• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Upgrade to old machine

dalzY

dalzY

dalzY

Associate
Joined
29 Dec 2008
Posts
60
Hi,

I have a Q6600 with a Nvidia 260
Looking to upgrade as I have issues with my current card playing Starcraft 2 and Tribes etc.

I have been looking at :

MSI HD 6970 OC 2048MB Twin Frozr II GDDR5 for £200

or

Club3D HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 for £170

Which would you recommend if any.

Thanks for your assistance guys.

Tom
 
dalzY said:
It would be good enough just plug and play or would i need to overclock it?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Yes, would be on par with the 6970 from just using it at stock, and if you want an easy 40% performance increase you can get it with a few clicks.

Also would be wise to OC your CPU as Greg says, all very easy to do.
 
Hold your horses! While your GTX260 is probably too slow for today's standard, but specifically for the two games you mentioned can be CPU limited even after graphic upgrade. On my old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz, in SC2 the were times with many units on screen the CPU would bottleneck my 5850 GPU usage down to 40-50% while fps fall to hell. For Tribes I believe it is quite CPU demanding as well...so you think you should give it some more thought on not just upgrading graphic card, but CPU as well.
 
If there is no Overclocking on your Q6600, and you cannot overclock it yourself; don't bother upgrading GFX, it'll be a severe bottleneck just like Marine-RX179 said.
I had a 5850 on a Q6600 with locked bios, it bottlenecked me to 42% usage on any game.
 
+1 for what Marine and Ceptic say

That system with a Q6600 CPU + a GTX 260 graphics card is likely to be CPU limited in many games (including the ones you mention) - especially if it isn't overclocked.

Therefore, if you added in an even more powerful graphics card then you wouldn't see much of a performance increase - as the performance would still be limited by the CPU in many instances.

Here is a performance review of Starcraft 2 (using a high-end GTX 480 graphics card and it shows that it is relatively CPU bottlenecked with a Q6600). In that test the stock Q6600 can only achieve an average framerate of 25FPS - while a stock i7 920 (with the same GTX 480 graphics card) is able to achieve 47FPS with the same game settings.

As for tribes - looking at this performance review it also scales pretty well with CPU performance, though it seems that the relatively low-end quad core CPU (like the Athlon II X4) is able to play it rather well - so for this game your Q6600 would probably be OK.
 
Last edited:
2 late the order has already been placed...

I will be looking at upgrading the CPU mobo and Ram hopefully on next months pay check so all is not a loss!

Thanks again for your sound advice!

Kind regards,
Tom
 
No worries there, you are still getting an excellent GPU - it just means you won't be able to use it to it's full potential yet.

For a new CPU, mobo and RAM I would go with these ones (total cost - £336.32 with delivery):

Intel i5 3570K (Ivy Bridge Quad core)
Gigabyte Z77X-D3H (Z77 chipset board from a good manufacturer which supports CPU overclocking, SLI and Crossfire)
8GB DDR3 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance Low Profile Good quality, nice looking RAM kit which is plenty fast and won't interfere with fitting large CPU heatsinks

Also, if you want to do some overclocking - I would recommend a good value aftermarket CPU cooler like this one.

Also, may I ask what make and model number PSU you are currently using?

PS. If you make 53 more posts on these forums you will qualify for free delivery on all future OCUK orders (so long as you live in mainland Britain).
 
Last edited:
I'm in the same position, I have a 7970 which is bottlenecked by my CPU. Though I can hit ultra/60fps in most games so in no hurry to upgrade my mobo/cpu just yet.
 
cmndr_andi said:
As for tribes - looking at this performance review it also scales pretty well with CPU performance, though it seems that the relatively low-end quad core CPU (like the Athlon II X4) is able to play it rather well - so for this game your Q6600 would probably be OK.
Click to expand...
From the look of the GPU usage in the task manager, it would look as if Tribes Ascend is still the same as Global Agenda (which was the previous game done by Hi-Rez Studio)...while there there's usage shown across 4 cores, but in reality the game still pretty much only uses 3 threads. Back then when I was still on my Q6600 at 3.6GHz, my lowest frame rate would go down to as low as 20s along with GPU usage dropped down to around 40%...but after I upgraded to i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz, the GPU became higher, and frame rate was manage to hold 56~60fps at those same demanding areas.
 
I've gone the exact same route. I'm on a Q6600 but I've now overclocked it to 3.2GHz, I ordered a new 7850 graphics card because they overclock so well, and then in the next few months I'll be ordering an Ivybridge 3570k, with a new mobo and RAM. I'm running on a 550w PSU, so the upgrade to Ivybridge will be a really good price for such a big upgrade for me :)
 
Thanks guys! I will defiantly look at your spec recommendations cmndr_andi I am currently using a Crossair 650w modular PSU.

Thanks again guys,
Tom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom