2x SLI GTS 450 or a single card such as the GTX 560 TI?

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If you go to Futuremark (my current score is 6,000) there's a lone 19,000 Vantage* result for a Q8300 + 560 TI.
That's a very significant upgrade.

Yes, it sucks that for another $250 I could redo the whole system, but that's not gonna happen.

Again, I don't play action games and I don't watch movies on this PC. I prefer RPG's, MMO's, and turn based strategy games.
My monitor is small by current standards (sad to think of the $400 I paid for it so many years ago).
So I can get by with less. Doing the q8300 + GTX 560 should do me for another 2 years.

The biggest game I'm waiting on is Star Wars The Old Republic, and MMO's are virtually always targeted at mid-range systems.


* Since it's a DX11 card, really he should have been running 3DMark 11, but those numbers don't scale with my current DX 10 system.
 
Forgot to add the benchmark for a q8300 and 450 gts.
It's about 9000-10,000.

Note that if I keep my CPU and get the 560, I get almost the same benefit as without getting a new CPU: around 17000. (vs 19000 for that one guy with the q8300)

Too bad we only have the one datapoint for the 560TI.

Also, I realize these are all "Performance" settings, but that's all the free version allows.
 
Well, you could OC either CPU. If I were you, I would grab a GTX 560 Ti, then OC your CURRENT CPU and see how it runs. If you are happy, don't get the Q8300. If you are not happy, get the Q8300 and OC it to 3+Ghz.
 
That's my plan. I'm ordering the GTX 560 Ti right now.
As JonPaul37 pointed out, given time I might get lucky with a used CPU or something.

Now I just need to find a good step-by-step OC guide. The e6750 is a good overclocker.
 
the only trouble you will have with overclocking the 6750 is the motherboard FSB. The cpu uses 1333fsb so you will be pushing your motherboard's FSB pretty hard to overclock it. a used q9550 would be great, they are comparable to AMD phenom x4's. But yeah, even with a q8300 you will see big benefits in general app performance and there are many games not listed in anands benchmark that do take advantage of quad core, and you would expect future games to use more cores also.. Good luck with all that!
 
If only that was the case, but she has her own PC.

Thanks for all your help, everyone! I'll post benchmarks after I get the new GPU. After that, new CPU soon.

$150 is doable. The problem is, for that money, the options for my LGA 775 [no new mobo, don't suggest it 😛] are limited, looking at NewEgg.

What do you look at to determine where the throttling occurs? Without knowing that, I have absolutely nothing to base a CPU decision on.

The performance advantage of a new CPU in and of itself isn't that great [see e6750 v q8400], so obviously I'm just trying to un-bottleneck to enhance the GPU.

For example, comparing Q9550 and the Q8400 (for example) definitely doesn't merit an extra $100/55% cost, but I don't know what that translates to in terms of the GTX 560 Ti.


 
The reason the q8300 is good is because it can OC to a way higher speed than the q9550 is. You can probably push it to 3~3.5Ghz. I am not sure what you meant about throttling, but if you mean when does the bottleneck come, it is when yoou CPU/GPU is fatser than your CPU/GPU. With a GTX 560 Ti you want somewhere around 3Ghz on your processor that is a tri-core or higher for newer games.
 
Yeah, I guess what I meant was, when looking at the specifications for any CPU alongside any given GPU, how would I know if there's going to be a bottleneck, without resorting to bugging nice people on Tom's forums? Is someone able to roughly gauge that by merely looking at specs, or do we have to look up a lot of benchmarking and tests? In which case, it's easier to simply ask people who have read all those.

Thanks for the specifics on the >3 Ghz for the GTX 560 Ti. That's exactly what I needed to know since I've settled on that card.

My current e6750 can go to 3.4 OC'd, but that's dual-core. So I have no idea what that means in terms of graphics processing loss. 50%? Less? More?

My 560 still hasn't shipped (Circuit City/Amazon) but lists expected arrival by Feb 23, so hopefully I'm a week away!

As for "throttle," I know people say bottleneck, but I prefer throttle because a throttle or choke can be adjusted or tinkered with to improve flow, but the neck of a bottle can't. Thus, "throttle" would be more accurate. What can i say, I have an annoyingly literal mind, even when it comes to metaphorical speech. :)
 
If you do not play CPU intensive games for dual core OC'ed to 3.4Ghz is just fine. Well, you cannot just look at a GPU and then a CPU and say, "Oh, yeah, that would bottleneck that." because it relies on architecture. With those two, architecture 3+Ghz would be fine for a GTX 560 Ti. You can really rely on what the last GPU/CPU series performed like and kinda go from there too. Looking at benchmarks help A LOT too.
 
Had some issues with the case--the screwless fastener for the PCI slots couldn't quite hold the (huge) new GPU. Because of that I couldn't get it 100% seated.

Now that it works, I ran 3DMark 11 and got P3195. Of course I can't compare that to my old card since it wasn't DX 11*. [Note: My CPU isn't overclocked yet.]

I played League of Legends before and after, with all the in-game settings on Very High (maximum).
8800 GT: Frame rate in tutorial (i.e., repeatable) combat was 6-10 FPS, generally around 8..
GTX 560 Ti: ~50 FPS.

I was having so much fun I forgot to check the framerate.

Rather than save for a new CPU, I'll just wait and get a new Mobo and CPU at some point in the future.
The only problem is that will likely mean abandoning my DDR2 RAM...particularly if I want multiple PCIe-2 slots.
Not that I really need them with this GPU.

But what I have right now is more than sufficient. I'm running a fairly representative game at max settings with 50 FPS.

Thanks everyone! I'm really happy with my purchase. Need to try it out for a couple weeks before I leave a review or try to OC.

* Edit: unless I wanted to buy the full version of the DX 10 3d Mark just to run one more test, and I really don't.
 
Okay, I uninstalled Vantage, deleted registry entries for it, reinstalled, then used a new email address.

Here are the results for both cards with 3DMark Vantage:
8800 GT: P6008
GTX 560 Ti: p9638

That's a 60% increase, without overclocking. However...it's not even in the ballpark for that CPU + GPU combination, which all range from 16,000 to 19,000.

Well, I didn't turn off my antivirus [Webroot], which is always a massive speedbump. [It was on for both tests.] Still, I'm like 10 standard deviations below those other results. Is my mobo really that bad?

Don't get me wrong, I'm still happy with the new card.
 
Also, if that bench-mark is CPU intensive, you will get a bottleneck. If it is GPU intensive, and not CPU intensive, you are fine. I wouldn't worry about it. By the way, when and if you upgrade your CPU and MoBo, get a AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE. It is an amazing CPU from what I have read. It looks like it performs very well in benchmarks and OC'ed very well. It would be cheaper than those LGA 775s and better than almost all of them.
 
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