More Graphics Power for HP XW8200, Cross-Fire Ready?

Well, here was my problem.  I had a 512 mb pcie card and now upgraded to a 1gb pcie card, but it still lags when I play games of starcraft 2 with a lot of units on screen.  I am wondering, if I upgrade to one of these cards (that at least look serious, it has two fans on it!) will it be a serious upgrade for me?  http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Graphics-Card-R5770-Hawk/dp/tech-data/B0037YSSXW/ref=de_a_smtd

Here is my current card:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004X6ABTM/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details

I bought it because it's numbers looked good (1gb ram, ddr3, etc.) but I it's still not that good!  Do you think I would have a great performance boost with this one, instead:  http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Graphics-Card-R5770-Hawk/dp/tech-data/B0037YSSXW/ref=de_a_smtd

The 6450 is NOT a gaming graphics card and will not run games like starcraft 2 very well(as you have found out). Basing a video cards performance solely on the amount of ram it has is just wrong, there are many cards with less than 1Gb of ram that would run circles around that 6450. The 5770 is a much much better card than the 6450. Here's a 6790 its a bit faster than the 5770 and only $15 more.
http://www.amazon.com/HIS-Radeon-Eyefinity-DisplayPort-H679F1GD/dp/B004XUINGQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331564035&sr=8-1

I read that not having my dual core (2 3.2 ghz processors) might create a bottleneck for any card I might buy.  Do you see this as an issue or will I see a dramatic improvement if I purchase one of the recommended cards above?

A new 6850 is now in the $130 - $140.00 territory with a free copy of D.I.R.T:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/msi-R6850-1GB-GDDR5-graphics-card-with-free-copy-of-Dirt-3-game-/270931082169?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3f14c03bb9

Regards,


RobMobility.

Hi,

If you have 2 processors then you should find that any multi-threading would be distributed across the processors, although since they are not on the same die, the interconnect may slow things slightly.

Your processors do support HyperThreading and the Xeons have quite generous L2 cache so should run quite well, although unlikely to be as quick as more modern multi-core processors.

Regards,


RobMobility.

Yes you will see a dramatic increase in gaming performance going from a 6450 to the 6850 or the 6790, but given the price id go for the 6850.

Hi,

You may be able to upgrade to Paxville MP or Tulsa Xeon Processors to provide 4 cores and 8 threads:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pair-of-Intel-Xeon-CPU-MP-Dual-Core-7110M-2-6GHz-800FSB-SL9Q9-/180838988423?pt=COMP_EN_Networking_Components&hash=item2a1ad7fa87

Might be best to check that your BIOS supports multi-core processors, via upgrade and that the motherboard supports the 7110M - they are socket 604 which is what I believe your motherboard uses?

Regards,


RobMobility.

Hi,

You may be limited to Paxville MP and Tulsa isn't an option - something like the 7041 might be the only option.

Regards,


RobMobility.

Hi,

Your motherboard may not support Paxville MP as it's TDP is very high at 165W (they effectively put 2 Xeon processors on 1 chip). If it's a high power board, it might support it - some Dell 607s using the same chipset supported Paxville MP.

Regards,


RobMobility.

Hi,

This seems to indicate that only single core (Nocana) processors are supported:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00216949&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&site=null&lang=en&tool=&query=xw8200&product=424274&key=null#N158

Sorry - doesn't look like an upgrade is possible.

Regards,


RobMobility.

Thanks for all of your insights.  I am considering these:

5770 ($114) - http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Graphics-Card-R5770-Hawk/dp/tech-data/B0037YSSXW/ref=de_a_smtd
6770 ($118) - http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-DisplayPort-PCI-Express-100328L/dp/B004ZCHWBY/ref=sr_1_9?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1331569819&sr=1-9
6850 ($139) - http://www.amazon.com/PowerColor-DisplayPort-PCI-Express-AX6850-GBD5-DH/dp/B0048D7AD0/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1331569819&sr=1-6

I'm thinking of going with the 6850 as was suggested.  Is this a good one to get?

From what I can find the Intel e7525 chipset doesn't support the multi-core processors. It only support the Nocona and Irwindale based xeon cpu's.

The 6850 is the best bang for the buck.

Hi,

Save $10.00 US with mail-in rebate card and free DIRT game!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161384

Regards,


RobMobility.

>>  Save $10.00 US with mail-in rebate card and free DIRT game!

Thanks!  Sadly, I already ordered the one from amazon.  So, you guys think I'll be able to play starcraft 2 on high settings with this thing?

Depends on the resolution you play at. 1680x1050 or lower yes, 1920x1080 maybe(cpu bottleneck may come into play here) , 2560x1600 probably not.

I would be playing at probably 1400x900 or something like that, so I'm looking forward to trying it out!  I don't understand why this one is so much better than the one I have.  The only difference seems to be the ddr3 as opposed to ddr5 or gddr5.

The gpu on the 6850 is much faster, there is much more to a video than just memory.

We can count the number of stream processors, the number of shaders, the clock speed of the video RAM, and the clock speed of the gpu.  The larger video RAM is only useful for large textures in games, which rarely occur.

Thanks for all your help.  I went with the 6850 and it works really well.  Sometimes there are some framerate issues, but maybe I will upgrade again eventually to fix those.