q6600+rx 550 ?

[antoine21839]

Hello,
I have an old Q6600 and a socket 775 motherboard with 4GB of DDR2, and I was wondering if an RX 550 would bottleneck it/be bottlenecked by it or not.
Thanks.

 

[lucas_7_94]

Depends the game, but its a old machine. Really old machine. But bet its a yes.

 

[atomicWAR]

well You would likely want 8GB of ram at this point for modern games but an rx 550 would be a good match up with your CPU as a whole...even a rx 560 could stretch its legs with a q6600 and if you overclocked it to 4ghz or close I would wager an rx 570/80 could even be used without to much bottleneck depending on the game.

 

[Chugalug_]

It'll be perfectly fine, but a GTX 1050 costs the same and performs much better than both an RX 550 and RX 460.
@atomicWAR, an RX 570/580 would likely bottleneck the CPU significantly due to it's poor IPC and lower clock speeds.
A 1050 or 1050Ti is the absolute most I would go with imo.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/gXnG3C/msi-geforce-gtx-1050-2gb-video-card-gtx-1050-2g-oc

 

[Karadjgne]

Stick with nvidia. It's backwards compatible from current back to pcie 1.1 motherboards. AMD isn't. Few years ago AMD changed up its power delivery system under pcie 2.2, so many of those older 775 boards had serious issues with incompatibility with new AMD gpus, as they ran pcie 2.1 or older. Whether your board is only pcie 2.1 or if it's 2.3 I don't know, but it's the right age to be right there possibly, so I'd not trust it to be compatible with new AMD gpus. Nvidia doesn't have this issue.

The 1050ti is probably the most gpu that's worth the money, anything more powerful won't be able to live up to its potential, so would therefore be a waste of money.

 

[atomicWAR]

It'll be perfectly fine, but a GTX 1050 costs the same and performs much better than both an RX 550 and RX 460.
@atomicWAR, an RX 570/580 would likely bottleneck the CPU significantly due to it's poor IPC and lower clock speeds.
A 1050 or 1050Ti is the absolute most I would go with imo.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/gXnG3C/msi-geforce-gtx-1050-2gb-video-card-gtx-1050-2g-oc

at stock clocks your right but that's why i specifically mentioned those with a 4GHZ OC. My nephew ran until very recently a Q6600 @4ghz and was able to use a gtx 970 without bottlenecking it to hard(in most games not all...) before I upgraded him to a i7 6700 for graduating boot camp this year. Point being I had experience with the exact CPU at 4ghz and a similar performing card. However anymore horsepower then that your right it'd be a waste in 85% of games. Intel did a good job though with the early quad cores even if they were 2 separate dual core dies.

 

[Chugalug_]

Ah right, didn't notice!
4GHz is a really nice OC on that CPU, must've taken quite a bit of tweaking.

 

[atomicWAR]

It did. It was one of my old rigs and took me a good while to get it stable. Water cooled the whole nine. I was lucky on the frequency for sure because I also had a q9650 that was only 100% stable at 3.9ghz...so silicon lottery always plays it's part. Regardless those early quad cores are still surprisingly strong near the 4ghz mark in gaming but their days are numbered.

 

[Karadjgne]

Much to do with the mobo, especially the ddr2 mobo's since they usually top out at ICH 10 and 1066MHz buss. I could only get 3.2GHz out of my q6600/0 for that reason. I'm impressed at 4.0GHz.

 

[atomicWAR]

you all are making me blush...

 

[Karadjgne]

Dude. 4.0GHz on ddr2 is pretty amazing. Not only because you actually got a q6600 that high, but you seriously stretched the limits if what settings were available at that time. Those bios weren't exactly user friendly, and you'd have to get the right ram too that'd take a good OC when you bump up that FSB multiplier. You've basically squeezed out 1000Hp out of a Honda Accord 4 banger. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back, you earned it.

 

[antoine21839]

OK guys, I have a different problem now. I have a 100€ budget for the GPU, i'm using a 350W PSU and I'm wondering what card to buy : R9 380, RX 460, RX 550 or another one ? (I live in France)

PS: don't tell me to take the most powerful, I want the best FOR MY SYSTEM. If the R9 380 is going to be bottlenecked, then I don't want a piece of shit that eats up 190W in my system for nothing.

 

[atomicWAR]

with such a low PSU wattage your looking at the rx 550 or gtx 1050(Ti)

 

[Karadjgne]

Video Card: MSI - Radeon RX 550 2GB AERO ITX OC Video Card (€99.99 @ Amazon France)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1050 2GB D5 Video Card (€121.99 @ Amazon France)
The 1050 is considerably stronger than the 550, it tops the 460 easily but comes in about 1/2way to the 470 in terms of performance. It'll handle anything that q6600 can dish out.

 

[antoine21839]

Video Card: MSI - Radeon RX 550 2GB AERO ITX OC Video Card (€99.99 @ Amazon France)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1050 2GB D5 Video Card (€121.99 @ Amazon France)
The 1050 is considerably stronger than the 550, it tops the 460 easily but comes in about 1/2way to the 470 in terms of performance. It'll handle anything that q6600 can dish out.

Cool, but my budget is 100€, and the GTX 1050 costs 130€... Thats closer to 150€
For the PSU, well, i'm not a PSU 1337 master but I think that it can handle the RX 460 (75w) quite well (tell me if i'm wrong).

 

[atomicWAR]

380W is the minimum wattage PSU for a rx 460.

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm

 

[atomicWAR]

thats why we were recommending the gtx 1050 (ti or not) or the rx 550 because they fell i the range of your PSU. Also the GTX 1050 is more likely to be compatible with your motherboard. AMD GPUs aren't always backwards compatible PCIe wise.

 

[Karadjgne]

Back in the day when pcie x16 started replacing the AGP x8 slot, it was pcie 1.0 standard. Wasn't any real different from AGP. Both nvidia and ATI upgraded to pcie 1.1 which unfortunately had the effect of changing the way power was distributed, so the two types are incompatible, you have to use a 1.0 card on a 1.0 mobo. As time progressed, pcie made its way upto 2.2 and was much better than AGP. At this time (somewhere around the time lga775 started moving to ddr3), Amd changed its power distribution again, in an effort to beat nvidia (which it did). So with the advent of pcie 2.3, amd cards were the superior card, but were no longer backwards compatible. Nvidia played it safe and stayed backward compatible and still is, all the way back to 1.1,whereas AMD modern gpus are only backwards compatible back to the original pcie 2.3. I don't know what your board is. But because of the time period, it's right at the right age to go either way. It's entirely possible it's 2.2,in which case you'd be stuck with old Amd/ATI designs like the X1900 etc, or if it's 2.3 or newer, which will accept the Rx550. The slots are the same either way, it's the internals that are different in the gpu and how it handles power requirements.

It's the reason why ppl will always suggest nvidia, not because of performance (the 1050 will eat a Rx460 for breakfast) but compatability with those old boards. Nvidia will work, Amd is iffy.