Upgrading GPU question...

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Phlame

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Jun 7, 2009
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Right now I have a decent rig, not looking to build new though.

Specs:
OS: Vista x32 Ultimate
PSU: Magnum 500 Watt
MOBO: Giga-Byte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 quad core OC'd to 3.0 ghz
Ram: DDR2 Corsiar 800mhz @ 4 Gig
HD: Two 7200 Sata Western Digital drives
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT
On board 7.1 sound

I would like to get this card:
Radeon 4830 1 Gig
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102827

But do i need a larger PSU? I don think i do.

Also, will it make a big difference if i upgrade memory to DDR2 1066 ?



Reason I want to upgrade is in CSS with mid level settings, My FPS drops to 15 in battle scenes, and tops out at 60-75 in just running around. I'm just tired of getting raped becuase of FPS and lag issues.
 
Don't get the 4830, get the 4770. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102835

It's sold out right now but sign up for auto notify when it's in stock and order fast. Expected arrival date on newegg is the 17th of June.

It performs as good as or better than the 4830 for the same price. Not to mention that it runs cooler and uses less power.

Your PSU will be enough for both of these cards. Upgrading from 4 Gigs 800 to 4 Gigs 1066 will probably never give you more than a 5 FPS boost, and that's being very generous. However faster RAM will give you benefits in other applications such as photo shop or video editing, but not so much for gaming.

On another note, I'd expect your system to perform better than that. Everything you have is better than what I have except for the graphics card, I also have an 8800GT. I don't play CSS, but in TF2 I max everything out at 1680 x 1050 and get 59+ FPS 99.99% of the time.
 
FreakingHell said:
Don't get the 4830, get the 4770. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102835

It's sold out right now but sign up for auto notify when it's in stock and order fast. Expected arrival date on newegg is the 17th of June.

It performs as good as or better than the 4830 for the same price. Not to mention that it runs cooler and uses less power.

Your PSU will be enough for both of these cards. Upgrading from 4 Gigs 800 to 4 Gigs 1066 will probably never give you more than a 5 FPS boost, and that's being very generous. However faster RAM will give you benefits in other applications such as photo shop or video editing, but not so much for gaming.

On another note, I'd expect your system to perform better than that. Everything you have is better than what I have except for the graphics card, I also have an 8800GT. I don't play CSS, but in TF2 I max everything out at 1680 x 1050 and get 59+ FPS 99.99% of the time.
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But with half the memory, will it really hold up? I'm all for running cooler though and what kind of OC potential does this have?
 
Thats really weird, I have a similar setup and im >100+ fps almost all the time in css. Might want to look into that before buying a new card it shouldn't be dropping that low at all.
 
Phlame said:
But with half the memory, will it really hold up? I'm all for running cooler though and what kind of OC potential does this have?
Click to expand...

What resolution do you play at?

Unless you're playing at 1920X1080 or higher, having more than 512mb's of VRAM won't help.
 
this might seem like a stupid question, but if his mobo chipset is nvidia can he run ati cards? and if so, will there be any performance loss?
he won't be able to run crossfire right
 
I thought it was weird too. I have all my drivers updated, just reflashed with latest BIOS. I play at 1600 X 1200 but recently scaled back to 1480 x 1050 (i think thats it) and I can only get decent FPS then.

Can you post any tips or config files that might help?
 
JunK said:
this might seem like a stupid question, but if his mobo chipset is nvidia can he run ati cards? and if so, will there be any performance loss?
he won't be able to run crossfire right
Click to expand...

An nvidia chipset can run an ati card with no performance loss, however an nvidia chipset cannot run crossfire. Same goes with ati chipsets and nvidia cards/sLi.

I can't think of anything other than drivers being outdated that would cause your performance to be so poor. Someone else will have to help here.

And 512mb is plenty for those resolutions.
 
Phlame said:
Right now I have a decent rig, not looking to build new though.

Specs:
OS: Vista x32 Ultimate
PSU: Magnum 500 Watt
MOBO: Giga-Byte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 quad core OC'd to 3.0 ghz
Ram: DDR2 Corsiar 800mhz @ 4 Gig
HD: Two 7200 Sata Western Digital drives
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT
On board 7.1 sound

I would like to get this card:
Radeon 4830 1 Gig
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102827

But do i need a larger PSU? I don think i do.

Also, will it make a big difference if i upgrade memory to DDR2 1066 ?



Reason I want to upgrade is in CSS with mid level settings, My FPS drops to 15 in battle scenes, and tops out at 60-75 in just running around. I'm just tired of getting raped becuase of FPS and lag issues.
Click to expand...

DO NOT GET THE 4830!!!

