upgrade ideas

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8 Mar 2005
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Hi all,

I have a bfg 680i sli board which has the old lga 775 socket.

I use to have a e6300 and upgraded this to a q6600 last year as this is the quicket cpu the motherboard can handle.

I use to have a 8800gts 640mb and was given a free upgrade to a leadtek 250gts 512mb card after an rma.

My rig has 8gb of quad set ram from ocz pc6400.

Anyway games are beginning to slow down and cod black ops even with AA off is only getting about 33-50 fps.

Now my question is this.

Is my board limiting the card?

From what i can see my board has two pcie 16x slots but i am unsure whether it does or does not have pcie 2.0.

So is my board forcing the card to 1.1 and this is causing the graphics slow down with the new highend games or do i just need a new gpu?

Also would a 400 series work on my board and would it not being pcie 2.0 limit its performance in anyway?

So if i do need a new card what would you suggest as an interim measure if my boards limiting things or a recommendation for a 400 series card that would work on my board.

Thats pretty much it.

Thanks!
 
I read on here the other day that Black Ops has performance issues anyway and that it may hopefully be fixed in a patch.

Is that Q6600 overclocked at all? If not then have a read up on overclocking and get it done. It will give you a free performance boost, just make sure you have a half decent cooler.

The 250 was basically a renamed 9800GTX+ and the newer cards are so much better. Depending on the res you play at something like a 1GB 460GTX or 470GTX or 6870 would be a good move and give you a substantial boost. PCI-e 2.0 is backwards compatible so the new cards in a older slot will not be a problem. You will only lose a couple of percent performance wise. Certainly nothing noticeable.

What make and model psu do you have?
 
I read on here the other day that Black Ops has performance issues anyway and that it may hopefully be fixed in a patch.

Is that Q6600 overclocked at all? If not then have a read up on overclocking and get it done. It will give you a free performance boost, just make sure you have a half decent cooler.

The 250 was basically a renamed 9800GTX+ and the newer cards are so much better. Depending on the res you play at something like a 1GB 460GTX or 470GTX or 6870 would be a good move and give you a substantial boost. PCI-e 2.0 is backwards compatible so the new cards in a older slot will not be a problem. You will only lose a couple of percent performance wise. Certainly nothing noticeable.

What make and model psu do you have?

Thanks for your reply.

I have a tuniq 120 cooler with artic silver thermal paste.

my psu is a seasonic s12 600w.

Good enough for a 400 line?

Thanks again for your reply!
 
I read on here the other day that Black Ops has performance issues anyway and that it may hopefully be fixed in a patch.

Is that Q6600 overclocked at all? If not then have a read up on overclocking and get it done. It will give you a free performance boost, just make sure you have a half decent cooler.

The 250 was basically a renamed 9800GTX+ and the newer cards are so much better. Depending on the res you play at something like a 1GB 460GTX or 470GTX or 6870 would be a good move and give you a substantial boost. PCI-e 2.0 is backwards compatible so the new cards in a older slot will not be a problem. You will only lose a couple of percent performance wise. Certainly nothing noticeable.

What make and model psu do you have?

+1

Also the Q6600 isn't the fastest CPU you could have got.

To recommend a card we need to know your budget!

That PSU will handle any single card on the market right now.
 
Nice PSU you have there, I would be confident putting any Nvidia Fermi card on that PSU.

As mentioned above, have you overclocked the CPU?

You say you are having problems with CODBLOPS, are you having performance issues with any non-broken-as-released games?

Your board is indeed only PCIe v1.1, however this is fine. It will run a single PCIe v2 x16 card with any problems as it is backwards compatible. You may loose a few % FPS due to the reduced bandwidth, but it really will be tiny.
 
Thanks for your reply.

I have a tuniq 120 cooler with artic silver thermal paste.

my psu is a seasonic s12 600w.

Good enough for a 400 line?

Thanks again for your reply!

That's fine. It's a good cooler and very good psu. No problems with that and a 400 series card.

Just to give you an idea about power consumption. The rig in my siggy only pulls a max of 334w at the wall and even then only if i run Fur stability test and Linx (similar to Intel burn test) at the same time. Normal gaming usage is anything from 220w-270w.
 
agreed the q6600 wasn't the best cpu. The qx 6800 and q6700 were if i remember rightly but they were too much money.

My budget is £150- £250.

Only game slowdowns I have encountered have been LFD2, Bf:BC2 and cod BO.

I am an nvidia preferred buyer after problems with ati years ago.

I am thinking 460 or 470 however i have heard something about getting a lower grade ati card and being able to unlock it to a higher card. Bit like the days of a 9800se that could be unlocked to be a 9800 pro.

Any clue on this?

Also i run dual hp w2207's at 1680x1050 for your reference

Thanks again for all the help guys!
 
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There was a brand of Nvidia 465 that could unlock to a 470 but they are long gone now. Have'nt heard of a 6800 "unlocking".

I would go for the Gigabyte 1Gb GTX 460 OC, the MSI 1Gb GTX 460 Cyclone or the EVGA GTX 470 on this week only (£183 one). EVGA has a 10 year warranty too.
 
There was a brand of Nvidia 465 that could unlock to a 470 but they are long gone now. Have'nt heard of a 6800 "unlocking".

I would go for the Gigabyte 1Gb GTX 460 OC, the MSI 1Gb GTX 460 Cyclone or the EVGA GTX 470 on this week only (£183 one). EVGA has a 10 year warranty too.

Ok thanks for the advice.

Would you wait on a 570/560 as the 580 has only recently come out?
 
Power consumption is over 300W on load for a 580. Your PSU may handle it ok, but you're on the very brink. This all depends on not having many HDD or other PCI cards...
 
Would you wait on a 570/560 as the 580 has only recently come out?

This won't be happening anytime soon, the 580 should really be called the 485, it's what the 480 should have been!

For ypur budget and considering what games you play, i'd suggest this 470 as you can EASILY overclock it to 480 speeds and have a very capable GPU on your hands, this will play all those games you mentioned on the res you mentioned with full settings smoothly.
 
For the record i sourced a 580 gtx standard golden sample from ebay for £369 including free postage.

Hope it runs with my psu and 4 hdd's!

2x barracuda 750gbs and 2x 2tb hitachi deskstars.

Thanks again for all the input!

I decided that when the 570/560 come out they will be about the price I have paid therefore its a worthy investment i hope lol!

I chose this mainly as the 460/470 have been out a while and are too steep for a 6-9 month old card.

Thanks again for all your help!
 
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