Upgrade to play all games maxed out settings.

MumboJumbo · 12 Jan 2011 at 23:36

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
You don't need a Core i5 2500K to run modern games at higher settings. Sounds more like e-peen TBH.

Why spend £200 to £250 when you can spend £500!

A Core2 quad and an HD6850 or a HD5850 will be fine.

It is most likely the 8800GT which is the limiting factor especially as it only has 512MB of VRAM.

Unless you are buying secondhand you are just being ripped off buying old tech like a conroe. You'll still have to pay £120-150 for it and at that price you're verging on the i5's and already into an i3 and over the next few weeks the i5's will come down in price.

I just don't see the point buying old tech. Cpu's may not being used to their full potential yet but the new sandy bridge is with out a doubt, significantly faster than conroe. Some benchmarks show a 100% increase over the q6600. The fact is the power just isn't being used yet. But unless he plans on upgrading again recently, there just isn't a point in not going for at least an i5 because the q6600 and alike will likely need uprgading again.

Plus if he's buying second hand there is no grantee's on any clock speeds. He may be stuck at 3ghz overclock. I currently have a q6600, which can no longer go over 3ghz and I'm telling you it's not fast enough to max out all games which is what was asked.

danewesley · 13 Jan 2011 at 01:08

the point is not about buying old tech, its that if he buys a newer cpu most of the other components will have to be changed.

what is you actual budget, people can actually start speccing then.

Vegeta · 13 Jan 2011 at 02:49

Well i'm not sure what todo now. I don't fancy shelling out £500-£600 to play some games. But £70 or so for the Q6600 and the rest for a HD6850 seems feasable but if it's going to need upgrading very soon is there anypoint in getting either option and just waiting a year to see what else comes out? I'm sure a Q6600 and a HD6850 could manage crysis/metro 2033? My 8800gt is really old and I can run it on them top specs but very slow granted but it runs lol.

Are ATI's still impossible to overclock? And I see Nvidia now own Physx (or something like that) so can ATi card's run Physx effects in games just as well as Nvidia cards?

ScottMC7000 · 13 Jan 2011 at 04:09

You would be as well just buying an another graphics card if the one you are using is not up to scratch. Very few games actually use all 4 cores anyway.
If it's just gaming you are doing you would be just as well picking up an XBOX 360 and save yourself some cash as an alternative. (Second hand even)

Troezar · 13 Jan 2011 at 07:21

I wouldn't spend more money on old tech, bite the bullet and spend just enough to go to the new stuff. You have to weigh up the extra cost against the amount of extra time the new tech will still do what you want it to

Marine-RX179 · 13 Jan 2011 at 07:45

It's all down to budget really.

I would love to have a 2500K system too, but at the end of the day, it's down to the budget and money vs performance gain.

Yes 2500K build (£350) would be much faster than Q6600 (2nd hand £70), but the frame rate difference between the two on a single GPU card would not be huge enough to warrant spending extra £280.

For a £350 budget, a 2nd hand Q6600 (£70) and overclock it plus a graphic card budget up to £150-£280 with a GTX460/6850/6950 (flash to 6970) or 6970/GTX570 would see far greater frame rate increase than spending all £350 on the Sandybridge CPU+motherboard+DDR3 rams alone, plus still have to pay extra £150-£280 on top for a graphic card as well...so we are pretty much talking about £220-£350 vs £500-£630.

However for people that play mainly just mmorpgs (i.e. WOW) or sim games (i.e. FSX) that use no more than one or two core instead of FPS, then upgrading to Sandybridge while keeping the existing average gaming card would be a better choice.

Random Guy · 13 Jan 2011 at 09:01

Marine-RX179 said:
<snip>

+1 in that you will generally see much greater gains when upgrading a GPU than a CPU for gaming. Ofc as other posters have pointed out, you want to make sure there is as little of a bottleneck as possible with the CPU.

Having said that, you should weigh the pros and cons of both choices in terms of how long they will last you. If you are upgrading only to play current games, you can get away from upgrading again for a while yet while you finish them all. If for future games as well....then I think the SB argument is more valid.

pastymuncher · 13 Jan 2011 at 09:14

Depending on your motherboard and cooler that E5200 should be able to go quite a bit further than 3Ghz. 3.6Ghz is probably the most common spot to hit with some going even further. All you would need to buy then is a new graphics card.

jyounguk · 13 Jan 2011 at 09:45

Sell the 8800GT(£30 - £35) and the E5200 (£15 - £20) cpu on the bay, put that cash to a secondhand Q6600 and a new 460/6850 and the upgrade will only really cost you around £150 . That should keep you gaming for a good time yet. It may not play every game at max but 99% should be fine.

Vegeta · 13 Jan 2011 at 10:13

jyounguk said:
Sell the 8800GT(£30 - £35) and the E5200 (£15 - £20) cpu on the bay, put that cash to a secondhand Q6600 and a new 460/6850 and the upgrade will only really cost you around £150 . That should keep you gaming for a good time yet. It may not play every game at max but 99% should be fine.

Yeah i'm pretty much going for this option. I will do a whole system upgrade at some point in the future maybe a year down the line just don't fancy doing it yet I have other priorities.

Blue160 · 13 Jan 2011 at 10:15

I think OP needs to realise that he's not going to max out everything at 1080p without spending big money. I have overclocked i5 and GTX 460 1GB, and I can't get close to maxing out Crysis, Metro 2033 or GTAIV at 1080p. I can run them at decent framerates, but with some settings turned down.

