Maximum PC

I have an EVGA 8800 GTX videocard right now and I want to upgrade so I can play battlefield 3 in its highest settings.

I have an Intel i7 920 with 6GB ram running Windows XP pro

What videocard can get me the best bang for my buck and how much of an improvement should I see when compared to my 8800 GTX?

grab the 560 ti for about $220, keep the 8800 as your physix cards. Best bang for buck; it'll probably play BF3 at high settings at decent frame rates.

I have an EVGA X58 SLI motherboard

I just gave the book a quick read over and it says one of the slots is PCI Express 2.0 x16 and the other one is PCI Express 2.0 x8.

will the 560 ti work with this?

yes

honestly, anything well be a good upgrade for you at this point.

guess it depends on how much you're welling to pay.
youll basically get what you payed for, from any videocard.

but i do agree that 560ti is a nice card.
something like this would be a nice upgrade:
http://www.eio.com/p-31546-galaxy-56ngh ... -card.aspx

if you're welling to spend more, trying looking into 570~580~590

I honestly thought that ATI (or AMD) was the top card this generation.

I get about 60fps with one 570 on high settings so one 560ti should have playable frame rates.

yes a 560ti will work,but no matter what card you get..you will not have DX11.
Win XP does not support it.

might i suggest grabbing a copy of Win7 pro 64bit..that way you can utilize the whole 6 gigs of ram you have,and not at most 4 gigs that your pc is currently using,and have DX11

oh yeah, keep forgetting he's running xp on an icore system. seems so backwards. Should be able to find a retail upgrade for the same price as an oem copy, that way you can put it on a new system if you need to and not be hardware locked.

I have a Windows 7 pro 32 bit right now and I ordered 64 bit, should get it tomorrow. Went to Fry's earlier and bought an EVGA GTX 570 HD

now why would you do something like that? expect to play games. hehe

Don't forget, if you have an extra pcie x16 slot, put the 8800gtx in phyisx mode, it'll help out with visuals for games that take advantage of like, like batman.

I only have 1 x16 slot and 1 x8 slot, would that work?

is it a physical x16 slot? speed doesn't matter, its only be used a physix card.

Yes. You don't need two x16 slots for physx. 570 is a solid single card solution. If you plan to use your 88GTX as a physx, make sure you're playing a game that can take advantage of the added card. Otherwise, you're just adding a heater inside your case.........

And don't forget the cost to upgrade your power supply as well... a 570 PLUS and 8800GTX will draw some serious juice!

ok it took a bit to find this post,but here it is....http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=113424&p=1149909#p1149909


what i ended up doing was removing the GTS 240 and just dedicating physx to my second 460,and had a much bigger performance gain.

so i'm not so sure that a 880 gtx card will help any.