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Is a HD6850 over the top for 19" monitor gaming?

no1john

no1john

no1john

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Joined
24 Mar 2009
Posts
12
Hi all, I have been looking around for a new graphics card and the HD6850 looks good for £83.99 excluding delivery.

My current setup is as follows:

500wat power supply
Gigabyte G31M-ES2L motherboard
Q6600 quad core CPU
4Gb DDR2 memory

19" hannsg monitor (max resolution 1280x1024)

My current graphics cars is the Nvidia 7600gt (yes its old!)

My question is: Is the HD6850 a bit over the top for my needs as I will only be using it on the 19" monitor at 1280x1024?

Would I be better off buying something cheaper which isn't as powerful?

sorry for the nube question but with so much choice around and with my very limited knowledge on graphics cards its hard to make a choice.
 
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I would say, for the price, it would be a good card to get. yes, you could get a cheaper card but it wouldn't be significantly cheaper, and will likely offer far less performance.

But if you decided to upgrade some of you other components in time, such as higher res monitor, the 6850 would work far better for you.
 
Would be a great upgrade for that PC, you could pretty much max out anything at that res :)
 
You E6600 will bottleneck the 6850. With that said, card that are lower than it are poorer price to performance...so might as well grab it.

But I have to wonder what PSU do you have...if that 500W is some generic PSU, then you might have a problem.
 
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I assume he actually has a Q6600 as he says its a Quad Core, in which case it'll be fine as long as it's OC'd to 3.2GHz or so (easy enough).

I've got a 460 1GB (pretty much same speed as the 6850) in the wifes PC with a Q6600 @ 3GHz and it's still a great combo.
 
The power supply is : Corsair CMPSU-500CXV2UK so should be fine I guess.

I made a typo on the CPU it's a Q6600 quad core not an E6600 (my bad)

I guess this card looks like a good fit for my system and it's a big upgrade from the 7600GT I currently have.
 
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no1john said:
The power supply is : Corsair CMPSU-500CXV2UK so should be fine I guess.

I made a typo on the CPU it's a Q6600 quad core not an E6600 (my bad)

I guess this card looks like a good fit for my system and it's a big upgrade from the 7600GT I currently have.
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Yeah that PSU wont have a problem.

Go for it, will certainly be a boost from a 7600GT!
 
Yup as above that PSU will be fine, now get that CPU clocked up to 3GHz+ and away you go.
 
TBH I've never overclocked anything before, I always thought it was the GPU rather than the CPU that makes a difference in games, as in faster Mhz on the GPU is more important than on the CPU (if that makes sense lol)
 
no1john said:
TBH I've never overclocked anything before, I always thought it was the GPU rather than the CPU that makes a difference in games, as in faster Mhz on the GPU is more important than on the CPU (if that makes sense lol)
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It depends on the game, most are more GPU dependant that CPU. However you need decent CPU speeds so that it can 'keep up' with the GPU.

Do you have a decent cooler on the CPU?
 
with a resolution that low, you don't really need to concern yourself with overclocking. just grab one of those cards before they're all gone. :D
 
Q6600's are like tanks, you'd have to do something ridiculously stupid to kill one :D

You'd want a half decent cooler like the Geild Tranquillo first though. I'm surprised you've manage to last this long on the stock intel cooler, it must be crazy loud under load with a Q6600!

And OC'ing a Q6600 is one the easiest things in the world, simple case of changing the FSB to 333, and giving it a bump in voltage if it needs it, easy 3GHz.
 
It is a bit on the loud side, but only when I use programs like handbreak for encoding movies, having said that the noise never really bothers me.

When I do game on it I tend to either have the speaker volume quite loud or use headphones (mostly at night) so fan noise isn't really an issue.

I will go for the card and see how it performs with my current setup, should be fine with my current monitor resolution but if overclocking the CPU makes a huge difference then I'll give it a go
 
I'd grab it at that price, that way if you do upgrade to a larger screen you should still be ok.
 
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