Getting an ancient system back up on it's feet, used GPU question

[SimianR]

So I have an older Core 2 Duo system and I'm going to throw a few upgrades in it to make it somewhat gaming viable.

Right now its

E8400
4GB DDR2 800
500W power supply
no video card.

I found another 4GB of DDR2 cheap, and also bought a cheap Q6600 for $25 to throw in there since it seems like a quad core will make a difference. I have a decent cooler and plan to overclock it.

Now I want to buy a used video card and I'm seeing lots of used 7950's for around $120 CAD (which seems great considering the R9 280 is still $250 new). I'm also seeing some Geforce 760's for around the same price. I guess the biggest difference will be the 2gb of VRAM vs the 3gb on the 7950. I'm also wondering if the 760 would be the better choice because this system is running a very old CPU - I wonder if the CPU overhead issues will make a noticeable difference here. I've also considered a 750 Ti (but it seems like I can get a lot more bang for the buck by going with a faster used card) or even the 950 which is supposed to be out in about a week. What do you guys think? And yes I know the CPU/system is very old - I'm not expecting any miracles.

 

[myocardia]

I'm also wondering if the 760 would be the better choice because this system is running a very old CPU - I wonder if the CPU overhead issues will make a noticeable difference here.

Yeah, even if you are able to run that Q6600 @ the maximum that your RAM will allow (3.2 Ghz), your CPU is going to be slowing you down quite a bit, if you're using an AMD card. A 7950, even a factory overclocked version is about exactly as fast as a GTX 760: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/12 <---That is with a 6 core/12 thread i7-3960X, btw, and it is close to twice as fast single-threaded as a Q6600 @ 3.2 Ghz, I'm pretty sure.

The 7950 is about the same amount faster than the GTX 760 in other games, but they are about the most-evenly-matched two cards the two companies have ever released. With a Q6600, though, you really want a GTX 760, which is rougly 50% faster than a GTX 750 Ti, btw.

 

[Hitman928]

I'm guessing that review was using old drivers, you need to compare the 280 which is a 7950 boost

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1038?vs=1332

With that, your cpu will hold you back but not completely. You can always turn up the graphical settings with a faster card. I would go for the fastest card you can get at the price you want to pay and call it good.

 

[Seba]

I had a E8400 and upgraded the graphics card to a GTX 660 (from HD 4850). Later on I upgraded to a Haswell platform and noticed considerable improvements in games. So the E8400 was bottlenecking the GTX 660. I do not think that a Q6600 will be capable to use a GTX 760 (or similar card) at it's full potential. In your situation I'll buy a GTX 750 Ti (maybe a used one). Even that may be overkill for your CPU.

 

[myocardia]

I'm guessing that review was using old drivers, you need to compare the 280 which is a 7950 boost

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1038?vs=1332

Umm, no it isn't, which is why the actual 7950 Boost scores considerably lower: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1038?vs=1033

With that, your cpu will hold you back but not completely. You can always turn up the graphical settings with a faster card. I would go for the fastest card you can get at the price you want to pay and call it good.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[happy medium]

I'd wait a week and grab a brand new gtx950/ti for about 150$. It should be a bit faster than a gtx750ti but slower than a gtx960/7950. A perfect card for a q6600@ 3.2.

 

[Hitman928]

Umm, no it isn't, which is why the actual 7950 Boost scores considerably lower: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1038?vs=1033

Again, the database is using old results with old drivers for the 7950 boost. Just look at the anandtech writeup on the 280(x) announcement.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7828/amd-announces-radeon-r9-280-radeon-hd-7950b-returns

AMD will be releasing a 7950 variant in the form of the R9 280, which is being announced today. The R9 280 will be filling in the same roll that its predecessor filled, which is offering a product between a full Tahiti (280X/7970) and a full Pitcairn (270X/7870) with pricing to match, while also serving as the standard lower tier bin for salvaged Tahiti GPUs. This marks the 3rd such release for the 7950, first being released in its vanilla 7950 form, then in its 7950 with Boost form, and finally now as the R9 280.

The R9 280 isn&#8217;t quite a rebadge of the 7950B[oost], but it&#8217;s going to be very, very close. The specs provided by AMD put the boost clock at just 8MHz higher than the 7950B[oost], with an unknown base clock (AMD still doesn&#8217;t publish that information), and every other aspect remaining unchanged.

