gfx for Q9550

[davethe11]

I have the following:

Q9550 @ 3.7GHz
Corsair 650W psu
8800GT 512
1200p
SWTOR, Civ5, BF3

I have the money to upgrade my graphics card now, and was wondering what single card solution would be a good upgrade for my system (assume unlimited budget). I am not interested in upgrading any other components at the moment. For example, would a 7950 be wasted on this setup?

 

[Rusty0611]

The 7950 is a great card although I reckon it might come down in price soon with the Keplar release if you can wait. You can overclock it to 7970 speeds as well for even more performance.

I think the question you need answering, is at what point the bottleneck from your CPU will kick in. The Q9550 is a decent chip though so I think it should be fine but I can't answer for certain.

Otherwise you'll be looking around the 6970/570 upgrade route. I would recommend the 570 in this scenario but there's not much in it either way.

 

[[WU-TANG]GZA]

As above the CPU shouldn't really be a bottleneck at that clock speed.

I would go for a 7950. God only knows when Kepler is going to be released so I would just get a 7950 now tbh.

I wouldn't bother with a 6970/570 at this point.

 

[andybird123]

I had a Q6600 @ 3.6GHZ and it just, just started to bottleneck a stock clocked 580GTX (by about 5%), so I would say a 580 / 7950 will be about the limit of card you would want to pair with your Q - you may not get the full benefit of overclocking the 7950

you could also wait a couple of weeks and see if the reported new NV 580 class GPU but cheaper card does indeed see the light of day around the 20th of next month, which should also see a price drop occur on the 7950

 

[Marine-RX179]

If the game is CPU demanding, and doesn't use all 4 cores, then it is quite possible for Q9550 at 3.7GHz to bottleneck a 7950.

Have a look at the following. While it does not have the Q9550 at 3.7GHz, you could use Phenom II X4 980 (3.7GHz) to give you a rough idea of how it compares to the newer CPUs like the i5/i7s:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20873/2

I myself play quite a bit of mmo, and back then even with my Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz it was bottlenecking the 5850 and GPU usage dropping from 99% down to around 50-60% and frame rate would drop to as low as 22-30fps during intensive fights. The main reason for this was because the games only used 2 and 3 cores, thus the Core2Quad was not enough to to provide the scaling. Now after I upgraded my CPU to i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz, I now get more GPU usage on the same 5850, and with frame rate pretty much staying constant at 55-60fps on those two games, rather than 22-30fps in the pass.

So it really depends on the games...it is likely that you would get better performance with a i5 2500K plus a £200 range card than 7950 with your current CPU, unless FPS (that support 4 cores or more) is all you play...which doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[davethe11]

Thanks for the advice chaps. I have been waiting for kepler to shake up the pricing a bit, but I'm starting to think that I could be waiting 3 or 4 months before this really happens. I confess to to an Nvidia preference, partially because of Civ5, and partially because I get the impression that they generally have less driver issues (I know, this is highly debatable). It's good to know that my cpu will not be a significant bottleneck for the new crop of cards. Think I will try and wait till mid March and if no kepler news has arrived then I will take the plunge. I've never gone for a near-top of the range card before, I'm usually on budget, but I've saved the pennies to treat myself this time

 

[Marine-RX179]

Thanks for the advice chaps. I have been waiting for kepler to shake up the pricing a bit, but I'm starting to think that I could be waiting 3 or 4 months before this really happens. I confess to to an Nvidia preference, partially because of Civ5, and partially because I get the impression that they generally have less driver issues (I know, this is highly debatable). It's good to know that my cpu will not be a significant bottleneck for the new crop of cards. Think I will try and wait till mid March and if no kepler news has arrived then I will take the plunge. I've never gone for a near-top of the range card before, I'm usually on budget, but I've saved the pennies to treat myself this time

Yea...it's worth waiting a bit if you are not in a hurry to upgrade. Considering GTX580 is priced around £340-£360, it is not unlikely that a new gen similar speed card would be available at GTX570's price range or less (£260).

 

[davethe11]

it is likely that you would get better performance with a i5 2500K plus a £200 range card than 7950 with your current CPU, unless FPS (that support 4 cores or more) is all you play...which doesn't seem to be the case.

I agree with you entirely, to be honest I'm really trying to avoid selling my current hardware and upgrading to an i5, despite its superiority. This is why I wondered where the bottlenecking would generally occur, but I understand it is dependant on the games use of multiple cores amongst other factors. Food for thought though, thanks Marine

 

[Marine-RX179]

I agree with you entirely, to be honest I'm really trying to avoid selling my current hardware and upgrading to an i5, despite its superiority. This is why I wondered where the bottlenecking would generally occur, but I understand it is dependant on the games use of multiple cores amongst other factors. Food for thought though, thanks Marine

I was in the same spot, so I know how you feel. But upgrading from your current platform to i5 2500K could cost less than you think.

I just did a quick search on the famous auction site, and there's currently a auction for a 2nd hand Q9550 boxed which ends in an hour, and the current bid is £122 (plus £4 deliver)! I myself picked up my i5 2500K chip from there for just £125 plus £5 deliver. If you have 2x2GB DDR2 memory, you would be likely be able to sell it for £35, which is enough to upgrade to 2x4GB DDR3 memory because how dirt cheap the DDR3 memory are right now. So the actually biggest cost for the upgrade would probably only be the new motherboard (plus whatever the fee that the auction site charge you for selling...but I think it is typically 10% of the final sales value), but even that you can pick up a decent budget Z68 board like the Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 for just around £75~£80 (if you are not thus about having army of USB port and SLI/Crossfire support).

I really think you should let go of your Q9550 while there's a demand for it, cause when IvyBridge arrive, there's no guarantee that the 2nd hand value of Q9550 will still hold at £120+.

 

[~>Dg<~]

depends on what games your playing and when you may upgrade

you should be fine with any card really at higher res. if you playing popular games you shouldnt have many problems if any.

i held of doing a upgrade from my p2 @3.7 (was gunna go i52500k ) but cause i knew id be playing bf3 mainly for next year or two i thought why bother its a gpu limited game.would have just payed 350-400 for zero extra ! in bf3 performance.

only other popular games i play that would benefit is skyrim and even that is fine at my res.

next game this year that may test is the next bf/moh and thats based on same engine so upto you as that will probably be based on gpu power again and not cpu. thank consoles for that

 

[subbytna]

I have almost the same setup a you have and my 570 is muchos plenty to game well on. 7*** series card could be overkill. What resolution do you play on? size?

 

[davethe11]

I game at 1920x1200, an upgrade to a 2500k is tempting, but I only recently upgraded to the Q9550 off of the MM from an old E2200, so I'm happy with my new cpu grunt I can always upgrade cpu in the future, when Ivy hits I assume SB will be going cheaper anyhow so any loss in selling the Q9550 will be covered to some degree. I've had my 8800GT for some time now and it has done me proud, but everything now is on lowest settings with no AA or AF (I like to keep my resolution at 1:1). The lack of news on kepler is frustrating, but I will ponder it all for a few days.

 

[Gregster]

It would be wise now to hang out and see, as rumour after rumour points to an April realease for Nvidia's new gpu's.