Worth it to upgrade an older core 2 duo setup?

[petebert]

My computer is an older build. I've always built my own and used to play a lot of games, not so much now so I'm out of the hardware loop. All I play right now is Civ 5.

I'm running 32bit Windows 7, a Core 2 Duo 6400 overclocked to 3.2ghz, 4GB of PC6400 and the video card is a GTS 250.

I was thinking of going with a GTX 650 Ti which can be had for under $150.

Can my system take advantage of that card enough to make it worthwhile? It's also a PCI-E 2.0 motherboard.

 

[refillable]

What are you planning to do with the Upgrade, To me, if you don't really do that much of an activity I'd upgrade the whole PC (or most parts of the PC) to a cooler, smaller and a less noisy PC. In that matter, an i3 or A8 would suffice.

 

[Quakemz]

Since you have a pretty healthy OC on the CPU, I'd say go for it. The 650 ti will work just fine with PCI 2.0. I'd say it sounds like a fine upgrade option. What is your PSU like? Brand, wattage, etc?

 

[stormworm]

Gtx 650 ti use less power than gts 250, so PSU is ok, and you'll see improvement in gaming.
Pcie 2.0 doesn't matter unless going for SLI/CF with high end gpus.

 

[petebert]

Since you have a pretty healthy OC on the CPU, I'd say go for it. The 650 ti will work just fine with PCI 2.0. I'd say it sounds like a fine upgrade option. What is your PSU like? Brand, wattage, etc?

The PSU is a rosewill 600W, doing a quick google search it looks like the GTX 650 would use about 50 more watts than my GTS 250 but I'm seeing conflicting reports on that.

 

[cst1992]

the 650 uses 64 W, the 650 Ti uses 110 W.
The gts 250 uses 145W (all at full load).
So you should be able to fit any one.
However, the 650 should suffice for your system. Why put additional money in a 650Ti?
When(if) you get a new PC, you'd want to put a newer, more powerful card in there.

However, your old card looks good enough. If you're getting decent framerates, then why are you upgrading the card?
Better save money now and get a better one with a new pc instead.

 

[Quakemz]

Since you have a pretty healthy OC on the CPU, I'd say go for it. The 650 ti will work just fine with PCI 2.0. I'd say it sounds like a fine upgrade option. What is your PSU like? Brand, wattage, etc?

The PSU is a rosewill 600W, doing a quick google search it looks like the GTX 650 would use about 50 more watts than my GTS 250 but I'm seeing conflicting reports on that.

The 600w PSU you have now will be totally fine with the GPU upgrade. When I searched I came up with mixed results as well. But that doesn't really matter, because 600 watts is more than enough for this build.

 

[terr281]

I would have to agree with refillable, above. If your primary game is Civ 5, I will make the assumption that your preferred genre of games is RTS. If this is true, then you'd be best off upgrading from your dual core cpu and older graphics card to a "higher end" AMD cpu with "good" integrated graphics. When you upgrade, make sure to get mid-high end ram with good latency. (Something around DDR3 1833 with CAS 9 timings.)

For your follow-up upgrade in a couple of years, make sure you are building in a case that allows a "normal" sized video card. At that time, upgrade to the "best mainstream" graphics card... and you'll already be running a multi-core cpu that should be able to handle RTS games.

Everyone remember, many games coming out today don't have official support for dual core games anymore. Just like happened with the death of the "super fast Pentium / Athlon" era, the end of the dual core cpu is near.