Would upgrading form a 3870 to say a 4890 improve the shader sensitive operations- water reflections?Or is it just a lost cause without a faster cpu? (Q6600 in my case)

Not sure about that one. Both the 3870 and 4890 use Shader Model 4.1. Of course, the GPU on the 4890 is faster than the 3870 so that might help a bit.

Would upgrading form a 3870 to say a 4890 improve the shader sensitive operations- water reflections?Or is it just a lost cause without a faster cpu? (Q6600 in my case)

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardw...pphire-xfx.html