I think I need to upgrade for the Planetary Annihilation Alpha/Beta/Release So I currently use a desktop w/ a Q6600 B3 at 3 GHz, 4GB 1GHz DDR2 RAM, and a RADEON HD 3850 512MB, it only has PCIe 1.1 so I wonder about upgrading to a new GPU (anything up to a GTX 660 Ti) on this system. Given what has been said I do not think the Q6600 is an issue. I could buy and stick in two more 2GB sticks as well. Alternatively, I just happen to have a SR-2 board lying around doing nothing and could probably get two X5650 Xeons, a GTX 660 Ti, 24GB DDR3 RAM, and the rest of the fixings for $1400 (plus the cost of a case but I have a place to set it up for now). Or wait until the dust settles on Haswell and get a i5-4670k or i5-4570k (or whatever it is called), system with 16GB DDR3, and a GTX 660 Ti. I could do something else but the total budget should be about $1400 excluding case.
Are you planning on participating in the PA alpha or beta? If so, you may want to upgrade sooner than later. Otherwise, I recommend waiting for Haswell. It might also be a good idea to see how well the alpha/beta run on your current machine, and if it's limited by primarily the videocard, you could toss in a little extra to to a temporary upgrade, then buy a new computer later on.
Alpha and later. So a should probably get a card I would want to put in a new system if the 3850 doesn't cut it and use that as a stopgap to see how Haswell pans out or if I still want to finish the SR-2?
Makes the most sense to me. Plus all the big-scale PA functionality won't be coming until later anyway. I don't think multiple planets will come into play in the initial Alpha, nor will the giant, 40-player games. Plus you will be able to get a general idea of how the game scales performance-wise, so you can choose a card that works well, but isn't necessarily the best or most expensive one you can get. After all, it's only to hold you over until you build a new machine.
Whatever you put into a PCIe 1.1 slot is just simply not going to run nearly as well as in a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. If you want a 660 Ti, look at a 7870 XT instead. The two trade blows but the XT is considerably less expensive. This is because it uses 7900 chips that don't meet standards but work perfectly fine with part of it disabled. They are very limited in number, so get one or two now while you can. Make sure whatever motherboard you get has enough PCIe 2.0 x16 slots for the number of cards you want to install. Don't confuse them with x4s that have much lower bandwidth. Either then hold out for Haswell in June or get an AM3+ motherboard now with an AMD processor; AMD is big on backwards-compatibility and you'll be able to upgrade when AMD gets its act together. Until then, the processor isn't that important for gaming, relatively speaking - as long as you have something current. This may change with the new consoles, however. Also, never mix RAM. Every stick of memory in your computer should be the exact same make and model unless you want stability issues.
