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Graphics Card Recommendations

mundstick

mundstick

mundstick

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Joined
27 May 2010
Posts
251
Location
Northampton
OKay so in an attempt to get back in to PC gaming I have managed to get hold of most components to make up a gaming PC, albeit a modest and second hand one!

This is what I have got,

Antec Sonata III 3 Case
EarthWatts EA 500D Green psu
Asus P5Q Deluxe
Intel Core 2 QUAD Q9550, 2.83 GHz processor
4 GB RAM 4x2GB PC2-8500C5
SSD OCZ 60GB Solid Series S 2.5"
F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB cache

The only thing missing really is some graphical grunt! Any suggestions of the type of card that would suit this system? I am not looking to spend vast sums of money at the minute so what do you think?
 
cmndr_andi said:
This card is an excellent deal at the moment and should run OK on your PSU.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. Is the PSU ok or do you think I would be better picking up something different?

Like I said, this is an attempt to get me back in to PC gaming so if it works sometime in the near future I would probably be looking to build myself a new machine anyway.
 
Looking at this review, the Eartwatts 500W can provide up to ~440W on the 12V rail and comes with two 6 pin PCIE connections (one is 6+2 pin). This all suggests that the PSU will be fine with a 5850 and your existing setup.

A card like the 5850 will allow you to play modern games at high resolutions, high settings, DX11 and very nice framerates, have a look here. At only £117 it is a really cracking deal at the moment.
 
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It's worth investing on an semi-decent CPU cooler for overclocking yout 9550, considering you got a P5Q Deluxe.

It should easily up your 9550 from stock clock 2.8GHz to around 3.8-4.0GHz.

From my own experience with my Q6600 at 3.7GHz together with my 5850 overclocked to stock clock 725MHz to 900MHz, I can tell you that my overclocked 5850 still get bottlenecked by the Q6600 at 3.7GHz during some intensive moment in games (GPU usage drop from 99/100% down to 65-90%...with the frame rate drop to around 23-28fps). It is not due to the Quad-core CPU being not good enough, but more to do with games not making (good) use of 3rd and 4th cores...so the extra clock speed will definitely help.
 
+1 for going with a new cooler to overclock the CPU. Something like this would be great and will work with many future boards too.

As marine mentions, the P5Q Deluxe and Q9550 are an excellent combination for overclocking. With a good cooler like the one above and a bit of reading you should have that CPU running happily at a much higher clockspeed.

Also, if your case only has one 120mm fan installed - then I would suggest adding in a second, since a new GPU (and overclocking the CPU) will introduce quite a bit more heat to your system that needs to be removed from the case. A fan like this would be great (or go for two to replace your existing one).
 
Thanks again for the replies. I am picking up the compnents next week so once I have built it up with the addition of the 5850 and cpu cooler I will up and running!! :p
 
As a budget setup for my first foray back in to PC gaming I will stick to a single 5850 for the minute. Might try an pick one up later though
 
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