Video card/Hardware advice needed

Hey fellas. Just wondering what your opinion is on this: Basically I have this couple year old PC that I put together, it's a 3.16ghz Core Duo with a GTX 260, 4 GB RAM, on a Gigabyte EP45UD3L mobo. It used to have a pretty decent case but now it's in a pretty bad one that I have to leave open (otherwise it won't cool, and my card will overheat). Anyway I've been playing the BF3 beta and the performance is really spotty. I mean this card is old, I think it has some heat damage and may be performing below the bar as is. It runs at about 30-40 fps average with frequent hiccups of poor performance… overall playable but a pretty ugly experience both from a visual and gameplay perspective. Of course that's all to be expected, this card isn't made for BF3. Nonetheless, it's served me well and still does. It can play just about every other game I own (TF2, Dawn of War 2, Starcraft 2, SSF4, DMC4, AC2, BFBC2, Crysis games, Total War games…) and it can play them on high if not their highest settings most times. So I'm pretty satisfied with things… spending $1000+ on a new rig just for BF3 seems a bit unsavory because of that. TL;DR given the specs I listed, would it be at all worth it to buy a better card? Like a 6870, or going up to even a 550/60 or something. Will my system bottleneck? Will that card even work in my rig? Will the game still play like stuff because I still need a quad core and 4 more gigs of RAM? I'd really like BF3 to look pretty and run stable. But I feel like without all of the other aspects of my PC in line (RAM and CPU namely) it might just be a waste of money and do very little. I'm pretty amateurish about all this stuff and greatly respect this community, so I'd love your input

A quad core CPU is of no real benefit to gaming (it would be for video editing or a lot of "potoshop" usage or serious multi-tasking). So the CPU you have is fine. More than enough for any game.

If you are running a DDR2 rig as I suspect, a new generation card will certainly improve things but you will not get the full benefits of it (direct X 11). Not such a real problem, as most games are only running direct X 9c or direct X 10. At some stage when software (games) has caught up a bit more where direct X 11 is common, you might consider upgrading your mobo and ram to DDR3.

In the meantime you can reduce your video-card heat issues by removing the card fan and heat-sink and cleaning the sufaces off with chemist-shop alcohol or some "contact cleaner" sprayed onto a cotton bud or cotton rag. apply some quality thermal paste (I use Arctic Silver 5) very thinly with the edge of a credit card (not a razor blade) and re-assemble, You'd be surprised at the temp. drop.

I do the above even with a brand a new card as you would be dismayed at the cheap rubbish card manufactures use as thermal compound or how baldly it is applied, even on high cost cards. Expect up to a 10 degree temp. drop.

That will reduces temps, but not improve the performance of the card by much. For BF3 and other games like it, I'd go to a Gigabyte
550. Your system will not "bottleneck" and more RAM is pointless for any 32bit. operating system.


Id consider one of these as a big step-up from your current card and your system will run it fine but a better case should be thought about. GIGABYTE GV-N550OC-1GI GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB. This is the best 550 I've seen and read reviews off. Far superior fan than other 550's and very quiet.

Cheers,
Lee

Lee after your recommendation and inspecting the details further, I'm definitely purchasing this card. Thank you so much for the advice! You're right I do have a DDR2 rig. However I was under the impression that DirectX11 was related to your graphics card and your OS? If that's the case I am running Windows 7 64-bit (the E8500 Core Duo are 64 bit processors), and with the 550 I would expect DX11 to work right? Currently for RAM I have a pair of 2GB sticks and two empty slots. The board can support 16 GB supposedly, so even if it's DDR2 I feel like I have some room to work with, and really cheaply… although actually I don't need any RAM right now, as you said. Anyway I think this solution should work out perfectly, as I only wanted to have to bump my system (and wallet) a tiny bit. The new card is 1.1 inches longer than the old monster, which is actually cutting rather close in this case, but there is definitely room. Thanks so much again! I'll try that paste method as well.

you are correct Kunaizel and dx11 will run on your os with that new card. just to warn you, messing around with the new card by replacing it's heatsink can and will void the warranty.