 12.6, not even an official release. Which having personally tried to upgrade to, since I actually use my OpenCL 1.0 support, is a horrid mess. Uses a newer xorg server than 12.4 and at least on my system, segfaults when starting X.)
I used to have a 4-year upgrade cycle on my gaming desktop. Last time I've upgraded it was in 2008, with a Core 2 Duo E8400 and mid range GPU (6600GTS).
However, things have changed a bit, and I'm not planing on upgrading my whole system for the near future. I've bought a 128GB SSD a year or so ago, and this was amazing for the overall performance of the system, but as my games are not installed on the SSD itself, it didn't do much for them.
So I'm considering a new GPU, in the 200 € range, to improve my gaming experience, but without breaking the bank... Any ideas? :)
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
That's my favorite ardware store on the whole Rebel base!
This article caught my eye because I performed a very similar upgrade recently. I went from an even older chipset (Core 2 Duo) and gpu (9500GT I think?) to the same gtx660 they tested. I also upgraded to an Intel SSD.
Their article does not do justice to how effective this upgrade was, as they tested relatively puny games. I mean, Civ 5? Really? That game was playable on my 5 year old system. Even Borderlands 2 isn't really that intensive a game. So to all the above naysayers that say "Oh hardcore gamers always upgrade their entire system bla bla bla" - I say, you're a fool. And you've been fooled by the industry. You can squeeze another five years of life out of a system with a massive GPU upgrade. Exhibit A:
I went from running the Witcher 2 on the lowest settings and having it utterly unplayable (5 fps) to running it on 'High' with 25 fps, i.e. playable.
Skyrim went from 20 fps at 'Low' to 25 fps at 'Ultra'.
These are two massive performance increases on two relatively new games with somewhat demanding graphics needs. The Witcher 2 in particular is a difficult game to run because of its poor utilization of hardware. My desktop is now over 5 years old and I play every game I want to play on 'High' graphic settings. I even have a crappy mobo that I didn't think through at the time, and am limited to 4 gigs of RAM and one PCIe slot. Thus if I happened to have a better mother board, I could double my ram and double up on the GTX660 for another $300 and probably run any game for *another* 5 years. This article really fails to show just how true this is, and just how silly it is to go drop $1500 on another solid gaming machine.
This is how I built my gaming PCs when I was poor. Junk parts other people were throwing away, decent speed smallish hard drive, mid-range video card upgraded biannually, pirated software.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can play almost everything from last year with quality visuals with an old CPU teamed with a new GPU. But here are the tricks:
* You need at least 2GB of memory. If you don't have this, don't even try.
* The CPU must be dual-code, at least. Single core CPU don't work anymore (tried both on the same machine, difference is night and day, it just happened that I could access a compatible dual-core CPU for free, otherwise it would have been impractical). If the CPU is not dual core, it does prevent decent performance, even with a top notch GPU.
* Upgrade the HDD to SSD. The older HD that comes with your 10 y/o rig will slow everything down. This is the second most beneficial upgrade beside the video card.
Quad-core CPUs existed more than 5 years ago, so did very fast dual-core parts. RAM hasn't been a bottle-neck for far longer than 5 years. In what sense is a decently specced 5-year old machine SUPPOSED to be ancient, save for the GPU?
Have IQs suddenly dropped. Has the election of Obama turned everyone into morons?
For modern AAA gaming, the GPU will ALWAYS be the bottleneck. High-end games do unthinkable amounts of maths per pixel displayed. Newer cards to more maths, given the same 'class'.
Most SANE gamers will accept framerates that gaming sites claim as 'unplayable', in order to nurse older computers and GPUs. This means 20-30 frames per second (and some rare-ish low framerate spikes) with eye-candy kept at a decent level. Every so many years, games advance to the point where a new GPU is required, if eye-candy settings are to be kept good.
However, of late there has been a remarkable and most happy 'complication'. AAA games teams have learnt how to use the console hardware to maximum efficiency, and because most PC games are console ports, and PC hardware is vastly more powerful than current consoles, AAA games are running more efficiently on PCs as well.
The old, very very expensive, ways of producing high end eye-candy have gone. In their place are console friendly algorithms, that happen to run incredibly well on quite modest PC GPUs. For instance, games now make a real attempt to only render visible pixels- in the past lazy game engines would experience massive over-draw, and rely on the power of the GPU to keep framerates high. Likewise,antialiasing methods that ONLY existed to sell ever more expensive hardware from ATI and Nvidia have been dropped for post-processing methods that look better, and run far far faster.
