4890 upgrading

Hello

I want to upgrade and not sure what is going to give me the biggest boost. I've got a 6600 core 2 duo (oc'd to 3ghz), Asus P5W DH Deluxe, 4gb of good DDR2, Radeon 4890 1024mb.

I was considering going for another 4890 which I can pick up pretty cheap. I think the other route is upgrading to i5/i7 meaning new MB and Ram. Or would a quad core and 4890 be enough? Any thoughts?

To be honest I can run things in pretty high settings but some of the more recent games struggle on the higher settings.

Any opinions will be gratefully received.

Lots of love

Sweedo

I assume this is for gaming? What resolution do you game at? If its 1920x1080 or above, I would say GPU. If its below that, I would look in to your system, and the GPU. That rig may be getting a little long in the tooth.

Current res is 1680x1050. It's mainly for gaming.

Just looking at gfx cards now. Would a 6870 keep me happy for a bit longer or do you think the other bits would hold it back?

6870 would help, sure. But you are being held back a bit by that CPU.

You're going to be held back by your other components with a 6870. You might want to update the main system components first before grabbing a new GPU.

Another issue is that the 4890's already a strong card, so a 6870 wouldn't be a huge upgrade from what you already have. A 1GB 6950 would be better in comparison, however you'd be completely CPU-limited by your E6600 with that GPU.

I would look for a nice used quad if you are planning on keeping that 4890.. Something you can OC to 3.5 at least. That way you have 4 cores, and a decent gpu.

I second the system before card vote, the 4890 has 13.6k mps fill rate with 124.8gbs gddr bandwidth, while something like the 6850 has 24.8 and 128gbps. sure the fill rate is huge but the bf series since bfbc2 has tapped multiple cpu threads quite highly soooo:

if you went gpu and got something, sure, you'll be able to play the game with the on card visual effect maxed out but physics and other effects that hit your cpu will bring you down quite a bit making your overall gaming quality fps wise kinda stinky.

if you go full system, sure you'll be playing around at dx10 so it won't look as pretty, solution, play multiplayer till you can afford to upgrade your gcard, then do the campaign and enjoy the even nicer looking multiplayer. and meanwhile everything else you do on your system will be much faster...

If you do end up going gcard first, throw in a nice heatsink thats 775 and 11xx and or 1366 compatible and overclock that cpu to 3.4~8 like everyone else on ocf with a c2d