I have an Amd quad core processor, 6 gigs of ram, with a geeforce 8800 video card. And i went to upgrade the videocard. To get better gaming graphics. A salesman at which store will remain un named. Said. It's usless to get a new videocard or run 2 cards in sli/crossfire because the bottleneck (what's holding back my videocards performance)is not enough system memory. and he recomended upgrading my motherboard and ram to ddr3 to match the video cards ddr3 memory. Is this true? What system setup would you use to get the ultimate maximun graphics/video performance.I want to be able to play the game Crysis with all the graphics setings on maximum. Also. I want to be able to play the new Direct X 11 games when they come out.

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Not true. He is trying to sell you more than you need.
Its more likely that your CPU will be the bottleneck for high end games (once you get new vid cards)

Total BS.. just about everything the guy said is just plain wrong. He's trying to rip you off badly. Why wouldn't you want to name the shop? If I were you I'd want to get the word.. if anyone listens.

Regarding buying a GPU for games: I followed some rules over the years and have been quite happy with that. Try not so spend much at once and upgrade a little more often. This tactic changes a bit as the speed increase slows down now, so you can keep a befy card longer without seeing it almost instantaneously obsoleted. Which in turn increases the value of getting a bigger card now.

Practically I'd go for a 4870 for 100€, maybe a 20% faster 4890 for 150€. In the green camp there's GTX 260 and GTX 275 at comparable price points. Combining any of these with your 8800 is likely not worth it and SLI wouldn't work on so different cards anyway, would it? You could keep the 8800 for PhysX, but seriously: neither the games nor the benefit is there to waste that much energy, even if the card is idle. Or is it crunching GPU-Grid?

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

thats why we call them salesman.....!!!!!! buy newegg, no sales pitch, no hassle, just raw technical advice if you want it.

Salesman: You need DDR3 to match the GDDR3 on your GPU.

Customer: Really? Oh.. kay.

Salesman: Oh, and your motherboard doesn't support DDR3, so you need a new one.

Customer: What a Pity!

Salesman: Oh I see, you CPU doesn't support DDR3 either. You need a new one.

Customer: Well, if I already bought the other stuff I'll actually want to use it, right?

-> off they go. Later the customer returns because his games didn't get even the slightest bit faster.

Salesman: Oh I forgot.. of course your old GPU doesn't cut it for modern games! Here take this one, a really nice HD4770. It's the newest around!

Customer: And then I can finally play?

Salesman: Well, your 550W power supply is of course too small. And this GPU has GDDR5, so you need new main memory to match it. Which the motherboard you just bought doesn't support, so you need...

Customer: *takes out a huge Viking Axe*

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Salesman: Well, if you are going to get that hot under the collar about it, I've got this great Arctic Cooler ....

I have an Amd quad core processor, 6 gigs of ram, with a geeforce 8800 video card. And i went to upgrade the videocard. To get better gaming graphics. A salesman at which store will remain un named. Said. It's usless to get a new videocard or run 2 cards in sli/crossfire because the bottleneck (what's holding back my videocards performance)is not enough system memory. and he recomended upgrading my motherboard and ram to ddr3 to match the video cards ddr3 memory. Is this true? What system setup would you use to get the ultimate maximun graphics/video performance.I want to be able to play the game Crysis with all the graphics setings on maximum. Also. I want to be able to play the new Direct X 11 games when they come out.

If you have 6G of usable RAM it is not likely that this is the bottleneck in game performance.

If you are considering upgrades the path to glory is varied. One choice is to get a better video card now, then later get a better MB, RAM and CPU ...

I tend to get high end, or near high end parts and that can give me longer "life" which for me is about 2-3 years (tops) before I start to look at replacements. WIth multiple systems I can wait for a good Frys sale and get a deal on a faster, wider, better system at that time.

The last sale for example I got a pair of i7 920 CPUs and a couple of GTX260 cards. Now I am looking for a chance to get another faster GPU to replace the slowest (9800GT) which will boost productivity ...

But I agree with the rest, he is blowing smoke, you do not have to match system memory to GPU memory ... it just sounds plausible ...

I see you have a phenom 9500 and 6gb of RAM, Ram will not be your limiting factor. The only thing that you'll notice when you don't have enough Ram is when games load very slowly or at the besinning of a level (especially in crysis) everything lags for 15 seconds.

6GB of ram is much more than enough, however I see that you can only use 3GB of it with your 32bit vista, to use all of it you should upgrade to the 64bit version...

You will clearly see that a new video card offers you more than more Ram, I'd say that Ram is a limiting factor for games on vista if you have 2gb or less RAM.

Look...just by being here, you already know a fare bit about GPU & Graphics Cards... so when looking for a new Graphics card, ask the Salesman "what is CUDA" or "can you use the GPU to run non-graphics software"

Of course we know what the answer should be... but if the salesman trys to bulls**t you, you'll know straight away...

I have already tried this in PCWorld... and was told that CUDA meant "Central Unified Data Analyser", was used my make the games run smoother...

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