Hey guys, was wondering if this is a good update path as I am planning to go back to NVIDIA (sick of ATI) or should I wait till the next batch of graphics card to arrive? Need an honest answer please.. lol, its freakin $500 BUCKS
you get around 20% extra performance in 'most' cases and an extra 500MB vram, probably not worth the $500 with a new gen of cards around the corner.
Could go for an overall system upgrade instead as getting a high end card from any side will be at a bottleneck.
cpu ram m/b, 2500k, z68 mb, 8gb ram. all for less than the price of a 580. your bottlenecked 5870 will thank you for it with increased performance. and it also appears 5870 xfire is on par with 1 580 at least from this review. http://www.overclock.net/t/890010/gtx-580-vs-radeon-hd-5870-crossfire-review also look at this http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-sli-review/5 OP I would suggest getting the cpu,mb ram upgrade first and then another 5870 on the cheap for xfire. if you look at the charts in my second link it is a potent solution when paired with a i7 cpu do you have a link to your psu?
I agree with tommyk2005 Get a new board and whatnot, you'll be grand. I have a secondary machine that has a single 5870 in it. Spits out every game maxed with plenty of fps, even bf3.
yea...your probably not even getting full use of your 5870 with that ddr2 memory and low end dual core cpu. A 580 would be a big waste of money as you don't even have a system capable of feeding it the data it needs. I agree with the others....getting a new motherboard/cpu/ddr3 ram would be a far more noticeable improvement to your games then a 580. I am willing to bet in a lot of games your 5870 isn't even getting to stretch it's legs.
yes, you buy very well gtx 580 because 580 (my GTX480 ) is much better than high-end HD5800/HD6900 for tessellation but you should upgrade from C2D E6550 (2 cores) to cheaper C2Q Q6xxx (4 cores) due to your Mboard supported and you don't NEED new motherboard, RAM...
@guys NOTICE!! you may NOT buy any CPU non-cheaped and you do NOT need new mboard, RAM...!!! you read my post #10, VERY IMPORTANT because cheaper quad-core CPU (eg: C2Q Q6600, Q8200...) and GTX 580 are very good balance system!!! EDIT: oh! sorry, you need new PSU 700W or more watts due to high-end videocard.
700w? no. a 550W will run ANY single GPU even overclocked. a 550W is about 100W more then a high end system with a 580 will use. a 750W is enough for 2X GTX 570's..
you're stupid because the current CPU's are expensive!! you may not keep videocard because the performance is insufficient for tessellation and any AMD/ATi card hasn't physx support yet.
He's willing to spend money to (possibly) buy a GTX 580. If that is the case, a CPU/RAM/Board combo would come in around the same price or less. How is buying what's needed the most, seen as "stupid". Sure, they could grab a Core 2 Quad, but why bother shoring up a near dead platform just for 6 month or so of extra life? I'd be straight on the net, ordering a 2500K, a Gigabyte P67A-UD4 (SLI and Crossfire 8x/8x ready) and some RAM (4GB, 8GB, whatever). The O)P would probably see similar performance increases upgrading like that than they would from switching to a 580.
any quad-core is good for gtx580 but NOT CPU sandy!! you read again that my post #16 is updated, sorry.
Going with an overall system upgrade is advisable because you can change a video card at any time. If you get a GTX580 you will definitely be at a bottleneck and pretty sure any video card after that will be the same. If you upgrade to the latest system you can later upgrade your video card without having any problems other components slowing you down. Now if you're going for a system upgrade later and you want the video card first then thats fine. Could always upgrade the CPU but pretty sure buying one will be almost the cost of a new 2500k so it would be best to go for an overhaul than just upgrading here and there. I remember having an E8400@4GHz, 4GB ram and HD4870. Did an overhaul upgrade (i7 920@4GHz, 6GBram but i was still using an HD4870 and I was really satisfied with it and it was noticeably faster. Later on I just swapped to an HD5850 no problem, and got a speed bump on the gaming side then after that the HD6970 which was the cream on top. My example here is I did a system upgrade before video card and to show that it is easier to swap/upgrade the video card later on without having to worry about slow downs.
You are living the dream!Arent you ricardo? Im willing to bet that im most situations my system is faster than yours. Sure i have slower gfx card but i have faste CPU. Everyone knows phenoms are on pair with C2Q CPUs clock to clock performace,and most probably you arent getting much from you other 2 cores on your 1055 when it comes to gaming.... Im not trying to show my e-peen here but everyone knows games fly on Sandy! He could pick up 2500k for 150-160euros and a decent mobo for 100e also 4 gigs of ram for 50e. For ~300e(400$) he is all set plus he could buy next gen nvidia or ATI when they arrive....