Gigabyte P35-DS4 Upgrade GPU Advice

[eik00c]

I currently have a GTX 470, but want to upgrade to a newer card (Preferably in the GTX family). I'm new in the upgrading field, and am not sure how much of a newer card would be worth it on this motherboard. I'm willing to spend between $200-300 (going a little over 300 won't hurt that much), but I want to get the most bang for my buck, considering I may end up upgrading the motherboard int he future to get a faster CPU and more RAM. I want a card that can work good on this current Motherboard, but that will still be decent when I decide to upgrade the MB/CPU. Any advice on what my best option(s) are?

 

[clutchc]

The motherboard won't be a limitation. it will accept any card that fits a PCIe x16 slot. PCI Express is a backward compatible interface. But whether or not your CPU will bottleneck a faster card is hard to say since you gave no other specs.

 

[eik00c]

Sorry about that. The current CPU I have is Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4Ghz. I also currently have 6 gigs of ram if that's relevant.

 

[clutchc]

Sorry about that. The current CPU I have is Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4Ghz. I also currently have 6 gigs of ram if that's relevant.

The old slowish Q6600 might be at its max right now with the GTX 470. Any faster gfx card may end up not giving you all the performance it is capable of due to CPU bottleneck. But if you see a new platform in your near future, you can always take the card with you.

 

[eik00c]

Sorry about that. The current CPU I have is Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4Ghz. I also currently have 6 gigs of ram if that's relevant.

The old slowish Q6600 might be at its max right now with the GTX 470. Any faster gfx card may end up not giving you all the performance it is capable of due to CPU bottleneck. But if you see a new platform in your near future, you can always take the card with you.

I'm thinking of getting the Intel quad 3.0 ghz along with the new video card. I'm just wondering if that's worth it, or if my best option is to get a new motherboard that can handle more, THEN upgrade gpu, cpu, etc..

 

[clutchc]

Intel quad 3.0 ghz? You mean the C2Q Q9560? A small difference, yes. But you are still held back by low IPC of the Yorkfield Core architecture. Might be better to not invest in any more upgrades to the old platform. Save for a new Intel platform.

But if you want to get the card now and see how much (if any) improvement it makes, your $300 budget puts you in the GTX 970, R9-280X, R9-290 class. More card than your aging quad core can keep up with, but at least you'd already have a good card for the new platform.
But keep in mind the PSU minimums required for those cards. And no cheap PSUs.
GTX 970: 500W (actually uses less power than your GTX 470)
R9-280X: 600W
R9-290: 650W