Advice on Graphics Cards

[indira]

you need a new PC buy a cheap one with a newer 4 core CPU and atleast 6GB of ram and buy a decent videocard like amd 6000+ series or nvidia gtx580 or higher.
you could build one but you need to know puters.

your CPU is close to 10 years old.

[Abriael]

you need a new PC buy a cheap one with a newer 4 core CPU and atleast 6GB of ram and buy a decent videocard like amd 6000+ series or nvidia gtx580 or higher.
you could build one but you need to know puters.

your CPU is close to 10 years old.

6GB of RAM are good only with a triple channel architecture (that depends on the chip). 4 GB are actually plenty for most gaming needs, and if your chip supports double channel, better than 6.

[Solace]

6GB of RAM are good only with a triple channel architecture (that depends on the chip). 4 GB are actually plenty for most gaming needs, and if your chip supports double channel, better than 6.

Still the cpu bottleneck is a valid point. That is going to cause a large drop in fps.
Not a hypothetical drop, a very real, large drop.
My system with that cpu, would loose about 4k points in the benchmark, on estimate.

Bottom line. The gpu is going to give you the most increase in fps, at the least overall cost.
You would need to entirely rebuild the system, to remove bottlenecking.
The mobo, cpu and memory would need to be replaced, to make as much difference as the gpu by it's self.

To the OP:

Get one of the GPU's recommended and call it a day, if you are not looking to spend a thousand dollars or more.

[Abriael]

Still the cpu bottleneck is a valid point. That is going to cause a large drop in fps.
Not a hypothetical drop, a very real, large drop.
My system with that cpu, would loose about 4k points in the benchmark, on estimate.

Bottom line. The gpu is going to give you the most increase in fps, at the least overall cost.
You would need to entirely rebuild the system, to remove bottlenecking.
The mobo, cpu and memory would need to be replaced, to make as much difference as the gpu by it's self.

To the OP:

Get one of the GPU's recommended and call it a day, if you are not looking to spend a thousand dollars or more.

It was already brought up. Her mobo doesn't need to be changed. It's an AM3, and as such it supports a 965be which is plenty not to bottleneck a 660. The only problem is the PCI 1.0, but that's just a 5% loss for a 660.

I recently had to upgrade from 4GB cause TERA was using up all my free RAM (it is compiled with LAA, so it can use up to 3GB RAM.. which it does), leading to ugly stuttering and I can only see it happen more often in the future with x64 systems being commonplace now. I was usually advocating 4GB RAM is enough, but with a mere 10€ difference in price, it's safer to go with 8GB for dual channel nowadays.

In my experience it's actually better to have 4GB of good memory (IE: Corsair Dominator for instance) than 8 GB of 10€ memory, to be honest.

[Soukyuu]

In my experience it's actually better to have 4GB of good memory (IE: Corsair Dominator for instance) than 8 GB of 10€ memory, to be honest.

It seems you have misunderstood what I meant. I got the corsair xms3 8gb for 47€, 4GB was 37€. That's 2x more RAM for only 10€ more. That makes 5,7€/GB vs 9,25€/GB. The sticks run stable at 1600Mhz@CL8.

The Corsair dominator is similar, 4GB vs. 8GB. 8GB is just better value. What's supposed to be better about those anyway? 1600CL9 is pretty standard...

Besides, 4GB of expensive memory won't help you if they are full and your PC will start trashing the HDD...

[Soukyuu]

6GB of RAM are good only with a triple channel architecture (that depends on the chip). 4 GB are actually plenty for most gaming needs, and if your chip supports double channel, better than 6.

I recently had to upgrade from 4GB cause TERA was using up all my free RAM (it is compiled with LAA, so it can use up to 3GB RAM.. which it does), leading to ugly stuttering and I can only see it happen more often in the future with x64 systems being commonplace now. I was usually advocating 4GB RAM is enough, but with a mere 10€ difference in price, it's safer to go with 8GB for dual channel nowadays.