I just got a 4770 and its way faster than my old 9800GT. The DDR5 on the 4770 is the selling point, its like 5 times faster than ddr3 and u dont need the bandwidth you needed ddr3! I am at 128 bits, and I still get 65+ FPS in COD4 with everything maxed....and 4x aliasing
 
Try getting a sound card first. The main problem with on board sound is that it has to use the CPU which causes a bottleneck in gaming. I got a new 5.1 surround sound system and when I switched my on board sound card to handle it, it literally ate the crap outta the CPU making the FPS drop to nothing on most games. Now that I got a sound card everything works perfectly fine. :)
 
Kigen said:
Try getting a sound card first. The main problem with on board sound is that it has to use the CPU which causes a bottleneck in gaming. I got a new 5.1 surround sound system and when I switched my on board sound card to handle it, it literally ate the crap outta the CPU making the FPS drop to nothing on most games. Now that I got a sound card everything works perfectly fine. :)
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He has a quad core @ 3.0 Ghz, the on board sound shouldn't be using that much of his CPU.

I'm using onboard sound and I'm perfectly fine, and his quad is faster.
 
Meh, still it takes a toll on the CPU. That is, if you are using multiple channel sound (i.e., anything other than 2.0). Sound cards can be cheap if you know which one will cover what you need.

Like I hinted in my post, my onboard was fine until I got a 5.1 speaker system. Then the onboard ate up all my CPU trying to process sound. Now I have better frame rates then I had before.

Also, you need to remember than most onboard sound cards will only use one core. (i.e., so being quad or duel means nothing) Same thing exists with a lot of game still today. They don't take advantage of multiple cores due to timing issues in threads.
 
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Kigen said:
Meh, still it takes a toll on the CPU. That is, if you are using multiple channel sound (i.e., anything other than 2.0). Sound cards can be cheap if you know which one will cover what you need.

Like I hinted in my post, my onboard was fine until I got a 5.1 speaker system. Then the onboard ate up all my CPU trying to process sound. Now I have better frame rates then I had before.

Also, you need to remember than most onboard sound cards will only use one core. (i.e., so being quad or duel means nothing) Same thing exists with a lot of game still today. They don't take advantage of multiple cores due to timing issues in threads.
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Yes, but having multiple cores still gives you an advantage even if the programs don't support multicore, because everything your computer is doing is still distributed across 4 cores, whether the programs themselves use more than one core or not. I am using a 5.1 set up myself on my onboard and I still only utilize ~ 50% of my CPU when playing TF2(and again, his CPU is a faster quad).

I find it very unlikely that your onboard soundcard is the problem. Unless you are unhappy with the audio quality of your onboard card don't waste the money on a dedicated sound card as a GOOD one costs $50 or more(most likely more if you want to use it for movies, music, and gaming).
 
This is a common misconception mostly based on information from 3+ years ago.

Current onboard sound with relatively modern processors (anything duel core or better really) uses a VERY small amount of CPU cycles, even with high quality sound.

Even with a low-mid range C2D processor you won't see more than 1-2 FPS at most when moving to a sound card. Going from a 7.1 system playing a very taxing game like Crysis with onboard to a sound card will net you insignificant gains. If your expecting 5-10fps more you are fooling yourself.

What sound cards do offer is very high quality sound, a high end sound card dwarfs even the most high end onboard sound in terms of quality.

TLDR: Don't buy a sound card for increased FPS, you will be sorely disappointed if you expect any significant gains. However outdated onboard sound drivers can cause very significant FPS drops and stuttering. This I think is where a lot of the misconception comes from.
 
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I just know that I have a NVIDIA nForce 780i motherboard. When I went to 5.1 surround sound it ate the crap outta my CPU that my FPS was around 5-10FPS in every game. I got a sound card and now I'm back up to having close to 100-200FPS.

p.s., I do keep my drivers updated. So that wasn't it. Problem was the onboard sound has to computer positional data with the CPU which already has to focus on running the game. A good sound card will have its own processor to handle such stuff to off-load the task from the CPU.
 
I know how onboard sound functions in regards to CPU cycles :P

Anyways there is/was an issue with something in your system, even remotely modern computers don't see anywhere near 5-10 FPS when switching off onboard sound (or using a sound card). I suspect a conflict of components is the likely culprit as you said drivers were up to date.

Anyways the point of my other post was more to keep someone from buying a sound card expecting such abnormal FPS gains, it's just not the way it works ;)

In addition to the many other systems I have tested and built (as well as the many knowledgeable forums on select sites that cover this topic) I installed a new sound card on my main gaming rig yesterday. Moving from onboard with a 5.1 high end sound system to the Forte card netted me less than 1FPS increase in multiple games (crysis, stalker, TF2 among others) and this can likely be ruled out as marine of error. The days of 5+ FPS gains ended a few years ago unfortunately, duo/quad core CPU's almost always have at least a few free % when playing even the most taxing games and onboard sound just doesn't use enough of those to make a large impact anymore :(

Any serious gamer / gaming rig SHOULD invest in a quality sound card, but this is more for quality of sound and shouldn't be purchased under the pretense of gaining FPS.
 
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I would recommend a GTX260 (make sure you get one of the new ones with 216 stream processors). They are great cards capable of playing crysis smoothly at 1920x1200 on high/very high. ($169 on newegg with Far Cry 2 and CoD:WaW). We just built my friend a new rig w/ an i7 920 and gtx260 and it blows my q6600@3ghz and 2x8800GT SLI out of the water.
 
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