Which Video Card To Buy + Will My CPU Bottleneck My Choice?

[dsinghgill]

Hi there ...

I finally plan to upgrade (parts of) my old gaming computer, and I plan on starting with the video card, with a budget of about $140.

Currently I have a PowerColor Radeon HD4850 (512 MB).

I'm interested in buying one of the ... R7 260x, or GTX 750, or 750 Ti.
So first of all, which one of these is the best and will show me the greatest upgrade?
Also will I be able to play relatively current games, in high or pretty good quality in 1920x1080 resolution?
(As an FYI, my PSU is 650W.)

BUT ...
Before I even buy a new video card, I just realized that my CPU can bottleneck my GPU.
So secondly (and probably more importantly), will my current Quad-core Phenom 9850 Black Ed. bottleneck those above three video cards? As in will it be fine to go ahead and buy on of those, or not?

Thanks, and I really appreciate all your help!

 

[badboyrog2]

your cpu is a little bit weak..that will Bottleneck a bit your gpu
i think is better for you to safe some money and get a new rig
but..you still able to upgrade the gpu for a r9 270x or up , and buy a new cpu and mobo later on

 

[damric]

Yes and no.

Upgrading your GPU will allow you to increase detail settings and have more maximum FPS.

You will still have the same minimum FPS dips due your CPU choking in certain areas of the game.

 

[dsinghgill]

Frankly, I don't have money to build a new pc.
Right now, I just want to upgrade my video card so I can play some newer games at a nice quality.

I mean, how much will my CPU bottleneck those 3 video cards?
Like will I notice a dip in performance or something? Or will it not seem a big enough upgrade from the 4850 to those cards due to the bottleneck?

Also can someone just explain that FPS issue a bit more?

Thanks

 

[damric]

I'll put it this way, no matter what card you upgrade to, you are still going to have the same laggyness from your CPU (the low FPS dips) that you already have with your HD 4850. The difference is, your game will at least look at lot better overall because your GPU will be strong enough to support higher details and higher average and maximum FPS.

I'd snag the 260x, as it least it is capable of the Mantle API, which reduces driver overhead for your CPU, so your old Athlon can keep up a little better. It also has True Audio, which is also supposed to reduce overhead (this is brand new and I'm not sure if any games are supporting it yet).

Then later, when you get around to it, you will obviously upgrade to a better CPU platform.

 

[dsinghgill]

I'll put it this way, no matter what card you upgrade to, you are still going to have the same laggyness from your CPU (the low FPS dips) that you already have with your HD 4850. The difference is, your game will at least look at lot better overall because your GPU will be strong enough to support higher details and higher average and maximum FPS.

I'd snag the 260x, as it least it is capable of the Mantle API, which reduces driver overhead for your CPU, so your old Athlon can keep up a little better. It also has True Audio, which is also supposed to reduce overhead (this is brand new and I'm not sure if any games are supporting it yet).

Then later, when you get around to it, you will obviously upgrade to a better CPU platform.

Thanks for the input and explanation.
I was hoping if you could help me out a bit more:

If I do go the 260x route, is it worth the upgrade going from a 4850 to that?
And moreover, is it worth it in general to buy the 260x?
How good is this card and do you have any experience with it?
Oh, and how much does that mantle thing help?

Adding to that ... on the other hand ... should I just try to upgrade my CPU, instead?

I mean, I'm not a heavy gamer. Atm I like to play games like Skyrim, FIFA, FarCry3, etc with my 4850.
But I just want to invest a bit more (without forking out a lot of cash) to enjoy some newer games too, like playing Tomb Raider in good enjoyable quality. With my 4850p, I can only run TR in low to med. settings, and it's not really fun like that, tbh.

If I do go with upgrading the CPU, I might have to upgrade other things too like mobo and ram.
Or do I? (My mobo is asus m3n72-d with ddr2 ram support)

Anyway, thanks again!

 

[badboyrog2]

ok if you buy a new gpu like r9 270x or up ...it will be yours for a while and it will not loose value.
your new gpu will fit in any futur rig and even now if you have a pci-e version 2.0 and up on your mobo
if the asus m3n72-d is your mobo , it will be ok for a r9 270x

 

[damric]

I'll put it this way, no matter what card you upgrade to, you are still going to have the same laggyness from your CPU (the low FPS dips) that you already have with your HD 4850. The difference is, your game will at least look at lot better overall because your GPU will be strong enough to support higher details and higher average and maximum FPS.

I'd snag the 260x, as it least it is capable of the Mantle API, which reduces driver overhead for your CPU, so your old Athlon can keep up a little better. It also has True Audio, which is also supposed to reduce overhead (this is brand new and I'm not sure if any games are supporting it yet).

Then later, when you get around to it, you will obviously upgrade to a better CPU platform.

Thanks for the input and explanation.
I was hoping if you could help me out a bit more:

If I do go the 260x route, is it worth the upgrade going from a 4850 to that?
And moreover, is it worth it in general to buy the 260x?
How good is this card and do you have any experience with it?
Oh, and how much does that mantle thing help?

Adding to that ... on the other hand ... should I just try to upgrade my CPU, instead?

I mean, I'm not a heavy gamer. Atm I like to play games like Skyrim, FIFA, FarCry3, etc with my 4850.
But I just want to invest a bit more (without forking out a lot of cash) to enjoy some newer games too, like playing Tomb Raider in good enjoyable quality. With my 4850p, I can only run TR in low to med. settings, and it's not really fun like that, tbh.

