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Help/Recommendations?

sk0rd

sk0rd

sk0rd

Associate
Joined
6 Jul 2011
Posts
14
Hello I'm new to overclockers and I'm currently building my own PC but I don't know
what graphics card to buy. I am buying an i7 2600k processor (if that is any help) and I can
spend upto about 140 but if there is anything higher and worth it please do not hesitate to mention, any help will be much appreciated, thank you.
 
If your primarily playing games, get an i5 2500k instead and use the £70 saved to get something like a 6950 2gb card.
 
James J said:
If your primarily playing games, get an i5 2500k instead and use the £70 saved to get something like a 6950 2gb card.
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this is a decent option.

for gfx cards under £140 the 5850s & 5870s are good value right now, and the Sapphire 5850 Xtreme is regularly being offered at a great price.
 
Icm76 said:
this is a decent option.

for gfx cards under £140 the 5850s & 5870s are good value right now, and the Sapphire 5850 Xtreme is regularly being offered at a great price.
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Very true, although the only problems with the 58xx series of cards are 1gb of VRAM limiting the user in high res situations or future demanding titles and their tesselation performance is sub standard, limiting their use in directx 11 applications which utilise that option.

6950 2gb would be a more long term prospect in my opinion.
 
I lean toward favouring the 6950, but the OP didn't specify what the priorities are. Maybe Hyper-Threading or max possible CPU performance are more important than the graphics card...
 
Icm76 said:
I lean toward favouring the 6950, but the OP didn't specify what the priorities are. Maybe Hyper-Threading or max possible CPU performance are more important than the graphics card...
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Aye, noted. This is why I said if its primarily for gaming I'd go for the i5 2500k instead (which infact, I did :D). Encoding and applications which use over 4 cores would be better on the i7 chip but it all boils down to exactly what the OP wants to do with the PC.
 
Wow thanks for all the replies
Erm I'm not sure as I am ordering a monitor too, but pretty high arc@css
Yes I've done some research and I found that the i52500k is really good for games, but if i get an i72600k isnt it better for the long run?
So the i5 is good for games, what is the i7 aimed at? Thanks :D
 
sk0rd said:
Wow thanks for all the replies
Erm I'm not sure as I am ordering a monitor too, but pretty high arc@css
Yes I've done some research and I found that the i52500k is really good for games, but if i get an i72600k isnt it better for the long run?
So the i5 is good for games, what is the i7 aimed at? Thanks :D
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Mostly encoding and encrypt/decrypting files and programs that use some serious horsepower in terms of how many cores they can use. Theres not many applications which use more than 4 cores as most struggle with more than 2 lol.

If your gaming, i5 2500k is perfect for your needs and you can overclock them to very nice levels, improving the performance further.
 
James J said:
Very true, although the only problems with the 58xx series of cards are 1gb of VRAM limiting the user in high res situations or future demanding titles and their tesselation performance is sub standard, limiting their use in directx 11 applications which utilise that option.

6950 2gb would be a more long term prospect in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Yea, but do not forget we are talking about at a cost of around £100 extra. While the extra VRAM will no doubt be handy in the future, but the GPU grunt on the 6950 is not hugely greater than that of the 5850, no thanks to the cancelling of the 32nm process.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Yea, but do not forget we are talking about at a cost of around £100 extra. While the extra VRAM will no doubt be handy in the future, but the GPU grunt on the 6950 is not hugely greater than that of the 5850, no thanks to the cancelling of the 32nm process.
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Yet I've accounted for that shift in price by going from an i7 2600k to an i5 2500k.

In games, the later with a 6950 2gb would be vastly quicker than an i7 2600k with a 5850 1gb
 
560's are pretty good cards but it HIGHLY depends on which screen res your intend to use, plus what sort of settings you also want to go with it. Things like anti-aliasing add to the VRAM load, making that 1gb of VRAM on a 560 really stunt its performance in games like shogun 2 total war, crysis 2 (expecially with dx11 features enabled) etc.
 
If you really want to keep the costs down but still have a powerful card, I'd go for a Sapphire 5850 personally as its memory bandwidth is higher than that nvidia card and they are VERY quiet. Thats my personal opinion though.
 
James J said:
Yet I've accounted for that shift in price by going from an i7 2600k to an i5 2500k.

In games, the later with a 6950 2gb would be vastly quicker than an i7 2600k with a 5850 1gb
Click to expand...
I did say it's better to go 2500K instead of 2600K for gaming, but I was trying to say was 6950 2GB vs 5850 1GB is 15-20% faster at the cost of 80% extra...

Yes around the £200 range the 6950 2GB is definitely the best card to get, but it still a bit poor in value considering the it's not really that much faster than the 5850.

Yes the 6950 2GB is together with the 2500K would be a good option at the moment, but another option that the OP could consider is get a 5850 for now, and then upgrade to the next gen 28nm £200 range card when it's out and sell the 5850.
 
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