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Need a new gfx card advice

bigbird76

bigbird76

bigbird76

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Joined
24 Nov 2008
Posts
61
Hello all

Not sure if i can explain this correctly but i will try.

My sons pc is rather old now but still plays most of his games ok i will eventually give him my pc but I cannot afford a new £1000+ system for the moment so we will just have to upgrade his pc for now

We have a 280GTX installed in his pc at the moment.

Anyway the newer games are running dx11 and so on and some of the games we play will not run on his system anymore so i thought it might be time to upgrade his gfx card for xmas

The pc spec is

Asus P5K e/wifi ap Motherboard
Q6600 CPU
Antec truepower 650w power supply
Cannot remember ram but i think he has 4gb of ram OCZ

Can anyone suggest something decent to fit into this pc which will be ok for newer games, I would prefer an AMD gfx card and my budget for him is about £300 for the card.

Cheers guys

Leigh
 
Is the cpu overclocked? If you're just thinking of dropping in a new card, then it will have to be overclocked to restrict the likely bottleneck as much as possible.
 
ermm no not overclocked or anything i know the cooler for the cpu is not standard i bought it when the pc was new. I think it was an Arctic cooler

Leigh
 
Buy him a 7950.... And a new system... The longer you leave it the less his stuff will be worth and the more it'll cost you in the long run.

You can pick up the older Intel i5's and i7's for dirt cheap on ebay
 
If i were you, i would see what you can add to the 300 budget, then split it to upgrade the CPU + motherboard too.

Budget: £325
FX 6300 £80
Asus evo 970 £90
AMD 7870 £155

Budget: £360
FX 6300 £80
Asus evo 970 £90
AMD 7950 £190

Budget: £400
FX 8300 £120
Asus evo 970 £90
AMD 7950 £190

Budget: £460
FX 8300 £120
Asus evo 970 £90
AMD 7970 £250

Of course, going second hand will net you cheaper builds.
 
I shall have a word with the other half, The £400-460 build makes sense I suppose.

He wants to play the X rebirth game when it comes out next month we pre ordered it for him a few days ago. Would the £400+ spec stuff run that game guys?

Leigh
 
bigbird76 said:
I shall have a word with the other half, The £400-460 build makes sense I suppose.

He wants to play the X rebirth game when it comes out next month we pre ordered it for him a few days ago. Would the £400+ spec stuff run that game guys?

Leigh
Click to expand...

At 1080p it should do it no problem. Considering the current specs, i imagine he wont be the sort of person that thinks anything less than 60 fps is unplayable. If you are running windows 32 bit and your 4gb of ram is showing as less, you might need to consider a 64 version of windows at a later date, so you have a bit more RAM free and also to have the option of adding an extra two sticks of 2gb DDR3 1333, bringing you up to 8gb.
 
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Guys on your budgets you proposed you forgot to add £50 for DDR3 memory because Asus 5K uses DDR2.


Because I had a Q6600 up to 2 2/1 years ago, at 3.4Ghz overclock the best card you can pair it with is a 5850-5870/GTX570-GTX580 with bit overclock too. Anything bigger it will be bottlenecked by the CPU. (Has same power as a 2500K @3Ghz if the Q6600 is clocked at 3.4Ghz).

X Rebirth, which I am waiting to play also, going to use as many cores as the system has to process the "world" and is 64bit ONLY. Also Egosoft is warning they mean real CORES not fake Intel "hyper threads". So only the Intel 8 cores will perform better than an AMD FX 8-core there.

So here we either price for the best gfx card the cpu can support, or full upgrade.

For cheap & cheerful incremental upgrade, a R9 270X @ £150 is good value for money for the Q6600 to start but is going to work as good as a Radeon 5870 at most.

Then need to start looking upgrade the rest of the system. That means an FX8320 (£120), a AMD 970 chipset motherboard (around £60) and 8GB DDR3-1600 at around £50.

Total including GPU ~£380.
 
Paying for DDR3 ram now as well as the GPU, mobo and cpu may seem daunting but the alternative of just getting a GPU that isn't bottle necked by the current system seems a waste if OP is buying it for their son to play games, that are yet to be released. The next generation of games will surely require higher specs than the current build with a new un-bottlenecked GPU.