If it's a matter of getting everything to run smoothly at reasonable graphics settings then a new GFX card (GTX 460 or 5850) will do it. If you really want to max everything, then get the cheque book out and start with Sandy Bridge and a pair of 580's!

Vegeta · 13 Jan 2011 at 10:28

Yeah I think you're probably right my expectations were very wrong. I just thought maybe hardware out now (3-4 years after Crysis was out) could run the game on full settings but looking at online reviews guess it's not the case.

EDIT: The again looking here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/180 a minimum framerate at 23.3 at 1920X1200 is ok, the average must be a lot higher.

Anyways going for a quadcore and a GTX460.

Blue160 · 13 Jan 2011 at 10:36

A quad and a 460 will be a cracking upgrade

Try Crysis on full, but I suspect you'll be disappointed. I did that when I got my 460, and it all looks great till people start shooting at you, and the framerate dives off a cliff. I'm going to put another card in and run SLI soon. I'll see if that fixes it

Dark_Angel · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:10

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
You don't need a Core i5 2500K to run modern games at higher settings. Sounds more like e-peen TBH.

Why spend £200 to £250 when you can spend £500!

A Core2 quad and an HD6850 or a HD5850 will be fine.

It is most likely the 8800GT which is the limiting factor especially as it only has 512MB of VRAM.

I went from a GTX 480 for about a week in a Q6600 to a GTX 480 now in a 2500 K build.

Some games *DO* run visibly better, in particular GTA4 and Crysis and Batman. That's FRAP and my friend also said "wow, that made a difference" (he'd played on those games on my PC before).

I won't argue if it's worth it to the op though. To me, it was. But then, I wanted it for more than just gaming... and a Q6600 (overclocked of course) would be very very nice, but if he can fully upgrade, it's worth considering.

Another option would be a cheaper AMD based system, if he didn't want to spend that much.

MumboJumbo · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:11

What motherboard do you have and what cooler? Plus do you have paste and rubbing alcohol to clean the old heat sink if you have a decent heat sink that is or you need to buy a new one of them as well.

danewesley said:
the point is not about buying old tech, its that if he buys a newer cpu most of the other components will have to be changed.

what is you actual budget, people can actually start speccing then.

Vegeta said:
No budget as such I just want to be able to play all games with the least spent as possible, not sure what my power supply is but it's more than powerful for anything (one of the Be Quiet! powersupplies). My pc spec is listed in the OP.

Well he said he had no real budget and just wanted to max out games.

Hence me telling you that you won't max out all games on a second hand q6600 that likely won't make it past 3.2ghz. Not to mention the fact that it might max out games now but will it in a years time? Which means then you have to upgrade again which means you spend more money overall. It's just smart to go 2500k if you want to max games in the long run.

Dark_Angel · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:14

I believe a Q6600 should max about 80 percent of games. High on others.

SB 2500 K will max just about all.

GTX 460 = again, 80 percent of modern games maxed.

GTX 480 / 570 / 6950 / whatever = 95 % of games maxed + 60FPS.

Vegeta · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:16

I have a H70 so cooling should be OK. I have some Gigabyte motherboard not sure but it'll overclock fine. I'll go for the quad core now and i'll upgrade properly at a later date, £200 isn't much to get games running a lot smoother for now.

Marine-RX179 · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:17

8igdave said:
Well he said he had no real budget and just wanted to max out games.

ehh...the OP clearly said "as cheap as possible" in the first post.

Dark_Angel said:
I believe a Q6600 should max about 80 percent of games. High on others.

Doesn't work that way...it's more depended on what graphic card is being use with the overclocked Q6600, and a Q6600 won't be really a bottleneck for cards up to 5870/6950 level. But for faster graphic card(s) above that, then people should really start considering upgrading the CPU/platform.

But yes architecture wise, i5/7 (may it be first gen or 2nd gen aka SandyBridge) will offer higher minium frame rate than Core2...but as a reminder again it would be at the cost of around £350 comparing to just replacing the CPU with a 2nd hand Q6600 for around £70.

shadow_boxer · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:25

Yeah seriously consider a second hand Q6600. It wouldn't be value for money buying a Core2 Quad new when for a little more you may as well invest in Sandy Bridge.

What is you existing motherboard?

Q6600 - £70-80 (second hand) [IF MOTHERBOARD SUPPORTS IT]

HIS Radeon 6870 - £173.99

CPU Cooler £30

Sell you current E5200/8800GT and should get at least £50 back.

Dark_Angel · 13 Jan 2011 at 11:36

Marine-RX179 said:
ehh...the OP clearly said "as cheap as possible" in the first post.

Doesn't work that way...it's more depended on what graphic card is being use with the overclocked Q6600, and a Q6600 won't be really a bottleneck for cards up to 5870/6950 level. But for faster graphic card(s) above that, then people should really start considering upgrading the CPU/platform.

But yes architecture wise, i5/7 (may it be first gen or 2nd gen aka SandyBridge) will offer higher minium frame rate than Core2...but as a reminder again it would be at the cost of around £350 comparing to just replacing the CPU with a 2nd hand Q6600 for around £70.

I'm aware, I'm refering to games which are CPU limited too.

For example, for me, GTA4 allowed me to fully max traffic / other settings where as my Q6600 wouldn't.