Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Can a New GPU Rejuvenate a 5 Year Old Gaming PC?

Posted by samzenpus on from the making-the-best-of-it dept.

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."

12 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Older = how old? by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Older = how old? by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      And a GTX 660 is not a $400 card, it's more like $200.

      The real issue is that most games are designed to run on consoles with their ultra-crappy CPUs, so they do very little on the CPU even on a PC. I've rarely seen my i7 go over 20% CPU usage in any game I've played in Windows with the CPU monitor running.

    2. Re:Older = how old? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      A new card with 32 Mb of ram

      When was the last time you were shopping for a graphics card? 1998?

    3. Re:Older = how old? by MrBippers · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's a hardware architect that's been out of work since 3dfx closed down, you insensitive clod!

    4. Re:Older = how old? by B1oodAnge1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      To be fair, at 25 years old and over 200 games bought on steam I think I fit the target market for PC games pretty squarely, and I just upgraded my 8800 GTS to a GTX550Ti on my computer that is around 6 years old.
      I went from needing to run at medium/low settings at 1080 to being able to run just about everything maxed out at 1920x1200 for about $120.

      --
      RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
    5. Re:Older = how old? by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And a GTX 660 is not a $400 card, it's more like $200.

      ..and its 140W TDP, significantly more than the 8800 GT or 9800 GT NVidia card that was $200 when they pieced together their 5 year old system, so they need a new power supply too.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  2. Re:This just in, duh by illaqueate · · Score: 4, Informative

    That said, ~48% of Steam users still have a dual core on Steam according to their hardware survey

  3. SSD by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    One thing that helped boost my older system was switching the drive to an SSD.

  4. Re:no surprise there by Ancient123 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have an i7-920. Still have yet to hit a reason to upgrade.... I bought it on new years eve 2008.

  5. Re:DX10 requires Vista by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:no surprise there by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:no surprise there by Warma · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.