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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."
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.
One thing that helped boost my older system was switching the drive to an SSD.
I have an i7-920. Still have yet to hit a reason to upgrade.... I bought it on new years eve 2008.
Thanks consoles, or thanks Windows XP?
Thanks Microsoft for trying to use DirectX as a stick to force people to switch from XP to Vista. Hey, kind of like Window 8.
I'm still using a core2 quad and am getting by fine (GeForce 9800 gpu). Sure I don't turn the graphics full up on games but I'm doing alright.
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
It's a bit more nuanced than that: certain upgrades lean almost entirely on the GPU(say you get a fancy new monitor and want Game X to look good on a 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 instead of a 1280x1024); but you can run into situations where no CPU is really enough CPU(RTS pathfinding in games that permit a lot of units is a particularly hairy case. Supreme Commander, say, can merrily chug along at 60fps with a screen full of units cranking out idle animations; but a few hundred bots scrambling to navigate can bring your CPU to its knees.) It's certainly a less common issue than an inadequate GPU; but it can happen.
My home system is from 2008 also, and sports a pair of 9800GTs.
I've gone through many of the same thought processes as you, and come to many of the same conclusions.
Here's what I've gleaned:
1. A five-year-old video card (or a pair of them) should be trivially-cheap to replace with an efficient and modern equivalent, but it's not.
2. The prettiest games I want to play today bog my Q6600 CPU more than my video cards, which just loaf along on such titles.
3. I need more RAM. 4GB isn't enough and DDR2 is fucking expensive. A motherboard+CPU sidegrade is damn near free with 2x4GB DDR3, compared to 2x4GB of DDR2 by itself. And getting a significantly faster CPU at the same time isn't significantly more expensive.
4. Integrated graphics, no matter the claims by people who say they're quite good enough, suck in comparison to even quite old dedicated hardware.
5. Conclusion: To upgrade my 5-year-old gaming rig piecemeal, keep the GPU(s), replace everything else, and ignore integrated graphics.
Kid-proof tablet..
Perhaps it depends on the game. Counter Strike gives an advantage to those that load the map the quickest. Being able to get to the bottom of the ramp in Dust2 to counter snipe the inevitable sniper is huge. Just sayin.
I had a comparable processor, which I bought on the christmas of 2009. However, some new games such as Mechwarrior Online and Planetside 2 are heavily CPU-bound and the machine was lacking when running them. I upgraded to i7-3770K and the improvement was dramatic (30-40 -> 60fps for MWO and 40-50 -> 90fps for Planetside). The graphics card did not change, as it was already rather powerful (Radeon 6970) and not a bottleneck on the detail levels I was using.
This was literally the difference between unplayable and playable, so if you play those games, there absolutely is a reason to upgrade.
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?
This is pretty much what I was using before I did a full overhaul during the past few months. Between replacing the CPU+Ram+Mobo, graphics card, and primary harddrive, by far the biggest improvement was replacing my old harddrive with an SSD. The games already ran smoothly on the old hardware on medium-high settings, so the upgraded processor and graphics card really only let me notch up the settings back to max, but ultimately resulting in the same frames per second. But the quick boot/wake and fast level loading made a tremendous difference. Even the split seconds saved in regular desktop use made the user experience change dramatically.