GPU Upgrade, Compatibility Questions

[DragonFire1170]

I'm looking at a new card for my computer, but I'm wanting to know if my computer is compatible with it.  The card is the EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi), from what I read, it will fit in my PCI slot.  I'm just not sure if the rest of my hardware is good.  I'm hearing it can run Crysis and other high-end games on maximum with minimal problems.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz
RAM: 4.00 GB DDR2
Video: PCI Express 2.0

Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130595

[Eximo]

If you are getting this card in advance of a new system, I'd say go for it, but...

If you have a little extra cash, you might have better luck spreading the money between a motherboard, CPU, and a lesser graphics card like a 550Ti or 560Ti. You will get better performance from a system wide upgrade at this point then dropping a huge card into an old system.

You also have to be careful for PCI Express 2.0 vs 2.1 changes. There may be some bottlenecks there.

[DragonFire1170]

I'm not looking to upgrade my entire system at this time, just the video card since from what everyone I've talked to says that the GPU is the thing holding it back

[-AAA-]

Honestly, your CPU is going to be such a bottleneck, a powerful card like that is going to be mostly wasted and you'll still get bad performance.  One possibility would be to overclock your CPU, but I don't recall E6550s overclocking terribly well (they were the budget/mid-range processors of the C2D line when they were new) without cranking up VCore or under-clocking memory a significant amount.  However, it is worth a shot.  If you have enough to spend on a GTX570, you'd be better served by a new CPU - you can get a much better-performing Socket775 CPU for under $100 these days - and spending the rest on a less powerful GPU like a 560 or 6850. 

That's still not going to be getting mind-blowing performance, but it will be much better than putting a 570 in your current system.  That would be like putting a jet engine on a red radio flyer wagon. 

[DragonFire1170]

Any recommended processors then?

[Eximo]

CPU is the larger factor in MWLL, at least from my experience. If you can fire up the windows sysmon (I think you can get a good 3 minutes on a single graph) see what your CPU usage is when running games.

My old system was a Athlon X2 6000 with 8800GTS. I didn't feel like commiting to a new set up hardware and decided to upgrade my video card to a GTX280. Barely made a change in the overall performance, though some things looked slightly better.

Dropped that same GTX280 into an i7 950 and the performance tripled. I've since upgraded to a GTX580, and even still, from what I have read in other posts CPU first.

You could take that $340 and really make good headway into an i5 2500k with 8G DDR3 and a decent motherboard. You'll have to spend a little to get a video card onto that rig, but it would certainly be worth it. Without scrapping your peripherals and such you could be looking at $550-600 for a major upgrade.

[DragonFire1170]

I'm mainly looking at the upgrade for better performance over most games, not just MWLL since a few games I enjoy playing aren't performing as well, I've grown used to how MWLL performs on my system.

EDIT: Did some nit-picking on Newegg with the parts you suggested, it'll cost about $719.96 for the parts I'm looking at, out of my budget for the time being, I was choosing these parts (set to Best Rating):

Intel Core i5-2500k 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) - $219.99
ASRock Z68 DDR3 Motherboard - $249.99
EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) - $199.99
G.SKILLS Ripjaw Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 RAM - $49.99

[Freeborn_Toad]

250 dollars is too much to be spending on an LGA-1155 motherboard. You could get one that would take a 2500k to as high as it will go on air, reliably, for 75-100 dollars less.

[Mitchpate]

Have the taskmanager open on a 2nd screen while playing and see what your CPU usage is.  My overclocked Core2 Q6600 barely hits 50% while playing but some people here claim their Core i7s are getting maxed out so it really all depends on what game settings you're using.

Unfortunately, your Q8200 is not going to overclock very well so you're out of luck on that front.

I would say get the card and see if it helps.  If you don't get the results you want you can get a decent LGA1155 motherboard, a Core i5 2500k, and 8GB of DDR3-1333 for $340 shipped.  If you aren't able/willing to spend the additional $340 then you can lower the CPU intensive settings until you find a happy balance or simply enjoy the much higher framerates at medium or mostly-high settings.  Virtually every other game you play will greatly benefit from the GPU upgrade so IMO you can't really lose.

[sleepysheep]

Have the taskmanager open on a 2nd screen while playing and see what your CPU usage is.  My overclocked Core2 Q6600 barely hits 50% while playing but some people here claim their Core i7s are getting maxed out so it really all depends on what game settings you're using.

Unfortunately, your Q8200 is not going to overclock very well so you're out of luck on that front.

I would say get the card and see if it helps.  If you don't get the results you want you can get a decent LGA1155 motherboard, a Core i5 2500k, and 8GB of DDR3-1333 for $340 shipped.  If you aren't able/willing to spend the additional $340 then you can lower the CPU intensive settings until you find a happy balance or simply enjoy the much higher framerates at medium or mostly-high settings.  Virtually every other game you play will greatly benefit from the GPU upgrade so IMO you can't really lose.

Unless he plays alot of cpu intense games then that gc is just a money sink till the rest of his rig is upgraded. I have to agree with eximo, your not going to notice much of a difference expeically in large servers where it really matters for mwll.

These days its pointless upgrading just one part of your pc by tons and leaving everything else four(ish) years out of date. You will just be bitterly disappointed in spending all that money for the increase in performance that your going to get.

[GB-72AT Talon]

would be a lot of work but would be useful to have a linear graph to show scaling of GPU with CPU, so the same GPU tested under the same conditions across several platforms, to see the linearity and scaling,

[Mitchpate]

Unless he plays alot of cpu intense games then that gc is just a money sink till the rest of his rig is upgraded

The problem is that you're using Crysis as the standard to how a "CPU intensive" game performs.  Go check the benchmarks for Crysis, you'll see that dualcore processors often deliver the same FPS as quadcore processors.  On games that are actually well optimized for multiple CPU cores, for example Bad Company 2, you'll notice that while the CPU may affect FPS it is not something that breaks the experience.  The 2500k may deliver twice the FPS but if the low number is 55-70 to start with does it really matter?

Upgrading your entire computer for just one game is stupid, especially if every other game you own plays just fine.  If you use that mentality with the rest of your purchasing decisions in life you'll die a very poor person.

[DragonFire1170]

I'm mainly wanting to upgrade to try to rid framerate issues with games that really shouldn't give any, like Team Fortress 2 and a few others.  On maximum settings I might get 20-30 with lag caused by particles/large amounts of players on TF2, along with a few other 2007ish games.  I haven't checked my FPS on Crysis, but judging from what I can remember visually, I might get 10-20 FPS depending on the situation.

[Mitchpate]

What video card are you using right now?

[DragonFire1170]

I'm using a Nvidia GeForce 9500GT