Which Card is Best for me

[Jonathan_106]

My rig-
i5 2500k (sandy bridge)
16 GB ram 1333
Radeon 6950 (one I want to upgrade)

I want the best cart I can get (well 300 dollarish price ceiling) without it being overkill for my rig. I mean I don't see the point in spending a ton on a GPU to try and play at 4k only to bottleneck.

1444 p would be nice if I can do it. but 1080p 60fps is the goal.

The NVIDIA 1060 looks interesting and so does the 450, but I am not sure I can get the most out of those.

I do not plan on dual GPU as I have had bad experiences with that in the past.

 

[pigeoncracker]

What I would be doing is getting the fastest ram you can for your system, as high speed ram gives a decent performance boost with the i5 2500k. Overclocking the stuff out of that monster, and then dropping money for a RX 480 or 3GB 1060. You'll get a slight CPU bottleneck with either card, but that would be lessened by higher speed ram and a decent overclock. Sandy bridge is limited to 2133MHz ram, so try to get near there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4
This would be enlightening for you.

 

[Jonathan_106]

What I would be doing is getting the fastest ram you can for your system, as high speed ram gives a decent performance boost with the i5 2500k. Overclocking the stuff out of that monster, and then dropping money for a RX 480 or 3GB 1060. You'll get a slight CPU bottleneck with either card, but that would be lessened by higher speed ram and a decent overclock. Sandy bridge is limited to 2133MHz ram, so try to get near there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4
This would be enlightening for you.

hmm, I use an ASUS P67. which I think goes up to 2133. I don't recall why I went with 1333 back in 2012. Must have been a big price jump to go higher. Ya leaning towards the RX 480, I need new monitors so I think I will check freesync out. I am hoping to get another 2-3 years out of this upgrade then make a fresh build. I think doing the ram and GPU now can get me there.

 

[pigeoncracker]

You will probably be able to get a year or two out of it with that upgrade. You won't be running 1440p at max settings, maybe medium or low, but you would definitely be able to max it at 1080p with an RX 480. Getting a aftermarket cooler for your CPU, if you don't already have one, would be good for overclocking. 4.5GHz seems to be a common frequency that people hit with the chip.

 

[Jonathan_106]

What I would be doing is getting the fastest ram you can for your system, as high speed ram gives a decent performance boost with the i5 2500k. Overclocking the stuff out of that monster, and then dropping money for a RX 480 or 3GB 1060. You'll get a slight CPU bottleneck with either card, but that would be lessened by higher speed ram and a decent overclock. Sandy bridge is limited to 2133MHz ram, so try to get near there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4
This would be enlightening for you.

ok watched the video, went back and looked at my invoices from Tigerdirect... I bought 1600 mghz ram, but it only shows in the bios 1333. How do I fix this?

 

[pigeoncracker]

ok watched the video, went back and looked at my invoices from Tigerdirect... I bought 1600 mghz ram, but it only shows in the bios 1333. How do I fix this?

Should be under Ai Tweaker in the BIOS, by memory frequency. I believe you should be able to change that to 1600MHz. You could also try enabling XMP and seeing if that affords a boost or not.

 

[Jonathan_106]

ok watched the video, went back and looked at my invoices from Tigerdirect... I bought 1600 mghz ram, but it only shows in the bios 1333. How do I fix this?

Should be under Ai Tweaker in the BIOS, by memory frequency. I believe you should be able to change that to 1600MHz. You could also try enabling XMP and seeing if that affords a boost or not.

ya I fixed it. It must have reverted to default settings, I had a virus a while back they thought it was cool to over load my system so I must have downclocked and forgot to fix it.

I run it at 4.2 OC, but in the past I have gone up to 4.7 when I was playing games that I needed it(or it help). I just leave at 4.2 when the current game I am playing does not need it (right now its EU4, so not as much as Battlefield 4 or something).

I will do my next rig when 4k capable gpus are in the mass market range (250-350) or intel releases the next Sandy Bridge you have to upgrade and now type CPU.

Thanks for the help.