If I do go with upgrading the CPU, I might have to upgrade other things too like mobo and ram.
Or do I? (My mobo is asus m3n72-d with ddr2 ram support)

Anyway, thanks again!

The 260x (and the 750/750ti) are budget cards. However, compared to your HD 4850. you are looking at like 4x more raw performance (just estimating based on my ownership of various AMD GPUs in each generation). I'm currently running an HD 7850 which is slightly faster, but is way overkill for my 60Hz 1080p monitor, It would be worthwhile.

You could definitely update your CPU platform first if you wanted. Even a cheap $90 Athlon x4 760K on $50 FM2 motherboard will be light years faster than your old Athlon X2, but you need to buy DDR3 as well. That would be worthwhile as well.

If budget is really an issue, try shopping for slightly used stuff on the overclock.net marketplace. People there buy new stuff, then as soon as somethign newer comes out they buy that and put it in the market for a fraction of the price. Some of the stuff is hardly used at all.

 

[dsinghgill]

I'll put it this way, no matter what card you upgrade to, you are still going to have the same laggyness from your CPU (the low FPS dips) that you already have with your HD 4850. The difference is, your game will at least look at lot better overall because your GPU will be strong enough to support higher details and higher average and maximum FPS.

I'd snag the 260x, as it least it is capable of the Mantle API, which reduces driver overhead for your CPU, so your old Athlon can keep up a little better. It also has True Audio, which is also supposed to reduce overhead (this is brand new and I'm not sure if any games are supporting it yet).

Then later, when you get around to it, you will obviously upgrade to a better CPU platform.

Thanks for the input and explanation.
I was hoping if you could help me out a bit more:

If I do go the 260x route, is it worth the upgrade going from a 4850 to that?
And moreover, is it worth it in general to buy the 260x?
How good is this card and do you have any experience with it?
Oh, and how much does that mantle thing help?

Adding to that ... on the other hand ... should I just try to upgrade my CPU, instead?

I mean, I'm not a heavy gamer. Atm I like to play games like Skyrim, FIFA, FarCry3, etc with my 4850.
But I just want to invest a bit more (without forking out a lot of cash) to enjoy some newer games too, like playing Tomb Raider in good enjoyable quality. With my 4850p, I can only run TR in low to med. settings, and it's not really fun like that, tbh.

If I do go with upgrading the CPU, I might have to upgrade other things too like mobo and ram.
Or do I? (My mobo is asus m3n72-d with ddr2 ram support)

Anyway, thanks again!

The 260x (and the 750/750ti) are budget cards. However, compared to your HD 4850. you are looking at like 4x more raw performance (just estimating based on my ownership of various AMD GPUs in each generation). I'm currently running an HD 7850 which is slightly faster, but is way overkill for my 60Hz 1080p monitor, It would be worthwhile.

You could definitely update your CPU platform first if you wanted. Even a cheap $90 Athlon x4 760K on $50 FM2 motherboard will be light years faster than your old Athlon X2, but you need to buy DDR3 as well. That would be worthwhile as well.

If budget is really an issue, try shopping for slightly used stuff on the overclock.net marketplace. People there buy new stuff, then as soon as somethign newer comes out they buy that and put it in the market for a fraction of the price. Some of the stuff is hardly used at all.

Thanks for the reply buddy ....
But before I add anything further to that and ask anything else, I want to clear up one thing:

I'm kind of confused.
You suggest that I should upgrade my cpu.
If I'm not mistaken, I think you may misunderstood the type of cpu I have.

I believe you think that I have an Athlon x2.
However, I have a Phenom x4 9850 B.E.

Going by what wikipedia says, aren't these 2 cpu types different? And isn't the phenom x4 better than the athlon x2 (or even the athlon x4)?

Plus going by some of the reviews on newegg (for my phenom 9850), some people even mention that this processor handles games like battlefield 3 and mw3 quite well.

So yeah, I just wanted to ask you to clear this up before I ask any further questions and make any decisions.

Like always, I appreciate all your help, buddy!

 

[damric]

No the Phenom I's were so so. They are barely better than the Athlon x2's that preceded them because they had such low clocks. Phenom IIs and Athlon IIs evolved the architecture and increased clockrate such that it was a very large step forward. Next was the Bulldozer chips which were kind of mediocre, and now they have the revised piledriver chips which are a lot better. The Athlon x4 are FM2 chipset piledrivers meant for cost weary overclockers. It would be a pretty good upgrade if you don't want to shell out even more money for an AM3+ FX CPU platform.

But since you mention you have a Pheom I 9850, you could, if your motherboard has BIOS updates, even just upgrade to a used Phenom II or Athlon II since the AM3 chips are drop-in compatible with AM2+ boards and have both DDR2 AND DDR3 memory controllers. You might just find a Phenom IIx4 for $50-60 and that would be a lot cheaper to upgrade that and still a pretty big performance boost. Then you might still have enough cash left to upgrade your video card too.

 

[dsinghgill]

@damric .... thanks for another great explanation. It makes a lot of sense now.

I think I'm going to go ahead and just build a new computer.
I decided that it would probably be best if I start from scratch and build something rather new, that should last and do the job for me for the next 6 years or so.

I'm going to start by selling my current rig, which should help me monetary wise. (And I think I may just post a new thread asking for an approx value)

Oh and I also got your private message. Thanks for that info!
I will keep in mind all the suggestions that you gave me.

Cheers, buddy!

(If you don't mind, I'll probably ask you some stuff regarding this new build)

 

[damric]

Cool man. It's more fun to build from scratch anyway