I'm a gamer and I haven't upgraded my CPU in 6 years

[.Radiant]

Originally Posted by Garido

Please stop talking shit, it makes baby Jebus cry. The 5850 is still a relevant card by even modern standards. Many can be overclocked within close range of a 5870 too.

They can clock like monsters One of my 5850's could do 1050 core (725 stock!) and truck away at games with little worry.

MadE - Dropping nuggets of wisdom

[Orphan]

Originally Posted by Madengineer

Yeah, It's crap. As I said, most people use them if they have no other choice. But considering the prices of 560s and 6950s etc, the move is being made.

They may perform on a "reasonable" level, but a single 5850 is in no way a good card.

I have a 6870 and while it isn't anything amazing it has run anything I have thrown at it on my 5 year old system. Remember it also depends on what games people play. Most new titles aren't overly taxing, at least not to the level Crysis was when it came out. Combine that with the fact that the majority of modern PC games are garbage and I can't see upgrading anytime soon. Also realise that some people are fine with having to use medium settings occasionally. So far I haven't played anything I couldn't run 1920x1200 @ all/mostly high settings granted I usually leave the filter settings low. Sure I am not getting 100fps+ maxed out in everything but I am able to get very playable frame rates at max visuals or at least close to them. It simply doesn't matter anymore as rarely does a good game come out and rarely does a visually impressive game that needs serious grunt come out. Would I like to upgrade? Sure, its always nice to have new shiney stuff but rather than spending $2-3k building a new system for games that don't exist I spent $190 on a new GPU that will get me through the next year or two perfectly fine.

[tree86ers]

wow this has really taken off

OP:
well i am not surprised that your still able to play the games listed one that thing. The only benefit you would probably see with games is loading times and some FPS increase (depending on setting; and depending on games), even then it would depend greatly on what your running the game on (HDD (and HDD speed)or SSD). Alot of people have mentioned this but if you see the quality of everything running ultra on a high end system you will see a difference, and it depends what you want out of it.

I myself would be running a Q9650 if i did not blow up the mother board when trying to upgrade from a Q8400. the biggest bottle neck i have in my current rig is HDD speed and GPU. My CPU can handle anything i can throw at it (but i like having decent FPS and things to look pretty)


Honestly in the end depends what your doing and what your playing and how your planing to get what your happy with. i can defiantly say that you have got you money out of that rig

[Foliage]

Originally Posted by NNNG

5850 is between the 6850 and 6870. Both of which are faster than the current generation mid-range 7770. So they would be regarded as mid-range cards by now. .

I forgot to say, my 5850 is overclocked, I'm not sure to what spec, but it did make a reasonable difference, however only stable in winter.

Originally Posted by tree86ers

wow this has really taken off

I didn't think it would be this popular!

[power]

I thought my old Q8400/6GB RAM/560Ti system was quite adequate and then I bought an i7 3770K/16GB RAM/GTX670 system.

There's a difference between does the job and smashes through everything like a wrecking ball - I prefer the latter.

*edit*

both systems were running a Crucial M4 128GB drive.

[Shawry]

I always find computer hardware is a matter of "ignorance is bliss".

Go play some games on a new i7 "gaming beast" type machine, then go home to your old PC (no judgement here, my PC is getting old too! ) and you'll cringe.

Also the fact you achieved a 50% overclock on your CPU is awesome
Majority of gamers wouldnt touch their hardware because of cost and voided warranties.

[elvis]

Originally Posted by NSanity

The other guy who was banging on about CG artists being done and dusted for $5k is a laugh. Autodesk (if you swing that way) + Adobe annual licening alone in Australia 15k plus, add 5-6k per workstation (sorry kids, they are Hp Z800's or equivalents, downtime costs money), money for tablets, art stock etc..

I'd be surprised if you can setup a CG Artist in a professional studio for < $40k in tools/software alone.

Yeah, that mirrors the sorts of costings I see in similar 3D-based creative industries. That software and hardware per person ain't cheap.

[Foliage]

Originally Posted by Shawry

I always find computer hardware is a matter of "ignorance is bliss".

Go play some games on a new i7 "gaming beast" type machine, then go home to your old PC (no judgement here, my PC is getting old too! ) and you'll cringe.

Also the fact you achieved a 50% overclock on your CPU is awesome
Majority of gamers wouldnt touch their hardware because of cost and voided warranties.

I have played on my mates rig and some games like civ V which runs like a dog on my machine, ARMA2, also Mafia 2 which was quite unoptimised and I was unable to run it nicely on high you do notice the difference, however games like Max Payne 3 and deus ex there was negligible difference, 8xAA vs 16x isn't really that much different, and when you are already getting 60fps with vsync the different just isn't noticeable, those two games were very highly optimised, I was actually shocked when they both ran without issue, I was actually planning an upgrade in anticipation.

[Aetherone]

Originally Posted by Foliage

it is blazingly fast still

I must ask the question - what is your frame of reference? Would you still think it was blazingly fast if you had a week on an i7 running another Ghz faster?
I think you might revise your opinion, although I do agreee with you that for a majority of tasks (such as wiriting a forums post), the difference between your C2D and an 3770k is imperceptable.

[Foliage]

For some games the difference would be night and day, such as Civ V, others like MP3 and DE3 I doubt there would be a huge difference, for office work an even smaller difference.

I run an i5 at work and if you asked me to do a blind test doing office work and software development I would not be able to tell the two apart, no joke, both are running SSDs and there is literally no noticeable difference.

[power]

Originally Posted by Foliage

For some games the difference would be night and day, such as Civ V, others like MP3 and DE3 I doubt there would be a huge difference, for office work an even smaller difference.

I run an i5 at work and if you asked me to do a blind test doing office work and software development I would not be able to tell the two apart, no joke, both are running SSDs and there is literally no noticeable difference.

yeah i5 is pretty meh

i7 is where shit gets moving.

[Aetherone]

Originally Posted by Foliage

software development

I'm surprised software compiling isn't more CPU sensitive, then again, if your work CPU is stock (highly likely), the lowly C2D can do a darn fine job of keeping up with it!

[Foliage]

So there is a big performance jump between the two? I haven't really read any reviews.

Compiling software definitely is CPU sensitive, but I'm talking 2-20,000 line projects max so it only takes a few seconds anyway. The slowest part is checking in/out code as our network isn't the fastest, but a CPU won't help with that.

[proffesso]

no games here, but each successive upgrade I do, I run a benchmark render test using my 3d app of choice and a everyday style scene I use for benchmarks


Q6600
5:15

X5570
3:57

X5675
2:03


now going to a dual E5-2680 will drop that to under a minute.

whats suprising though, is all the new arch and years gone by, a 6 core X5675 is only 250% faster than a Q6600 at rendering

[power]

I guess it's a testament to just how much Intel smashed everything when they released the Core Architecture.