The NVidia 560 and 570 lines are hovering around the $200 mark, which is about as much as I'm interested in spending at the moment. I was also going to bump up to 4GB system ram (only 3.5gb usable in win32 I realize)

'DCS Black Shark 2' is the motivator for the upgrade. I can run it pretty well (18-32fps) at low settings and small missions. However it chokes when smoke starts building up so I'm guessing that is a GPU limit rather than a CPU thing. I'd also like to run a second monitor with Helios, which I believe is also a GPU thing.

My one concern is system memory and bandwidth for loading 'medium' quality textures and if my 32bit 4gb ram limit and and 1.0 PCI Express x16 will cause choking as the textures move from disk to VRAM.

Current setup.
. Windows XP Pro SP3
. GA-EP35-DS3R (rev. 2.1), Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3ghz
. 2GB RAM DDR PC2-6400
. GeForce 8800GTS (190.62) 640mb @ 1920x1200 32bpp 96dpi


Any thoughts on whether the gtx560 or 560ti will be well matched for the CPU or if I should look into upgrading the rest of the system (CPU and motherboard) as well.

edit: not an SLI capable motherboard

In my experience, stay away from EVGA and the GTX 560ti. If it was me I'd wait if you could and upgrade to a Win 7 PC with an i5 and a quality video card.

i was gonna keep my eVGA 8800GTS SSC for my next system and use it for PhysX, but i may very well be running an AMD Chip.

There are "hacked drivers" that allow you to use Nvidia cards for Physx alongside AMD cards. Is it worth the power, noise, trouble and heat? I guess that is up to you. IMO I'd rather just sell the card for $30 or so and get an Nvidia card if you really want Physx.

Can you elaborate? Is it eVGA you have had problems with or does this cover the 560ti line in general? How about the 560?

A bit of a dilemma you've got there. If you upgrade to a 1GB card, there is not much point in upgrading to 4GB memory on a 32Bit OS. Upgrading to Windows7 64Bit adds an extra burden on your budget, but frees up your access to 4GB+1GB (or 1.5 or 2GB VRAM?) combination.

Upgrading your graphics card will give you a good boost, even on 'just' a PCIe 1.0 16x slot. (There has not been proof of a worthwhile jump in performance between 8x, 16x and 16x 2.0)

It will also be an in between step, from your current system to the next motherboard/CPU combo.

I have a similar system as the one you intend to upgrade to, only mine has a 5870 card. Q9400, Striker NSE II, 8GB, 5870 and Win7. Only in Eyefinity do I notice a slowdown on some games.

If your budget has a part set aside for Win7 and RAM, I'd say go for it.

Last gen GPU's need powerful CPU's to get the most out of them. Or else you will be bottlenecked, much like upgrading your car engine and not touching anything else (e.g. transmission, suspension etc.).

For this rig, get previous gen. card or do a full system upgrade. Anything else is money wasted.

Get the fastest card you can afford. It would be nice to upgrade the whole computer though. You could also OC that CPU since it will easily run at 4Ghz. That is supposed to be one of the most OC worthy Wolfdale chips there is. That said, I would get a 570 or 580 and OC the CPU and not waste any money on more DDR2 memory. Put that money aside for a full upgrade.

You might want to think about the upgrade now though. You can get the Intel 2500k at MC for 180 bucks now, with a pretty nice mobo for around 200. Add eight GB of memory for around 60 bucks and a 570 for around 300. You will need a decent PSU too, use your old hard drives and burners. Don't know what kind of case you have, but a newer case with most of the goodies will run around 75 and up.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_produc...CFQzDtgodomyDnQ

MC also has a 570 for 320 bucks on sale along with ASUS Sabertooth board for 199. I think these are all in store only though.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0358056

upgrade to a DDR3 board and CPU, $25 will get you 4 GB of decent DDR3 - 1600 (G.Skill).

I've have no problems with my 8800GTS, other than high idle and load temps and even more so in the summer.

still runs games that come out today on med-ish settings.

Thanks for all the input, guys. Seems like upgrading the card would help, though it won't magically make my system modern. I found a review on newegg from someone with a similar system to mine who upgraded to a 560 and saw noticeable improvement. But yes, it still might bottleneck at the CPU and increasing system RAM probably would not help. I had no idea that the 32bit limit also applied to VRAM.