Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
Overclocking + small investment in mid-range card = $150-$200 cost.
Throwing out entire system because the old architecture isn't good enough = $1000 cost
That said, if you are going for a dual card setup or higher end modern card, the CPU would still be a bottleneck but the point is that a Q6600 still has plenty of life left in it for gaming and especially with modern games that more effectively use multiple cores, it's still a damn good CPU.
You could buy a higher end GPU, pair it with an overclocked Q6600 and be a happy gamer for quite some time. Then later on when you have more funds, you could build a new rig and carry the GPU over.
That's just my opinion from a budget-minded and non-wasting good hardware point of view. That said, if you have the $$$ today, upgrading to a modern CPU and motherboard would be awesome too.
Ultimately, the overclocking option is a free option you can try right now to see if it gets you to a level where you don't have to throw out the old system and spend $1000. The rest is up to you but I honestly think that an OC'd Q6600 plus a midrange card that is about twice the speed of the 8800 Ultra would be fine.
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$1000 is what I figured a new build would cost. I don't have that money today. So I was curious if buying a new GPU would be worth it all. Seems like it might be. I found your
post about overclocking. So I will try to do that this week and see how it goes.
What kind of card would you recommend for mid and high? I would prefer to have a Nvidia card but if the savings are enough I would go ATI.