The £400 option with 8gb of 1600hz RAM seems to be the most reasonable choice.
 
Sandy Bridge is around 20% faster at same clock than the Q6600.
So a 3.4 (pretty easy to achieve) on a Q6600 is not that far off from a 2500K@3
 
Panos said:
Sandy Bridge is around 20% faster at same clock than the Q6600.
So a 3.4 (pretty easy to achieve) on a Q6600 is not that far off from a 2500K@3
Click to expand...

It's quite a bit more then 20%..... The original jump from Core 2 to Nehalem was around 20%+ and Sandy Bridge added another 10%+ on top of Nehalem
 
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It depends on your wallet I suppose. I am a cheap ******* myself, and can understand hard limits...lol


Personally I would add as much card as you can afford first. It will certainly play the game you want at the resolution you want. If you need more (system) later, do that then. The card you buy today will work in your new system later, if needed, and you'll see more performance out of it on the newer system.


I would also OC your system, the Q6600 and P5K OC easy. With the Cooler you have, around 3GHZ is all you are going to get. If you could get a better cooler (one that would fit a later MB too) you could go to around 3.4GHz. Your MB can handle that easy.


One thing that won't happen is your new GPU falling on it's face and causing problems, It just will not run as fast as it would in another system.


Anyway, you're looking for a 7870, 7870 (XT or LE), R9 270X < all 2GB cards ---or--- all 3GB cards > 7950, 7970, R9 280X as your budget dictates. All within your budget, but I would go with one of the 3GB cards. The 7950's are best bang for buck right now, the 280X (same card as the 7970) is the newest out at $300.
 
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Panos said:
Guys on your budgets you proposed you forgot to add £50 for DDR3 memory because Asus 5K uses DDR2.


Because I had a Q6600 up to 2 2/1 years ago, at 3.4Ghz overclock the best card you can pair it with is a 5850-5870/GTX570-GTX580 with bit overclock too. Anything bigger it will be bottlenecked by the CPU. (Has same power as a 2500K @3Ghz if the Q6600 is clocked at 3.4Ghz).

X Rebirth, which I am waiting to play also, going to use as many cores as the system has to process the "world" and is 64bit ONLY. Also Egosoft is warning they mean real CORES not fake Intel "hyper threads". So only the Intel 8 cores will perform better than an AMD FX 8-core there.

So here we either price for the best gfx card the cpu can support, or full upgrade.

For cheap & cheerful incremental upgrade, a R9 270X @ £150 is good value for money for the Q6600 to start but is going to work as good as a Radeon 5870 at most.

Then need to start looking upgrade the rest of the system. That means an FX8320 (£120), a AMD 970 chipset motherboard (around £60) and 8GB DDR3-1600 at around £50.

Total including GPU ~£380.
Click to expand...


Not entirely true. Below are my P35/Q9650 Fire Strike Scores with a 5850 and a 7870, same system. Remember 5850 at ~900MHZ performs the same as a 5870.


Here is the 5850:
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/926836/fs/926954

Notice the OC of the GPU doesn't make much difference.


Here is the 7870:

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/929303/fs/929352

Notice the huge increase. Also note the increase from the OC of the GPU, this system still wants more GPU!!!


I also saw similar results in the Heaven bechmark.
 
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Thanks for all the help and comments guys..

Just a quick question from the spec in post 5

What sort of memory would i be looking at getting for say £50 to suit them setups?

Leigh
 
I can't answer that, but I would add that you should choose from the QVL (Qualified Vendor List) from the manufacturer of the MB.

Those peices have been tested for compatability and function by the MB maker.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about sticking to the memory list. Motherboards usually are able to load most profiles, if not, you can enter them manually easily enough. A good clock memory above 1600 wont give you much a performance boost but it will make CPU easier to overclock since you can lower the RAM multiplier and wont have to worry to much about memory stability when messing around with the FSB.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-036-AR

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-035-TG&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387

One is higher clock but has looser timings, both perform about the same. Best way is to wait for the day you want to buy the parts, go to OCuk memory dual channel 14400+ and list it in price of ascending. Then you can choose between the first handful of 2 x 4gb sticks. Likely there will be an offer in your price range (there is always a memory offer in most price brackets)
 
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