Best bang for buck guys?

[glenmoray]

Hey guys!

Avid reader, first time poster.

Literally looking for some good advice as I'm an expat living in The Netherlands so can't ask on any Dutch forums due to my useless Dutch.

To the point!

I'm looking to play WoW in all its glory at 1680x1050, Empire/Napoleon Total War and, ehm those are the only games I play! I'd also like a little bit of future proofing here so I can keep my rig going for a little longer if possible, but WoW and Total War are my main priorities.

My rig is:

Asus P5Q-E
Intel E8400 @ 3.8ghz on a Zalman9700 (C0,stable, haven't gone any further with it yet)
2GB Corsair XM2 PRO 6400
ASUS 8800 GTS 512mb (overclocked slightly, used to be quite a high overclock but started artifcating)
Windows XP 32bit


Now ideally I'd like to get maximum performance for cheap... but I'm not so sure.

I'll be playing on a 1680x1050 monitor, 22" Samsung so thats really why I need what I think , a new GPU.

But if I also needed RAM, okay sure, I could get 2more GB (but DDR2 Ram doesn't look so cheap anymore) but then I'd need another OS to make use of it right?... That means I'd have to purchase Windows7 64bit, or Windows XP 64 bit but I'd be inclined to at least move up.

2x1gb sticks of my Corsair6400 ram can be found for about $72 atm. This seems a bit much.

So really one thing leads to the other and I'm spending more than I'd like :(

I think that for the time being probably, my best bet is just upgrading the GPU as I've spent a bit on the monitor, and then look towards the ram + os later. But i'd really need some expert opinions here.

To help with prices i've converted them from euros to USD.

Sapphire 1gb 5770 : $190
Sapphire 1gb 5850 : $327
Sapphire 1gb 5870: $490
Sapphire 1gb 5750: $170
Sapphire 1gb 4890: $247

Asus 480GTX: $619
Asus 260GTX: $225
Asus 275GTX: $275


Thanks guys,

Glen

[Brutal-Force]

I don't play WoW, but I wouldn't think that its that taxing on your GPU. I'd imagine that your RAM might be having something to do with that. How does it handle when your not running anything in the background? 2GB just seems a little low to me, but like I said, no experience with WoW, so I can only speculate.

[hatchermagic]

youshldnt be far off playing wow, and war series with ur current specs at full settings, maybe u havent got ur computer configured right, i used to play wow max settings with an overclocked 8600 gts and thts a crap card lol,

but still u cld grab a significant upgrade but depends how much you want to pay, gtx 260, 4870 can run most modern games at full spec at a res of 1680x1050 and you can pick them up cheap, but they may struggle to run games at full spec in the future, other than tht not much point getting anything else except the radeon 5xxx series.

[diaz]

2G of ram is a must. Your card is a very decent card, if you want a real upgrade from there you would definitely want to jump to a 5850 or a GTX470.

Runner ups:
GTX260
5770

-D

[DragoXT]

I would get the RAM before you go grabbing a new vid card. Those games you mention are hardly vid card dependent. Any RPG and RTS game does better with more RAM. You dont need a new OS to use 4gig's of RAM. Windows xp32 bit will only see about 3-3.5gig of RAM as it takes the RAM that is addressable for your vid card and subtracts that from 4gig, and that is the max amount of system RAM you can have as a 32bit OS can only address a max of 4gigs. With all that RAM, you can disable your page file completely, and that will help performance quite a bit.

You might also consider overclocking that dual core to increase performance of your games. RPGs and RTSs can run fine on your vid card, but your rig is lacking processing power and RAM to handle the other cpu calculations that must be done to run the AI.

As for upgrading a vid card, the 8800GTS you have is aka 9800GTX aka 9800GTX+ aka GTS250. Yeah they made little changes to the cards, mainly faster core/mem speeds and the last two, had 1gig variant cards, but essentially your card is basically equivalent to those. That being the case, your upgrades are not much and they will cost an awful lot to get a minimal boost in performance.

[glenmoray]

Thanks for such great quick responses.

The games run great, thats not been a problem. I'm playing WoW on full at 1280x1024. But when I raid - it lags. So I have to put it down, thats what I'm really getting at.

Its not like I can't play the Total War games , its just I want to play these games full out. My major deal with the gpu is that I'm going from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050 - and I wondered whether my gpu could take that considering I want to play both on full.

I'm getting what you're saying about the RAM, I think I'll purchase that first then to get myself up to 4gb. On a side note - should I look to a faster hdd? I'm using a Maxtor Diamondback 250gb SATA, not sure on its speeds but its pretty slow compared to new ones.

Thanks
Glen

[diaz]

Thanks for such great quick responses.

The games run great, thats not been a problem. I'm playing WoW on full at 1280x1024. But when I raid - it lags. So I have to put it down, thats what I'm really getting at.

Its not like I can't play the Total War games , its just I want to play these games full out. My major deal with the gpu is that I'm going from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050 - and I wondered whether my gpu could take that considering I want to play both on full.

I'm getting what you're saying about the RAM, I think I'll purchase that first then to get myself up to 4gb. On a side note - should I look to a faster hdd? I'm using a Maxtor Diamondback 250gb SATA, not sure on its speeds but its pretty slow compared to new ones.

Thanks
Glen

An HDD is a cheap upgrade, I suggest a WD Caviar Black 640G - most likely you wont see any difference other than game loading times - maybe..

[DragoXT]

That is why i suggested more RAM. The more you have the less need to even go to the HDD to get things which oh so improves the responsiveness of everything. I dont see where your 8800GTS couldnt handle 1680x1050 if you are handling 1280x1024 maxed out with good FPS. Personally though, anytime you do stuff online that requires lots of players, it is often better to not be at max settings just so you dont get the horrid FPS drops that tend to happen. Dropping FPS are what make games unplayable. I could see you holding off for an upgrade till around mid summer as, Nvidia is bringing their next gen mid range cards in come june which will replace the GTX2xx series cards and should perform better. Plus you get a DX11 card though i have yet to see a DX11 game, but that will come to pass soon enough.

[EarthDog]

Overclock that CPU. Wow, especially when raiding and also at the low res you play at, is CPU bound more so than anything.

There are a couple of DX11 games out already Drago... BFBC2, Dirt2......

[GatorChamp]

Overclock that CPU. Wow, especially when raiding and also at the low res you play at, is CPU bound more so than anything.

There are a couple of DX11 games out already Drago... BFBC2, Dirt2......
QFT

WOW is a power hungry dirty CPU monster. I dont play anymore but anything at or above GTX 260 let me max the game np. I was playing at 1920x1200 everything maxed and I stayed around 55 FPS during craziness. 60+ pretty much all other times, except for Dalaran. It would only drop to 40-45

Best bang for your buck card IMO is either 5770 ($165) or the new 5830($240), and I'm an Nvidia user. Both are Dx11 and you have to sell your first child to get Nvidia's Dx11 cards.