Upgrading Questions

[bigted41]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. playing games

2. What YOUR budget is. $150

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. USA

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. current gfx card is ATI 6850

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

- i7 920
- ASRock x58 extreme6
- 6gb G Skill triple channel ddr3-1600
- 640gb WD (2 platters)
- corsair 750w PSU

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7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. have it at default/stock

8. What resolution will you be using? 1920x1080

9. WHEN do you plan to build it? soon

so my real question is, should i get an ssd or crossfire my 6850? I mainly play skyrim, assassin's creed games, half life games, planning on playing Metro2033 soon, maybe. whats going to help my performance more? right now i'm sitting at 30fps on skyrim in the cities, and the fps can drop pretty low.

thanks for the help

 

[fralexandr]

ssds don't improve game performance much... mostly just the game load times

 

[bigted41]

i was thinking the same thing. i mean ssds are great for reboot times and application response right? i play games on my gaming computer, surf the internet on the laptop/phone

 

[fralexandr]

yep, the main performance benefit of ssds is that they greatly reduce windows boot up times, and make the system completely responsive on entering windows.
you won't have to wait 30 seconds while all your autorun stuff loads (antivirus, windows update etc)
as well as improved application load times

 

[bigted41]

sounds like i'll be getting a second 6850 then!

 

[lehtv]

Would strongly recommend against 6850 crossfire. You'd be limited to 1GB VRAM but have the processing power to handle scenarios that would use more VRAM than that.

Sell the 6850 and buy a 7850 2GB ($260). You'll get this much better stock vs stock performance. However pretty much all retail 7850 are factory overclocked. The overclocking headroom is great, you should be able to get 10-20% on top of the factory OC. This would result in nearly the same framerates as 6850 crossfire, for roughly the same price - but with more VRAM, less power consumption, no dual GPU issues and DX11.1.

 

[mfenn]

Is that 920 at stock? If so, I'll bet that you're CPU-limited rather that GPU-limited in Skyrim. Try turning the graphics options and resolution all the way down. If your framerates don't improve, you're CPU-limited.

 

[lehtv]

For reference, I have i7-920 at 3.36GHz (27% overclock) and a 560 Ti @ 960MHz (~50% faster than 6850 at stock).

I get 60fps constant in Skyrim on high settings 4xAA with slightly reduced object, item and actor distances. Game and driver updates improved performance, it used to be a lot lower especially in cities. I don't think I'm CPU limited - if I crank settings up to Ultra, framerate will suffer a lot. And if I'm not CPU limited, the OP probably isn't either (because his GPU performance is further from mine than his CPU performance).

 

[mfenn]

The OP doesn't say what settings he's running at, but based on the benchmarks, he would be well into the 60's if he had his 6850 paired with a Sandy Bridge. That's what makes me think that he's CPU limited.