Hello, I am considering upgrading my graphics card on my current system. At the moment I have an Abit IP35 motherboard - which I think is a PCI-E x 16 (1.0). I am considering upgrading my 8800GT to a 660 ti or 650 ti boost. The fact that these graphics cards are 'made' for PCI-E x 3 - is there going to be a performance issue. Will my Q6600 bottleneck the performance of the graphics card anyway? Thank you in advance Ed
It really depends on the game and your clocks if your Q6600 will be the bottleneck or not. I've ran BF3 on an old Q6600 system with a GTX 680 with very good results, but the Q6600 was OC'd to 3.4ghz and it was close to impacting my frame rate. As a generalization, an overclocked Q6600 is pretty much on the border of being the bottleneck with modern games. The PCI-E version won't impact real world performance AFAIK. Edit: Ah.. my sig hasn't been changed in years. That's the Q6600 system I was referring to.
Read this. http://hothardware.com/Reviews/GPU-Redux-Can-Old-DualCores-Drive-A-Modern-Graphics-Card/ Buy a 660, not a TI boost.
You could honestly buy anything above a GTX660 (or a HD7870) and you'd get a massive upgrade in performance.
You'd definitely get a big boost to framerates. what CPU cooler do you use? I was still running C2Q's until about 8 months ago and was able to get a good 0.5 ghz more on the overclock after switching to an AIO watercooler as the temps were kept so much lower.
I didn't mean sort of, "only get a 660" I meant it in a "660 is only a few £ more than the 650ti boost and batters it" sort of sense But yeah, 7870 (heck,even the LE version on Aria) will perform admirably with that CPU
Look at my sig. Run everything on max settings (albait in 1680x1050) with ease. It's worth it. If and when you upgrade your mobo and CPU you will get extra frames, but you should be able to get a very good boost just by upgrading the gfx on your current system.
OK thanks everyone. I think I will go for the 660 ti to be honest - its £164 vs. £150 for the standard 660. My motherboard hasn't been a great overclocker...but I might be tempted to get go back down the watercooling route to see if that will make a difference. I'll have an interesting sale of a variety of old kit coming up soon! Thinking of getting rid of my Aquacomputer 1800 RAD - a shame but not suitable for me any longer!
Be mindful of overclocking old components, as they are already worn and more likely to fail. With that said I actually raised the clock speed on mine to 3.2GHz and lowered DRAM speed to 800MHz (from 1066) to get a 1:1 ratio and the system seems less stressed somehow, and raised my Win Experience Index by 1 Very satisfied with how long the Q6600 has lasted for me (about 5-6 years old now) and how stable my computer has been. I actually had a very similar system to yours, added those second 4GB of memory to make 8GB about 2 years ago and got a 260GTX over 8800 some years ago until I switched to the 680 late last year. Also got an SSD a few months ago. The 680 has been the best improvement for game performance, and the SSD has been the best for overall smoothness of daily computer use. Only use the SSD for the system drive, browsing and programs, while games are on a seperate drive.
+1 im frantically trying to find one lol! I have a Q6600 now, i only got it off ebay the other day for 27 quid (bargain) and took out my E6600 and replaced ( its served me well since aquiring in 2006! ) and I use a GTX 285. Both are overclocked, but only on FSB / MHZ no extra volts etc. However my friend has a Q6600 to and a 560GTX And look at it its amazing despite the CPU being quite old. But is clocked at 3.2ghz on air with artic freezer pro cooler. Slap a 660 in there and you'll love it. Might want to clock the CPU to at least 3.0ghz still with the new GPU to keep up
The old Q6600 is a hell of a workhorse, but be careful of clock speeds. I found that anything much past 3.4GHz just produced more heat than real world performance. You could push north of 4GHz on some lucky chips but again all it was doing is shortening the life of the CPU and by that point producing a lot of heat! The Q6600 is actually bottlenecked more by DDR2 memory, if you ever get a chance to find a P35/45 motherboard that supports DDR3 on the cheap then it'll be a healthy speed increase.
CPU bottlenecking may be an issue - I've had experience with similar components so may be of help. I've just disposed of a Q9650 CPU & X38 DDR3 mobo 2 weeks back for Haswell, built in Feb 08 (CPU upgraded around 3 years ago). Started out with an 8800GT 256MB, then upgraded for a HD5770 and finally the 660 TI in Feb. The 660TI is now in service in my Haswell rig & made the move across from my old LGA775 rig. There's no question you'll see a significant performance boost - each GPU upgrade allowed me to significantly boost the minimum settings. However, you may well hit a CPU bottleneck - GTA IV is probably the most intensive game I have but I couldn't max out the settings with my Q9650 @3.6GHz with the 660TI @1920x1200 - I can with Haswell and the fps is higher than before (30fps is closer to 55, both @1920x1200). Supreme Commander 2 was very smooth until dropping nukes, even with the 660TI zooming in on the mushroom clouds brought the fps down to single figures - no longer happens with Haswell. Not saying you won't see a big performance increase with a 660TI - you definitely will - but from my experience getting a new CPU will allow you to get the best out of it
Ok thanks everyone, I decided to upgrade the CPU in the end after getting a great deal on a haswell build on this forum.
my upgrade resulted in my current gpu scoring more than double when I went from pcie 2.0 to 3.0 along with an ivy bridge proc current gpu radeon hd 5870 eyefinity 2GB
