1. there is something called bottle necking

Great CPU + OK Graphics Card = will not bottle neck much
Great CPU + SLOW Graphics Card = CPU will bottle neck
and so on... and vice versa

Windows 7 can kinda give you heads up on bottle necking

Left click on the Windows button
Right Click on My computer
Left Click on Properties
Take a good look at your system score
difference between Processor and Grphics socores less than 2 for systems without bottle necking too much (this is not accurate, this is my assumption)


2. Check if you have the space and connection for it
- Some older motherboards do not support PCI- E slots
- there are 16x, 8x, 4x, 1x in PCI-E bandwith
- all the graphics card for gaming will perform 99.9999% in bandwith greater than 8x.
- if your motherboad does not support 8x or greater, you may not be able to use 100% of the Card
- For Dual Slot graphics card, check if you actually have enough space to upgrade them.


3. Tips for comparing Graphics Cards
- how much ram and how fast of cores they have CAN NOT!!!! be used as a comparison tool between different models! especially between Nvida and ATI (hard to explain)
But!!! when your are comparing same cards it can be used! same cards means
same model numbers on GPU

for example: a) GTX 480 1ghz 1g of ram ---> Z
b) GTX 480 2ghz 1g of ram ---> Y
c) GTX 480 1ghz 2g of ram ---> X

These 3 can be compared based on how fast and how much ram they have.
More Rams on the same card will benifit where people have 3 monitors setup or resolution greater than 1920x1080. Rams on Graphics card basically stores data until they are displayed on your monitor(s).

let's say you are running BCBC2 with 1 monitor (1920 x 1080)

card "Z" might get you 60fps (let's just say)
card "Y" with faster speed might get you 75fps
card "X" with extra rams will benifit you just a tiny bit 62fps

let's say you are running BCBC2 with 3 monitors (5760 x 1080)

card "Z" might get you 4fps
card "Y" might get you 4fps, eventhough it has faster speed than X or Z cards, but it has small about of Ram. data processed by GPU will not be able to be diplated ASAP due to small space to store.
card "X" might get you 23fps

Nice article. Thanks

[quote="[BBF"]Muggermadison]
Nice article. Thanks
[/quote]

thank you
and if you have any questions or find something wrong on my post
please feel free to tell or ask

Hey Sleewalker,

I'm looking to upgrade my video card and was wondering what you would recommend for my system in a decent pricerange

Currently running Win 7 with Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0ghz , 4Gb RAm on an Asus P5K/EPU motherboard....My Current card is an NVidia Ge Force 7950 GT, which is only 512.

Someone recommended a Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire but that one's been hard to find....

Anyone have any ideas?

[quote="[BBF"]Crimson Ghost]
Hey Sleewalker,

I'm looking to upgrade my video card and was wondering what you would recommend for my system in a decent pricerange

Currently running Win 7 with Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0ghz , 4Gb RAm on an Asus P5K/EPU motherboard....My Current card is an NVidia Ge Force 7950 GT, which is only 512.

Someone recommended a Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire but that one's been hard to find....

Anyone have any ideas?


[/quote]


i need little more detail on this

PSU, Ram, Budget

[quote="[BBF"]sleepwalker]
[quote="[BBF"]Crimson Ghost]
Hey Sleewalker,

I'm looking to upgrade my video card and was wondering what you would recommend for my system in a decent pricerange

Currently running Win 7 with Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0ghz , 4Gb RAm on an Asus P5K/EPU motherboard....My Current card is an NVidia Ge Force 7950 GT, which is only 512.

Someone recommended a Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire but that one's been hard to find....

Anyone have any ideas?


[/quote]


i need little more detail on this

PSU, Ram, Budget




[/quote]


OK:

More details about my computer


Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz 6.5
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
Gaming graphics 2303 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 30GB Free (128GB Total)
Windows 7 Home Premium

System

---

Manufacturer System manufacturer
Model P5K/EPU
Total amount of system memory 4.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 2

Storage

---

Total size of hard disk(s) 1060 GB
Disk partition (C:) 30 GB Free (128 GB Total)
Media drive (D:) CD/DVD
Disk partition (E:) 720 GB Free (932 GB Total)

Graphics

---

Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
Total available graphics memory 2303 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 512 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1791 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.17.12.5896
Primary monitor resolution 1920x1200
DirectX version DirectX 9.0 or better

Network

---

Network Adapter Marvell Yukon 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Network Adapter Radialpoint Miniport (x64)
Network Adapter Radialpoint Miniport (x64)
Network Adapter Radialpoint Miniport (x64)
Network Adapter Radialpoint Miniport (x64)

hahaha that was great detailed info..
but i still need to know What your power supply and budgets are!!!!!

assuming your budget is $200 and you have enough Power on Power supply to run pretty much everything.

i would go with

Nvidia GTX 560
they really do have strong power for Middle level graphics cards...
and i wouldnt go higher than that.. because your CPU will strat to bottle neck and
slow GPU down

AMD - wouldn't go above HD 6870
Nvidia - wouldn't go above GTX 560

Thanks man! Much appreciated!