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Best GPU for Q6600

ZBOX

ZBOX

ZBOX

Associate
Joined
10 Jul 2012
Posts
19
Hi.

What are peoples adivce on a graphic card for the system -

Q6600 quad (overclocked to 3.0ghz)
4GB DDR2 Ram
W7 64 bits
Corsair 650W PSU
250GB sata HDD
Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L

I have around £100 (altough i could go to max of £125 in there is a good card)

And will be using it for gaming such as rFactor 2 racing sims.

After a little reserch i have looked at -

Geforce GTX 460

HD 6850

HD 6870

Which card would be best for my needs, or is there anything better for my price range ?



Thank you.
 
gregster said:
Maybe try and extend your budget for a 6870. A good card and underated.
Click to expand...

OK, thanks, I were thinking those too, i have seen them priced around £100 ish, but which model of the 6870 shall i get as there are many to choose from with variuos prices ?


**Edit**

Should add i was looking at this model Radeon HD 6870 OEM - 1 GB GDDR5 - PCI-Express 2.1 - it would be around £118 deliverd, Reveiws on youtube suggested this to be good for the money, Is it ? or is there a better model ?

Cheers.
 
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tommybhoy said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-205-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

I imagine it's quieter than the reference blower, plus you get OcUK's excellent customer service if you purchase from here along with a 14 day money back guarantee.
Click to expand...

Cheers, but looking at the reveiws for the link your provided, they say its loud, and plus its £120.

Would this Radeon HD 6870 OEM - 1 GB GDDR5 - PCI-Express 2.1 be better option for £118 ? as according to reveiws is not loud.

I would prefer to buy it from OCUK, but the 6870 you listed appears to be too loud.

Cheers.
 
Just thought I'd mention I have that xfx, its quiet once you set up a msi afterburner profile.

The problem with it is, the fan spins far too fast when its idling and it doesn't need to spin that fast. Its set to spin at 50% speed when idling which is way too fast.

I set it to 20% speed when not playing games and then its perfectly quiet once you do that. Its not difficult to setup, I can take a screenshot of my fan profile if you want.

In afterburner just have a straight line going at 20% up to 60c, then a steep upward curve so it spins up when you're playing a game.

Atm its sunny here and its at 51c at 20% speed.

I hope this helps :cool:
 
And I don't have great case cooling either in a thermaltake armor +mx case.

2 front 120's, 1 rear 120 and a side fan which barely pushes any air.
 
Thanks for the info Eames, I will consider the card now

51C at 20% seems nice, right now with my 8800GT idle its sits around 65C, then when playing games can get as high as 90C - way too hot. (the fan speed is 35%)

I also use afterburner and when i put my card upto 85% fan speed, it goes down to 50C idle, then 75-80C when playing games but fan is loud.

that aside, would you then recommend the card for my spec system plus what do you think of it ?

Thank you.
 
ZBOX said:
Cheers, but looking at the reveiws for the link your provided, they say its loud, and plus its £120.

Would this Radeon HD 6870 OEM - 1 GB GDDR5 - PCI-Express 2.1 be better option for £118 ? as according to reveiws is not loud.

I would prefer to buy it from OCUK, but the 6870 you listed appears to be too loud.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

For that price you could get 2 HD 5770 2nd hand.
 
ZBOX said:
Thanks for the info Eames, I will consider the card now

51C at 20% seems nice, right now with my 8800GT idle its sits around 65C, then when playing games can get as high as 90C - way too hot. (the fan speed is 35%)

I also use afterburner and when i put my card upto 85% fan speed, it goes down to 50C idle, then 75-80C when playing games but fan is loud.

that aside, would you then recommend the card for my spec system plus what do you think of it ?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Also got a 3ghz q6600 and 4gb ddr2.

Its not quite got as much poke as I'd like, I'm not sure if you're in the position where you can spend much more but I was and its not quite the leap from my old 4870 that I had hoped for.

For example, I have to use the medium graphics setting in tribes ascend for acceptable fps when I expected to be able to use high with smooth fps.

If you want to max out games consider something pokier, high not max settings at 1920x1080 is fine but if you want all the anti aliasing and so on its not got the grunt.

The 3ghz q6600 as I understand it is a bottleneck, whether its a huge deficit I do not know.
 
You can pick up a used 6950 2GB for not much more money, cracking card and works well with the CPU, both seem to reach their limit at the same time :)
 
Thanks for replys.

Would this be a better option -

ASUS ENGTX560Ti Nvidia PCI-E Graphics Card - 1GB (core clock 830mhz)

i can get this for £129.99

Or shall i just stick with 6870 ?

Cheers.
 
I had a ATI 5850 coupled with a Q6600, I was severely bottlenecked.
I couldn't get above 30 FPS on BF BC2 back in the day.
Upgrade cpu or overclock more. 0.66 Ghz OC isn't going to do much imo.
 
Ceptic said:
I had a ATI 5850 coupled with a Q6600, I was severely bottlenecked.
I couldn't get above 30 FPS on BF BC2 back in the day.
Upgrade cpu or overclock more. 0.66 Ghz OC isn't going to do much imo.
Click to expand...

That suprises me tbh, I've got the same cpu coupled with a gtx570 and it copes superbly with graphically demanding games including BC2 which always ran very well, can't quote you framerates as I haven't played it in a while but I always found it completely playable.

My Q6600 is overclocked to 3.5, were you running at stock?
 
jorzeh said:
Most modern games are only limited by the gpu not cpu so what ever you buy will be fine.
Click to expand...
I would agree with that IF my old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz wasn't severely bottlenecking my 5850 in the semi CPU demanding games (particularly those use less than 4 cores). My 5850 was bottlenecked in Crysis 1 as well, but that was mostly because the game only use two cores. Granted a 5850 is not graphic wise powerful enough for max settings with AA, but even at high settings, the GPU usage wasn't close to max and it was more bottleneck on the CPU side.
 
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