Graphics card Advice

[Garcian Smith]

yanamaster said:

I'm thinking about upgrading my comp as well but a bit more towards the higher end.

Right now i have a icore 7 920 2,6 Ghz
ram 3GB DDR3 1066mhz Ram
500+ Watt PSU
4850 1GB Ati radeon

While i tink that i could get a bit better Ram, say 6 GB of 1066mhz or 4 GB 1366 mhz, two 5770 ati radeon cards for xcrossfire since the upper gfx cards away out of my funding capabilities.

No point in waiting for Fermi cards as more and more info shows that they are nowhere near ati quality and efficiency.

The proccessor is imo good enough for another 2-3 years, or so i presume?

Unfortunately i will have to upgrade to a better psu to have my pc work without a hitch with crossfire. i suppose that a 850+ Watt psu will be suffice.

The Core i7-920 is currently way overkill for gaming, so no need to upgrade that. It should last you quite a while, though mid-range CPUs in two years will likely kick its butt.

I don't think you'll get much benefit from moving from 3 GB RAM to 6. The maximum standard for gaming PCs nowadays is 4 GB (mostly because the majority of game developers still develop for 32-bit OSes), but since you picked the LGA1366 platform for some reason, you'll have to settle for either 3 (a little under par) or 6 (way more than you really need). I'd just stick with 3 for now.

What resolution are you running at? If it's 1680x1050 or lower, you don't need to upgrade the 4850 just yet. If it's 1920x1080 or 1900x1200, then a single 5770 should do you. Or you could wait a few weeks for the 5830 and see if that suits your needs. Either way, don't use Crossfire.

In other words, the most you'll need is a video card upgrade, and then only if you have a high-res monitor.