The coming consoles from Sony and Microsoft both feature 8 modest AMD x86 cores running at 1.6GHz. A quad core PC system from the beginning of 2008 with have the same amount of CPU processing power. Given that the new consoles (launched 3rd quarter this year) will have a lifetime of maybe 7 years, that 5-year old computer will STILL be benefiting from a GPU upgrade 5-years from now.
The PC will never have AAA titles that are not console ports- they are just too expensive to develop for the PC alone. Now the new consoles will have masses of RAM, future PC ports will be better in resolution, framerate, and maybe the same rendering algorithms, but with 'higher quality' settings. There will no longer be better textures on the PC version, or different algorithms.
Oh, the new consoles have fairly modest GPUs- essentially mid-mid range parts from AMD. Nvidia's current 680 GPU is very much faster (50%+), and new parts from AMD and Nvidia later this year will be much faster again. Console GPU code is usually about twice as efficient as the same on the PC, so the new GPU parts will put PCs on a theoretical parity with the best the new consoles could hope to achieve.
Anyway, with the emphasis on sane coding, not burning pixels, AAA games become much more the game world and experience, and much less the maximum framerate, and quality of the edges of particular triangles. People want a living, breathing world with wonderful detail and lighting. As coders stop thinking that 'pixel burning' is the answer, and start exploring appropriate algorithms, a more balanced and efficient approach is discovered. Threads on the CPU ensure maximum culling, occlusion and scene simplification occurs BEFORE data is sent to the GPU. No more of the cretinous "z-depth solves all our problems" nonsense.
I suspect the approach of this article may be more relevant than at many times in the past because we've gone a fairly long time without having compatibility issues from AGP/PCI-E ports, power supplies...
Additionally I suspect the increase in CPU performance over the period has been relatively low in a gaming context as a lot of the added performance has been multi-core which games do not utilise especially well. Added to that is a long period where many PC games are multi-platform - presumably this involves taking a game that runs on the lowest-common denominator (XBox360) and then upscaling it which - again presumably - mostly involves tarting up the GPU-powered graphics rather than the CPU-powered engine itself.
Pity though that they didn't give us much about how they could increase the graphics quality without falling below a playable level.
PlanetSide 2 is one of the few games where you never have enough CPU.
But for 99% of games you can get a graphics card a couple generations ahead of your CPU and still not be bottlenecked by your CPU. It has always been like this.
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This is what my 8-year-old cousin has. Before it, I would have considered the processor absolutely essential to gaming. After it, I'm shocked just how irrelevant the processor can ultimately be. The graphics card is where the average gamer's focus ought to be.
No one gives a shit, hence your -1 moderation. Let me remind you of the title of this discussion: "Can a New GPU Rejuvenate a 5 Year Old Gaming PC?".
Your post really confuses me. I'm trying to understand why someone would write it in this context, but I just can't. GTFO.
I really doubt. It needs complex improvements, total hardware replacement.. 5 years is a long period..
I've done just this in the past and certainly have accelerated some games, however others simply suffer from processor or architecture limitations regardless of the card. For example, AI and texture load-ins, particle systems tend to jam up regardless of the card, as well as anything asking for a lot of random seeding.
I personally like to throw a new $250 card at each system about 2 years into its life, then upgrade the system on the other two years, repeating (providing there isn't a requirement to upgrade the socket). That way I tend to be able to run everything at maximum. Its certainly a lot cheaper than the good ol' days of yearly upgrades.
About 10 years ago I tried an experiment. I had bought a new CPU and GPU. The CPU could fit in my current motherboard. (Nothing was *old* just a few years out of date.)
My theory was that if I upgraded the GPU first, I would get most of my performance improvement and the CPU wouldn't matter. So I upgraded them one at a time to be a proper scientist. I had FutureMark ready to go.
The GPU, first, gave me the 2x improvement I figured it could, based on the improvement in the specs. I had expected a little less because of the old CPU, but seemed to get the full performance boost.
Then I upgraded the CPU and, surprisingly, I got another 2x just like the the CPU specs promised. I expected maybe 20% or so since the GPU should have been most of the bottleneck.
I was so intrigued that I found a memory upgrade that also fit the board. Again the 40% or so I expected, based on specs, happened.
I'm surprised to this day.
While it has been a long time, the best I can guess/remember was that it was an AMD 3000+ CPU (1.9Ghz). And an NVidia GPU, I think GT6600 or something? The memory went from whatever to DDR, if I recall.