Upgrading graphics card on old CPU - makes sense or not?

[danci1973]

I'm not a 'serious' gamer, I do occasionally play a game or two (recently Far Cry 3) and with these new games my PC is struggling.

It is based on Intel Q6600 (quad core) at 2,4GHz, has 6GB DDR2 memory and a GeForce 9600 GT 512kB graphics card, running Windows 7 Ultimate off a SSD drive. I'm quite happy with 'general' performance, it's only the latest games that make it 'sweat'. For example - to achieve 40+ FPS in Far Cry 3, I had to run it in 800x600 mode with video quality set to 'low'.

Would it make sense to replace the graphics card with a newer one, something like NVidia GTX 650 or perhaps GTX 660? Will that alone improve things 'enough' or will the CPU and the rest of the system then become the bottleneck?


D.

 

[JefferyD90]

That CPU should be able to handle most any of the Nvidia cards up until the 400 series. The 500 or 600 series would be too much, unless you plan on a new build eventually anyways. On the AMD side it should handle a low end 6000 series or a high end 5000

 

[Derza10]

Getting the GTX 660 would improve your game play by a good amount - but it will be bottlenecked by your CPU... In my opinion it is better to upgrade to the highest GPU within reason that you can afford - that way when you do upgrade to a new computer you can just move the video card over and not have to buy an new one again. Here is the cheapest GTX 660.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500270

 

[swifty_morgan]

more or less agree with Derza, but wouldn't buy the card listed ( my personal feeling). others are similar in price.

the card you have is a dog and replacing it will bring some new life into your old system.

FC3 is brutal on more powerful machines so cutting back on some settings will still be mandatory.

 

[timmy97236]

I had a amd phenom 1.8ghz quad core which i upgraded with a hd 6790 and i ran battlefield 3 at 1080p on decently high graphics... so i think that getting a good gpu will definitely increase your experience. Your cpu which is much better then the one that i had will only be bottlenecking at much higher gpus like the 670 or 680.

Also is there a reason why people are suggesting the gtx series... they're bang for the buck ratio is much lower then the ati hd series.

here is a link to the best gpus for the money... anything between $150-300 will increase your play experience dramatically. I personally would get a hd 7870... is very reasonably priced for the performance. I would not recommend the gtx cards unless your going to go for the 670 or better, but those cards are more expensive and really worth it unless your going to be editing and utilizing the cuda cores.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-3.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-4.html

Basically just look at your price range and pick the card that you like... once you decide on a specific card... look at the different companies and see what they offer. For example, msi has a lot of their cards come with factory overclocked and with better cooling... example being:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127662

 

[danci1973]

Thank you all. So a GTX 660 would be a good choice for now and would still be 'OK' in future if/when I get a new PC.


About ATI (now AMD?) - I had Radeon's before and I learned to hate their drivers and control panel - slow, unresponsive or quite often just not working. I suppose they managed to fix those issues but somehow I'm still reluctant to try them again.

With NVidia it was pretty much smooth sailing - even with Linux.

D.

 

[JefferyD90]

AMD usually has much better drivers than Nvidia. But whatever floats your boat.

 

[timmy97236]

Yeah I never had problems with AMD drivers as well... You can always choice not to install the control panel if you dont like it during the drivers install, you just have to choice custom instead of express install... but yeah really whatever floats your boat.

 

[danci1973]

Well.. My ATI experience may have been before 'your time' - no disrespect intended... :lol:

I'll certainly look into RadeOn's now - especially if it saves me a buck for the same performance.

D.

 

[swifty_morgan]

not even in the same park.

click on link, go down to drop down menu, check numbers.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_geforce_gtx_660_hawk_review,1.html

 

[blazorthon]

not even in the same park.

click on link, go down to drop down menu, check numbers.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_geforce_gtx_660_hawk_review,1.html

I'm not sure of what you're trying to prove because I stopped reading after I say the date. Early 2012 makes it a pretty useless article or whatever it is for proving any point today. Also, Guru3D really likes to not use up to date AMD drivers in their tests compared to drivers used for Nvidia tests. They're by far not the least biased site around. Anand and Tom's (among a few others) are generally better about that.

 

[iceclock]

id recommand changing ur plateform, and than upgrading ur videocard.

whats ur budget?

 

[JefferyD90]

Why in the hell do people go looking for a 3rd party program to install their drivers for them? Then actually spend the time to install it, and set it up, when in that time they could just find the drivers anyways... its silly. Poor installations of Windows is the #1 cause of bad performance.

 

[ph1sh55]

First, you could overclock your CPU to at least 3.0GHZ. The Q6600 shouldn't have a problem hitting that.. that'll help just a little bit, but it's free and worth doing (check the forums here for some guides, it's actually not that big of an undertaking.) For video card yeah I'd upgrade from a 9600GT even with that cpu.

If you are a FPS gamer and if down the road you want to try out lightboost for zero motion blur on a 120hz monitor get an nvidia card. That's pretty niche but if I had to re-do my purchase I'd probably go nvidia for that reason. Also, I haven't been happy with my ATI 7850 experience due to the crappiness of the catalyst control center and various driver issues.
7850 is a pretty good value sweet spot, though.

