New graphics card; Will my CPU/Mobo Chipset Bottleneck it

[dai]

I'm considering upgrading my graphics from an 8800GTS to one of the newest Nvidia Cards (Unsure exactly which one atm possibly a 285 GTX).

Just want to see if anyone on a Q6600 and p35 chipset mobo has done this. I'm loathe to upgrade the whole machine as to be honest it runs perfectly fine; in fact it runs all the game si want at 1680*1050 also. I'm just finding some frame rate slow down in some instances. Just thought a simple upping of Graphics Card would be a nice quick and cheaper solution.

I don't want to make this jump however if My mobo/Cpu will bottleneck the GPU. So anyone tried it?

 

[Owenb]

Is your q6600 running at stock? It's a pretty good OC chip iirc.

Your CPU would be a bottleneck on certain games(RTS/mmorpg are more likely to be cpu bound), especially at stock, but you should see a large improvement in most games.

 

[ArtificialFoxx]

Agreed, You would definitely notice a large improvement - I don't think your cpu would be much if at all a bottleneck for most games. Most newer cpu benchmarks in games don't appear to give the performance boost for their price.

 

[dai]

I generally run my CPU at 3.2gig with ram running at 1066Mhz.

Only issues I've had with the setup is for some reason my Ram keeps dying; My Ballistix died 3 times in 6 months before i bought some corsair TwinX which i ran for 9 months at 1066 (Stock Volts) no problem. Recently died though. Think it's my Abit mobo Overvolting for some reason. Anyhow that's a bit off topic.

I was hoping to upgrade the card just to fix the very minor stutter i sometimes get when running things like Lord of the rings and Aion at Max settings at 1680*1050.

Most of the time i get a fps of 40-60 but sometimes it dips down to around 10-20. Would like that dip to be less noticeable really; Sort of 30fps would be fine. Then of course when i upgrade the rest of my pc later this year I can transplant the Card into the new rig (unless theres some new great card out of course).

 

['Wes]

I've always had it in my head to have a 3ghz (no less) CPU, because it makes me feel more comfortable that everything will most likely run fine. I don't see it bottlenecking a GTX 285 though.

 

[dai]

Cool sounds good; DOn't think I'd Stretch to a 295. They are way to expensive at the moment and I doubt that thier worth the extra money for the performance increase they offer a 285. Might be wrong but I'm sure I'll get corrected if I am

 

[r0cky]

My Q6600 is at stock, and I'm going to get the 5870 2GB or the new Nvidia thing. My 8800GT has never really had the power to drive 1920x1200, and I'm sure the 5870 will be a great jump, and looking forward to lower power consumption.

I will get an i7 or whatever is best sometime next year; if need be, I'll put in a Q9650 or something to tide me over. I'll see how my games perform with the new card and make a call then. But I think more and more stuff is starting to multi-thread, so the quad-core should hold it's own for a bit.

As I said elsewhere, I need my machine to be bullet-proof reliable and I don't want the additional heat/power/costs from overclocking just for the odd game (it's a very minor aspect of my usage). If I need the extra power, I'll upgrade...

 

[dai]

One other thing Would i need to upgrade my Corsair 620w PSU to run a 285GTX or a 295 GTX (guessing its more likely for a 295 GTX but hoping it wont be necessary).