Just wondering if i can get by for a few months

[chughes1979]

hey all, new to the forums here but am a huge fan of the site, needless to say i have been thinking about building a pc for awhile now but am stuck with my craptastic dell630 xps for a few months longer, that being said i was wondering if i could use a GTX570 and 8GB of DDR2 RAM with the already present intel Q9400 2.66mhz yorkfield cpu and get some decent gaming going on, i realize i have a lame dell mb and psu but would this be sifficient enough to run games like skyrim, BF3, and some newer titles until i get back from a deployment in may to start my new build? thx all.

 

[cuecuemore]

I guess you can't OC your CPU, but you should be ok to play most games until you can get a replacement. If you could OC, there would be very little need for an upgrade.

 

[Supernova1138]

You would definitely have to get a new power supply in order to power a GTX 570, I highly doubt the stock power supply could run the card. Aside from that, yes you could get decent performance out of that computer with a GTX 570. Almost all games these days will be GPU bound before the CPU becomes a huge issue. BF3 doesn't seem to care what kind of CPU you have as long as you have a decent dual core. I doubt Skyrim is going to complain about a slower quad either. As long as you are not playing at a really low resolution (1280x1024 or lower) you aren't likely to hit a CPU bottleneck.

I would say go for 4GB of RAM rather than 8GB. DDR2 RAM is more expensive than DDR3 and you won't be able to use it in a new build. 4GB is enough to run any game as long as you aren't running a huge number of applications in the background. Only get 8GB if you absolutely have to run a lot of stuff in the background while playing a game.

Also, be sure to measure the length between the back of the case next to the PCI-E x16 slot and the hard drive cage. The Dell case may not have enough space to accommodate larger graphics cards like the GTX 570.

 

[chughes1979]

i cant overclock because my cpu cooler is dell stock, i might be able to put an aftermarket cooler on it but it would still leave the dell mb lol, like i said when i get back from wherever the air force decides to send me i will be newegg-ing it up haha.

 

[chughes1979]

also thx for the advice man, i do appreciate it.

 

[chughes1979]

the stock psu i have is 800w, thats not enough?

 

[Supernova1138]

If it's 800 Watts, that is enough for the 570. Usually prebuilt machines come with a 220 to 300 Watt PSU, which isn't enough for a 570. All you need to do then is to measure the interior of your case to make sure you can actually fit the card you want. The dimensions of the card are usually in the specifications section on whatever online retailer you go to.

 

[chughes1979]

yeah it'll fit in there just fine...im not trying to run metro 2033 or cysis on high obviously just games like skyrim, mass effect 3, bf3, and stuff that comes out on consoles that id rather get on pc...thx again for the help all! great site, great forums, great help.

 

[Deemo13]

If you coule overclock that processor somehow and add a GTX570, you would not have to upgrade anything for a long while. The Core2Quads are very very potent and highly underestimated. you should be able to run whatever you want with that system on decent graphics.