 

[swifty_morgan]

I'm not sure of what you're trying to prove because I stopped reading after I say the date. Early 2012 makes it a pretty useless article or whatever it is for proving any point today. Also, Guru3D really likes to not use up to date AMD drivers in their tests compared to drivers used for Nvidia tests. They're by far not the least biased site around. Anand and Tom's (among a few others) are generally better about that.

obviously a fan boy or you would realize both companies update drivers.
let's see, oh yes WAY BACK in October 22nd, 2012.... hmmm that would be almost 3.5 months time........ hmmmm. Makes me feel old.
if you don't want to read it don't.......... don't sit here and tell me a card is better when it isn't.

 

[iceclock]

meh i think researching many sites and getting a sum of it all gets u most accurate information. also no need for infantile remarks.

 

[blazorthon]

obviously a fan boy or you would realize both companies update drivers.
let's see, oh yes WAY BACK in October 22nd, 2012.... hmmm that would be almost 3.5 months time........ hmmmm. Makes me feel old.
if you don't want to read it don't.......... don't sit here and tell me a card is better when it isn't.

I never said anything about what the companies do. My point is that Guru3D uses up to date Nvidia drivers and tends to not use up to date AMD drivers. For example, when I read their GTX 660 Ti comparison last year, they had the latest Nvidia drivers, yet used friggen January 2012 drivers for AMD.

Furthermore, I never said anything about any card being better or worse than any other in this thread. I specifically said that I wasn't sure of what you're trying to prove.

Both AMD and Nvidia have had several driver updates since October. Furthermore, perhaps my browser had a glitch, but it said March, not October for me.

 

[swifty_morgan]

don't mean to jump in your ****..... my day is coming to an end and it's been a rough one. sorry.

 

[JefferyD90]

I never said anything about what the companies do. My point is that Guru3D uses up to date Nvidia drivers and tends to not use up to date AMD drivers. For example, when I read their GTX 660 Ti comparison last year, they had the latest Nvidia drivers, yet used friggen January 2012 drivers for AMD.

Furthermore, I never said anything about any card being better or worse than any other in this thread. I specifically said that I wasn't sure of what you're trying to prove.

Both AMD and Nvidia have had several driver updates since October. Furthermore, perhaps my browser had a glitch, but it said March, not October for me.

Once again, that is NOT AMDs fault... It actually looks like Nvidia has this 3rd party company on their payroll... So you can work with crooks like that, or you can choose to just simply spend 10 seconds to find the drivers yourself (so you know they are up to date)

 

[blazorthon]

Once again, that is NOT AMDs fault... It actually looks like Nvidia has this 3rd party company on their payroll... So you can work with crooks like that, or you can choose to just simply spend 10 seconds to find the drivers yourself (so you know they are up to date)

I never once blamed AMD. AMD had nothing to do with it. I blamed Guru3D for giving Nvidia an unfair advantage by using out of date drivers for their AMD card tests. I also find that it is common practice on a lot of web sites to do this and like I said earlier, Tom's and Anand (among a few others) are among the few that do not give either side an unfair advantage. I don't waste my time using out od date drivers on my Radeon 7850 and I didn't do that either on my GTX 560 Ti before my 7850, although I do tend to wait for some reviews of new drivers before updating since those old WHQL 196.75 drivers burned my 8800 GT a while back.

 

[cuecuemore]

I'd upgrade your GPU to the best you can afford and not worry about bottlenecking.

 

[blazorthon]

I'd upgrade your GPU to the best you can afford and not worry about bottlenecking.

The graphics is by far the greater bottleneck in OP's situation.

 

[swifty_morgan]

I've had drivers ruin cards before. the cards were too old for the drivers being written I guess. architecture couldn't handle it.

 

[JefferyD90]

I never once blamed AMD. AMD had nothing to do with it. I blamed Guru3D for giving Nvidia an unfair advantage by using out of date drivers for their AMD card tests. I also find that it is common practice on a lot of web sites to do this and like I said earlier, Tom's and Anand (among a few others) are among the few that do not give either side an unfair advantage. I don't waste my time using out od date drivers on my Radeon 7850 and I didn't do that either on my GTX 560 Ti before my 7850, although I do tend to wait for some reviews of new drivers before updating since those old WHQL 196.75 drivers burned my 8800 GT a while back.

I update drivers immediately... the ONLY time the performance goes down I in a very new game on SPECIFIC configurations. And usually that is fixed with a patch, usually within a week. And I just simply think its stupid to use a 3rd party program to do something that takes you NO time to do yourself... you can probably make the overall process go by quicker.

 

[blazorthon]

I update drivers immediately... the ONLY time the performance goes down I in a very new game on SPECIFIC configurations. And usually that is fixed with a patch, usually within a week. And I just simply think its stupid to use a 3rd party program to do something that takes you NO time to do yourself... you can probably make the overall process go by quicker.

I used to update immediately (I don't use any third party program to do it, I do it manually), like I said, until Nvidia's WHQL 196.75 drivers burned y 8800 GT. I don't take such chances anymore and prefer to wait a few days after they're released or if sooner, when a good review of them is out :/