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6870 or 6950

Ajaxx

Ajaxx

Ajaxx

Associate
Joined
2 Apr 2012
Posts
302
Location
Northern Ireland
6870 or 6950 advice

Hi, time has come for a little cash to be spent on the PC and I'm wanting to replace my GPU first..

My current gaming system is

Q6600 @ 3ghz OC ( at the min )
Asus pk5-e
4gb OCZ 800mhz DDR2
780w OCZ PSU
Dual monitors
and currently a HD5770

I play BF3,WoW and GW2 once out. plus some other random stuff.

Been looking a lot at the msi 6870 which will allow me to OC

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-143-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

it comes in at budget and from what I've read will go nicely with my machine.

But then I saw this 6950 which I dont think will OC well?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-299-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

at £10 more...

So my question is, for my system.. go with the 6870 or 6950?

will the 6950 be bottle necked with my system??

Also.. Mobo/cpu/ram upgrade isnt on the cards :P
 
Last edited:
For the games you mentioned, your Q6600 will be holding back the new graphic card quite a bit.

From my own experience, playing online games my old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz would bottleneck even my 5850 quite heavily, with GPU usage as low as anything from 80% down to 50%, and with fps drop to as low as around the low 20s. After upgrading to i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz, the GPU usage became much higher, and with the frame rate pretty much remain constant at 55-60fps.

While it is true that 'most game' are GPU limited, but what I found is that for online gaming with lots of people, characters, units...you would most definitely need a better CPU. If I had kept my Q6600 3.6GHz and upgraded my 5850 to something faster, the performance wouldn't really improve at all and I would still have frame rate dip to below 30fps all the time on online games, mmos etc.
 
Ajaxx said:
The 6950 I linked has Dual Bios. So looks like its unlockable?:confused:
Click to expand...

Back when the MSI 6950 Twin Frozr III came out, an MSI rep advertised the unlockability of the cards, then had to retract statements when people started trying and a lot failed. Some people even bricked their cards in the attempt. MSI had even posted instructions on a webpage on how to do it, and then hastily removed that web page.

Since then, the number of cards that have been unlockable has plummetted - most people who report trying since then have failed, but a few are lucky.

So, it's not worth buying a card if a large part of the attraction is you want to unlock it. Just buy it for its standard capabilities.

I have a couple of 6950's, but I haven't attempted to unlock them.
 
Ajaxx said:
well for me a standard 6950 should blow my 5770 out of the water lol.
Click to expand...

Indeed it should! It's a massive upgrade. If I wasn't using eyefinity, one 6950 would be plenty for me too. I was mainly targeting my comments at people who might be going for less of an upgrade, but were pinning their hopes on unlocking the 6950 to make it worthwhile.
 
Can you find the extra for the HD7850? They overclock like stink, well past even HD6970 speeds.
 
Tute said:
Can you find the extra for the HD7850? They overclock like stink, well past even HD6970 speeds.
Click to expand...

Na, that is beyond my budget.

Also getting a monitor at the same time as this 6950 now :D

So thats be totally spent lol
 
Once a 6950 is clocked past 930 core and mem 1300+ theres little difference between that and unlocking the extra shaders. Maybe 3-5 fps gain, sometimes no difference.
 
i remember going from a 22" syncmaster to a 24" and i still went "wow" so from 19" crt you will love it.

I have a 6950 myself. Not disappointed with it all. Although it sometimes struggles with BF3 on ultra on my BenQ XL2410T @ 120hz. I just lower it to Auto and lower AA. For Diablo3 its perfect, and those are the only games i play right now.
 
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