Is it worth pairing a Core 2 Duo E8400 with an Radeon R7 260X?

mimimi

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Mar 12, 2008
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I'm refurbishing my 7 yo kick-ass-back-then gaming rig as a gift to my young sister and as a family computer. Planning to make the most of it without investing much, maximize its specs, squeeze its last breath, give it a proper cleaning and let them bury it in a few years.
It will be used for browsing / Office / entry level gaming (titles from 3-4 years ago, lower res, medium settings).

The current spec
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz (I will overclock it to 3.6Ghz)
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 8800
RAM: 2 x 2GB Corsair Twin2X (I will add 4GB more, same brand)
Storage: 60GB OCZ Vertex II (I will add another cheap 60GB SSD and do a SATA II Raid 0)
Power: 500W Zalman
Cooler: Zalman CNPS9900A

I was looking at current entry level gaming GPUs, and the Radeon R7 260X seems to smoke out the old 8800 heater... I realize that in the current setup, the CPU is a major bottleneck, so I was wondering, is it worth getting the Radeon, or is the CPU so slow that it won't really matter that much? Do you think the old CPU coupled with a new GPU can handle decently newer titles in lower res and not so much details?

Any thoughts about that or any other are welcomed,
Thanks in advance!





 
Solution
Old games tend to use one or two cores, so the overclock will be a major help.
These old parts are overclocked through the FSB, raising this also increases the memory speed, and you'll very quickly push the RAM beyond its operating capacity, you'll need to either lower the memory multiplier or base speed to compensate or the system will quickly become unstable.
TBH it'll be easier on your sister to just put everything onto the 500Gb HDD, messing around with a three drive setup takes a bit of tech know how and she may not want to get that involved with it, meaning you will.
I'm currently playing with my old E6600 setup and even with an OC from 2.4 to 3.0GHz is can't keep a HD7950 (running at a leisurely 800/1250) well fed, the best...
Thanks for the prompt replies!
Hmm, 750Ti seems just a tad more expensive than the 260x, but I am definitely considering it now. I'm really happy the CPU will still hold its ground.

The thing with the SSD RAID is not related so much to the speed... but rather to the boot capacity.
I don't want to throw away a perfectly good 60GB SSD just because it is too small for a boot / apps drive.
Although you can fit perfectly a few older games, the apps and the OS on it, my family will save too often stuff on desktop and will top it up in no time.
So I was thinking to do the Raid 0 trick just to have a single volume of 120GB which will delay the inevitable :)
It will have some marginal speed gains, given the fact the SATA II is at most 300MB/sec, but as I said, it's more for capacity reasons.
They will get also a 500GB Seagate Enterprise 32MB cache for storage.

Do you think the SSD RAID is such a bad idea? Should I expect failures soon?
 
Hello... 1) Just expect harder data recovery in the event of...
2) Just Delete the Partition... Leave the drive connected, and assigned it as Fast Windows Page file/Temporary File storage drive. And it will Keep your main OS drive cleaner and less cluttered/Used.
 
@Justkeeplookin
true that, the mobo supports the much better Q9650... but since that's quite a still valid CPU, people sell it in Europe for almost 200euros (227USD), while selling the E8400 for as little as 24euros (under 30 USD). Crazy, right? So I guess everyone is trying to do the same thing, leading to a bit of competition...
Considering this I was thinking to put my money elsewhere...

The overclocking is supposed to go effortlessly to 3.6Ghz, no voltages or anything required, the RAM is already 800Mhz... Am I missing something?
Data recovery will not be necessary for the boot drive, they will fill it mostly with junk and temp things, the rest will be on the spinner.
 
Old games tend to use one or two cores, so the overclock will be a major help.
These old parts are overclocked through the FSB, raising this also increases the memory speed, and you'll very quickly push the RAM beyond its operating capacity, you'll need to either lower the memory multiplier or base speed to compensate or the system will quickly become unstable.
TBH it'll be easier on your sister to just put everything onto the 500Gb HDD, messing around with a three drive setup takes a bit of tech know how and she may not want to get that involved with it, meaning you will.
I'm currently playing with my old E6600 setup and even with an OC from 2.4 to 3.0GHz is can't keep a HD7950 (running at a leisurely 800/1250) well fed, the best loading I've seen so far is 85% with a much lower average which shows a big CPU restriction so yes, I think the R7 260X is about as much as you should really be looking at.
Make sure you install something like Ccleaner and educate her to use it regularly, it's a great little tool.
 
Solution


60 moon dollars? 😛

They cost less them $20, while the core 2 quad 9650 cost more then $100

In old games I don't think it will bottleneck. But you will not be able to get the most from that GPU,

https://realfps.wordpress.com/category/budget-gaming-pcs/c2d-e8400-r7-260x/

If I was you, I would only get a new GPU if the GTX8800 is not doing the job you need it to do,

And If you decide to buy a new GPU, I would consider a GTX 750 or a R7 250x (this one seems to have a good performance: https://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvr725xoc2gi ). For about 93$ they will be more then what your CPU can "handle".

Personally I would go with the Gigabyte Radeon R7 250X 2GB just because the R7 250 series have the greatest GPU's code name ever :) (Cape Verde)

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2355011/gpu-intel-core-duo-e8400.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2141547/250x-aka-7770-gonna-bottleneck-cpu.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2015-vga-charts/compare,3675.html?prod%5B7305%5D=on&prod%5B7207%5D=on&prod%5B7360%5D=on&prod%5B7357%5D=on&prod%5B7358%5D=on