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Which card to keep older system going?

lepercorn

lepercorn

lepercorn

Associate
Joined
28 Aug 2009
Posts
31
Location
Oxford
Long time reader and first time poster. Would really appreciate your opinions.

I currently have a 7600GT that I have had for three years now. While its been a great card, its starting to fall behind with newer games. I want to upgrade it as a stop gap until I can afford a complete rebuild.

The card only needs to be good enough for gaming on a 19" widescreen monitor and as I have a rather gimpy motherboard with only one PCIe slot, no crossfire or SLi.

I had considered the Radeon 4850 as I think its about the limit my PSU can take but am slightly worried about heating issues. I also have an old CPU (C2D E6300 oc'd to 2.3GHz) so I am wondering if this would bottleneck a 4850 and would be overkill?

Finally my budget is around £50-100. If it can see me through a year until the next gen cards become mid-price then I would be happy. Any help would be much appreciated! :)
 
Personally I'd get a GTX260 or a 4870. Could you overclock your cpu a bit more?? I managed to get my c2 2140 from 1.6ghz to 2.8ghz and it does pretty well gaming wise. Seems my graphics card is holding it back though, so I'm in the same boat as you :( Personally Im holding out for the 58xx range from ati. But chances are they'll cost more than £100. Also you could do with more than 1gb of ram if its true what your sig says??
 
lepercorn said:
Long time reader and first time poster. Would really appreciate your opinions.

I currently have a 7600GT that I have had for three years now. While its been a great card, its starting to fall behind with newer games. I want to upgrade it as a stop gap until I can afford a complete rebuild.

The card only needs to be good enough for gaming on a 19" widescreen monitor and as I have a rather gimpy motherboard with only one PCIe slot, no crossfire or SLi.

I had considered the Radeon 4850 as I think its about the limit my PSU can take but am slightly worried about heating issues. I also have an old CPU (C2D E6300 oc'd to 2.3GHz) so I am wondering if this would bottleneck a 4850 and would be overkill?

Finally my budget is around £50-100. If it can see me through a year until the next gen cards become mid-price then I would be happy. Any help would be much appreciated! :)
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You have a pretty similar system to me - I have my E6300 processor OC'd to about 2.9GHz without breaking sweat. If you want the settings I'm using let me know, it provides a nice performance boost and I have a feeling that I could push past 3GHz without much issue.
 
Thanks for all the replies. Firstly, I WISH I could overclock more. The BIOS on the stupid mobo I bought won't go over a FSB of 333, which I got to very easily with no problems (will never make that mistake again)! Should have bought the GA-965P-DS3 - think i was running out of money at the time :)

I am very worried about power for the 4870, it requires two PCIe six pins cables and my power supply has only 1, so would require an adaptor, and think it would all be a step too far for 380W.

I had been thinking the HD4850, and was wondering if my computer could handle it. But perhaps I should just get something really cheap and go for the HD4670. Could anybody comment or recommend a particular version? I'll probably find lots of info if I search the forums :) Unfortunately I don't have access to the members market - I would be happy to pick one up second hand.
 
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