Should i upgrade my CPU or GPU for better Gaming ?

Hello Every1,
I will be upgrading my PC after a few months, but i cant decide this!
I have this big problem that i keep on thinking about it. I dont know weather to upgrade my CPU or my GPU
for better gaming or a BIG boost in performance.

My Main specs are;
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3Ghz
MSI K9A2 Platinum
HIS ATi Radeon 4850
Corsair 4GB DDR2 (with 800 bus)
Corsair HX 520w Psu

For Gpu i am planning to get 4870 or CFing my 4850 & for CPU im planning for Phenom 9850 or 9950 or the new upcoming CPU's on Jan 2008.

& 1 more thing,
I've been searching almost every reviews & guides that if my Corsair HX 520w Psu can support a 4850 CF ? & yet i get more Nos than Yes s . (& wat i think about it is that No it may not support but my Psu is Modular so maybe it can. Wat do u ppl think ?

so u mean i can crossfire my 4850 with the same Psu ?

I think the manufacturers recommend a minimum of 550W for crossfired 4850s. You might get away with it because that Corsair is a very good PSU, but you'd be running it right on the edge.
In a few months, prices and available offerings may be very different than they are today. I'd watch for deals on a quality 650W-750W PSU; this will give you lots of options down the road.

From what he has already got i think it depends on his monitor as to if it's even worth upgrading. If hes only on like 1028 X 768 or 1280 x 1024 etc it's not realy worth an upgrade as there would be hardly any difference for the amount hes spending.
Plus for gaming how many quad core games are there..in most games a faster clocked dual will do better than a quadcore and be a lot cheaper.
I'd save the $$$ for 6-12 months then upgrade.

first of all AMD is weaker than intel, u can get better odds with asus mobo+intel duo than taht since u can ez oc the duo.

but in your case, i wouldent up anything, id save cash and make new system in about 2 years if u can wait that long.

and in 2 years, well we will see.

Your processor is fine, a Phenom would be a downgrade, or at least no better than what you have for gaming.
Buy another 4850 and go crossfire, that will give you the biggest performance boost for the money.
Hope you have a nice monitor though, if you are limited by resolution, then you really don't need anything....except a nice monitor capable of supporting the resoltutions you be able to run with crossfire.

LOL at "my Psu is Modular so maybe it can". Modular means you can detach the cables you don't need. It doesn't say a dashed thing about how powerful the PSU is and how many cards it can handle. And, in case you were wondering, painting the PSU yellow doesn't make it more powerful either

ahahahah thx man.... i thought it de same as u said lol

i would think about waiting for the Deneb release that is supposed to happen late this month. the clocks is going to be 3 GHz, and the price around 300-400. That would probably be the best upgrade, because then you have room for the CF 4850's.

I thought those ATI 4850/4870's did do a lot of the decoding of them .mkv files? Or is that depending on what player you are using??
I assumed they did, i've got a 4850 and assumed they did but have not tried any of the HD file types.
Sorry if i'm highjacking the thread asking this.

I thought crossfire/SLI only worked with the same video cards. I didn't know you could mix and match. Obviously you can't do nvidia and ati but i didn't think two different ati cards would work either.

What resolution is the of your 21" CRT anyway? I have a 5000+BE OCed to 3.2GHz and a 512Mb 4870 . I am playing most games at 30+ FPS (Fallout 3, Bioshock, Dead Space, COD4, COD5 demo, Left 4 Dead demo) with max detail at 1680x1050. Crysis is the only game that still plays in the 20-30 FPS. It doesn't seem like you would gain much by going to a 4870, unless you were wanting to go all out for a 4870X2. I don't think a Phenom would benefit you much at all. It might even produce slower FPS in some cases since most games don't seem to be written for quad cores.

I had thought about upgrading to Phenom myself, but have decided to wait and see what the next generation of AMD cpus bring to the table. If AMD is still lagging behind Intel, and it appears they will be, I might make the switch to Intel.

I was all for recommending crossfire HD4850, until seeing you play at 12x10 res. Isn't one 4850 enough? I wouldn't expect too much benefit from that second 4850 at that res and your system.

Truthfully with my 4850, i play every game on high in vista 32, but sum times it lags... u know wat im talkin abt. So i just want to improv de performance. I dont care weather a card or a processor would do so most of u guyz tellin me to Cf.

im talkin abt the new games like crysis warhead, Brothers in Arms etc

im using a 80 gb WD lol. Hope thtz not an issue.
+ i dunno how to chk de frame rates, can any1 tell how to ? right now im playing COD5.

A new hard disk would make your levels load faster, and prevent the games from stopping from time to time to read. I don't think it would make a big difference in fps though. That usually depends on the GPU, CPU, amount of RAM.

Thought I would follow up with you. I ran the FPS benchmark for 120 seconds 3 times last night and the average was 54 FPS. Again, this is with a 4870 and with my 5000BE @3.11GHz, and I was playing 1680x1050 with max detail and 4xAA. I would think your rig with the 4850 should be more than enough, especially at the resolution you are playing it.

Here are the results from the benchmarks with FRAPS:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6570, 120000, 32, 93, 54.750

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6736, 120000, 43, 74, 56.133


Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6297, 120000, 31, 85, 52.475

The 4850 is pretty good especially if you consider how well priced it is on the market =)

HEY man i got a really good fps......
1600x1200 res 70fps Avg coooool

Did you use FRAPS?

So, you have increased the resolution all the way to 1600x1200, you are averaging 70FPS, and you are happy with this? But, you weren't happy with the performance at 1280x1024?

Nope. Turboflame got it right. Here's an example from PC Power & Cooling's site:

http://www.pcpower.com/technology/myths/

That is, if the PC needs 550W of DC and the PSU works at 83%, the input power (measured at the wall) is 550/0.83=662W.

crossfire and sli really are not the best options - that is why i told you to get a 4870



best thing is to sell it and buy a used q6600 system from me with 3870 x2! lol! i just got myself in trouble! joke to mods! do not email me for a used system!

the best thing is the sell yours and get intel system - ebay yours and get a used ebay system

absolutely nothing currently from amd will even push 2 4850's in cross fire, go intel, WWWAAAAAAYYYYYY better

& 1 more thing......
I dont understand wat exactly will be the benefit from upgrading a 800bus memory with 1066 bus memorys? ( im thinking abt changing my corsair 4 gb 2x1gb DHX 800 bus with a dominator )