Worth it to get a better PSU and ATI card or is there a cap where getting higher and higher end Radeon cards stops mattering for my CPU?

#1 17 Jun 2011 @ 22:47
Would it be worth it to get a better power supply and better graphics card or is there a cap where getting higher and higher graphics cards doesn't make a difference for my Intel 945G Express chipset and Intel Pentium D CPUs (3.20 GHZ (2 CPUs with 5x1 and 6xx Series Processors)).

I have a Dell Dimension E510 and I can't afford to be buying a new computer or building one from scratch.
This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 17 Jun 2011 @ 22:57
AfterDawn Advertisement
#2 20 Jun 2011 @ 5:36
Depends. A Pentium D is a sufficiently slow CPU to bottleneck almost any graphics card you buy. It depends what you need the PC to do. No need for a $300 high-end card if you'll only be playing basic games, but equally you'll still find situations where your old graphics card may be a limiting factor, but not the CPU. The most it's probably worth upgrading to for that system is perhaps an HD6670 or so. Anything beyond is going to be a bit of a waste without upgrading the CPU.



Afterdawn Addict // Silent PC enthusiast // PC Build advisor // LANGamer Alias:Ratmanscoop
PC Specs page -- http://my.afterdawn.com/sammorris/blog_entry.cfm/5036
updated 25-May-11
This discussion thread has been automatically closed, as it hasn't received any new posts during the last 180 days. This means that you can't post replies or new questions to this discussion thread.

If you have something to add to this topic, use this page to post your question or comments to a new discussion thread.

Subscribe to AfterDawn's weekly newsletter.