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Time for new GPU, limitations of current rig? Budget £150ish

Tasocahtfu

Tasocahtfu

Tasocahtfu

Associate
Joined
14 Dec 2004
Posts
755
Location
Essex
Hi All,

Looking to sort myself out with a new GFX card as my current 8800GT is looking a bit long in the tooth and would like something decent that'll allow me to play games like BF3 and MW3 with a bit more oomph and hopefully last me a couple of years or so.

Current setup is:

  • Q6600 at stock with Tuniq Tower cooler (never overclocked anything, maybe I should, think I have one of the G0 variants but wouldn't know what I was doing!)
  • Abit IP35 Pro
  • 4GB RAM (Edit, found it: OCZ PC2-6400C4 800MHz Reaper HPC Enhanced Bandwidth Edition Dual Channel DDR2) (OCZ2RPR800C44GK))
  • 8800GT as above
  • Corsair 520W HX Modular PSU
  • Running Windows 7 @ 1680x1050

Been out of the loop for a fair while on this kind of stuff, but seems as though the 560/560Ti's are getting a lot of mention on here at the moment, would something like this be a good choice? Whatever I get I would like it to be as quiet as possible, at least when not gaming, as currently everything is nice and quiet (until the GT has to be ramped up to game!).

Also in terms of my current setup, would the power supply be enough to power a newer card? Is the processor, or anything else for that matter, going to bottleneck a newer card at all?

Thanks as always for any advice ;)
 
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I have a similar build firstly you want to overclock the cpu to 3.2 ghtz this can be done very easily. At stock its gonna cause you issues with all high end gfx cards

400fsb x8 multi at 1.35 volts vcore(cpu voltage) is the easiest way to do this if that dont work bump up the north bridge voltage as you probably have 4 ram sticks this helps when overclocking there are many guides to overclocking a q6600 it was a super chip google is your friend as are forums. This will get rid of any cpu bottleneck in a single card solution. xfire and sli are a no go unless you upgrade the cpu they require massive bandwidth which only a i5/7 can supply.

gpu wise the nvidea cards prefer i5-i7 to get best out of them as they are bandwidth hungry the 560ti is where they get into a bottlneck ona core 2 quad. They work ok with early quads but more prone to bottlenecking when you get to 570 and above. The better choice for you would be to pair your q6600 with a amd card these are less sensitive to cpu bottlenecking as they require less bandwidth than the nvidea 5 series as they are designed to run with amd cpu's which have similar performance to your core 2 quad when overclocked. a 6870/6950/6970 or wait till dec/jan then next gen cards will be out on 28nm process amd 7 series which will be a big step up in perfomance and should not have a significant bottlenecking issue.

Also your corsair hx is still a very good psu for a single card set up if you email corsair they can send you modular cables for 8 pin pci express the higher end cards will require 8 pin and 6pin. I beleive the early hx 520 only came with only 6 pin connectors. They will do this for free!! later models came with both 6 pin and 6+2 pin connectors corsair are very helpful this way. I emailed and got sent 4 cables for my hx620.

To keep you inside a 150 quid budget overclock the cpu its free you want at least 3.2 ghtz the more the better but try and not go over 1.4 volts on the cpu for 24/7 use. I would personally hold off till early jan you should be able to pick up a mid range 7850 for around 150ish which should outperform a 6970 comfortablly and will be best bang for buck upgrade to your system and keep you gaming for next 2/3 years.
You game at a lower res than 1080p so some strain will go on cpu the higher the res the less cpu bottlenecking you will see as its more load on the gpu and this is ideally what you want. save till jan for a new AMD card then look to get a better monitor or 1080p tv like a samsung 32inch with a fast response time. That is your best upgrade path. After that your looking at a SSD drive for WINDOWS 7/8. when you have all them then its time to say goodbye to your q6600 not before hope that helped. by that time we should be on ivy bridge or somthing better and you will see big gains all around not small ones.
 
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Cheers for the replies guys, Farooq thanks for taking the time to write all that out! Will deffo get on and sort out the CPU then, will have a search and find a guide.

Never knew that about lower res causing more strain on the CPU, always figured it would just make things easier for the GPU, not harder! Perhaps I will hold off until Jan if there is a new range of cards about to hit, just about to move house so might not have as much time to game anyway, and from what I've read today I may not even open MW3!

Something I forgot to mention was my case - I have a Sonata III I think. Will this be an issue in terms of a new card fitting into it? I had a friend who had to saw off some of his drive bays for a card a couple of months back :/

Interesting what you said about the ATI cards being less sensitive to bandwidth requirements, again something I was unaware of (this is why I come here for advice!). Must admit I've always had Nvidia cards, primarily because I always thought they were quieter, but not averse to changing if I'll be better off. Is there really much of a difference between the two brands in that respect?

Cheers
 
Yeah I am kinda keen to get one in the next week or so really, will see what I can find price wise.

Anyone able to confirm if my case (Sonata III) will take a new card such as the ones mentioned?
 
personally, for my opinion on things... throwing a beefy card in there may well cause you a nice little bottleneck..
id seriously concider overclocking your cpu and see how it all goes first before chucking a huge gfx card in there.....
 
How you get on with the overclocking did you manage to get it over 3 ghtz?

As for space no idea if they fit in a sonata 3 I use a large full tower coolamaster stacker t101 so I have tons of room. sorry cant help with that but I would stay clear of dual gpu gfx boards if your worried about length of cards. They are always longest ones usually extended atx in length most other cards will be full atx length or smaller.
 
Tasocahtfu said:
Yeah I am kinda keen to get one in the next week or so really, will see what I can find price wise.

Anyone able to confirm if my case (Sonata III) will take a new card such as the ones mentioned?
Click to expand...


I am guessing you must have swapped out the original 500W PSU that came with that case as that is what I currently have

But yes, I can confirm that a 560Ti will fit in that case - I have the MSI Twin FrozrII in mine
 
TheCSSDoctor said:
I am guessing you must have swapped out the original 500W PSU that came with that case as that is what I currently have

But yes, I can confirm that a 560Ti will fit in that case - I have the MSI Twin FrozrII in mine
Click to expand...

Yeah I did, needed another PSU for a different machine so just changed them out.

Ahh brilliant, thanks for the confirmation :)


Farooq - Moved house last weekend so I've had little to no time in front of the PC, but planning on attempting the overclock this weekend. If all goes to plan and it works I'll order a card next week, just in time for my broadband activation :D

Found what looks like a good guide so I'll follow that. Thanks for all your help, much appreciated.
 
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