It's a 7950 Boost with a 0.8% increase in clock speed, for all intents and purposes, they are the same.

http://www.techspot.com/news/55877-amd-launches-radeon-r9-280-as-a-re-branded-hd-7950-boost.html

The mid-to-high end GPU is essentially a re-brand of the Radeon HD 7950 Boost that was released in mid-2012

A well cooled 7950B will show essentially no difference between itself and a 280. At most you might have to increase the power target of the 7950Boost to maintain boost clocks, but again, a good model (i.e. non-reference) should have no issues maintaining boost anyway. When the 280 came out, reviewers stopped updating their 7950 results and just started using the 280 because they are the same.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What's the intended use of the system? Intended OS to install?

For instance, if you're doing vintage gaming, you might want to go a generation or two back, so there's Windows XP support and so on. (Radeon 4870 or something.)

So it's important.

 

[Hitman928]

I'm pretty sure both AMD and Nvidia had WinXP support through at least GCN 1.0 (HD7000 series) and Kepler (GTX 600/700 series). Not sure about the newer cards though.

 

[SimianR]

It's not going to be a vintage system. I'm going to put Windows 10 on it. I'm also not going to be playing super high res (using a crappy LCD 1440x900 monitor).

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I've got a Q6600 computer that went from a Radeon 6850 to 7850 (1050/1250) and then to overclocking the processor to 3 GHz. The video card upgrade didn't really budge problem spots I was getting before, overclocking the CPU did. Then the 15.7 Radeon drivers helped more (also Windows 10). Now I feel the CPU/GPU are more fairly balanced. I'm not sure what this tells you, if anything, but that's my experience.

 

[SPBHM]

Q6600 will be slow specially without OC, I would recommend a 771 xeon + the sticker mod, around the same price but a lot better power usage/performance (something like a e5440 at least)

in any case... the GTX 950 might be the way to go once is out in a few weeks? should perform decently, supports DX12.1, better drivers (DX11 MT), and hardware HEVC video decode?

it will probably cost a little more than some used 7950, and be slower, but considering the resolution and CPU, I think it makes sense.

 

[TheProgrammer]

I used to use GF2 cards to give slower Athlons a good all around system boost back in the day. Nvidia had acceleration built into their drivers for XP, and it made a world of difference from other vendors.
Today I think that card is the 960/950. I have an old C2Q system that I'm looking to breathe new life into and really interested in the 960. It has exceptional Linux support, best video encoding/decoding on the market (even best among the other Geforces), and Vulkan/DX12 support.

While I think Nvidia dropped accelerating the desktop in the Vista era and beyond, a 960 would give the best results on a Q6600 today of all your choices. Vulkan/DX12 may well eliminate the fact the CPU is older, singlehandedly. Giving you really good performance regardless of the fact it's a Q6600, you'll basically get the performance out of your card that you would on a much newer CPU.

950 is worth waiting for. It'll probably be just the thing for older rigs like this IMO.

 

[SimianR]

The 950 sounds like it might be worth checking out. I'll wait a few weeks and check it out. At this res I'm guessing VRAM won't be an issue anyway - but it does bug me that in 2015 there are still so many cards launching with 2GB. There will be a 4GB variant but at a hefty premium I'm sure. Anyway, hopefully it launches next week and we'll see some reviews.

 

[TheProgrammer]

Also don't forget that these sites are designed to get you to upgrade needlessly. Check this out http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/i...ignificantly-bottleneck-gtx-970.html#15446588

-Guy with a Q9450 upgrades his CPU to a pretty pricey platform upgrade to a 5820K Haswell 6-core. No change in minimum FPS.
-Buys a GTX970, finds his minimums increase.
-Tries the GTX970 in his old Q9450 to test. Same minimums.

These are the types of things AT, Toms and everyone else can't be trusted to tell you. They exist to sell Intel/AMD/NV hardware. They're not going to test this for you. Just tell you to replace everything everytime.

Minimums are all that matter, and keeping a FPS average above your refresh rate. So in my case as long as I improve my minimums and stay about 60FPS, I'm set. A new CPU will increase your averages and max FPS. But if you're already consistently above your refresh rate, the CPU upgrade was pretty expensive for no gain.

Skylake is excellent and if you're not just gaming- it may be worth the upgrade. But I'd suggest putting a video card in your rig first, seeing how it does. You probably don't need a thing even with a Q6600.

I'm considering buying a GTX970 for my Q9450 rig now. No reason not to, it'd be a better experience than a guy with a SandyBridge with a Radeon 7850 or similar.
Just if you benchmark against someone, make sure you set the rules to be minimums only. That's the most important thing anyway other than staying above your refresh rate consistently.

With DX12/Vulkan, the CPU limitation is going to be dramatically reduced if not gone entirely. So just wait for those games and then you'll be really surprised. If nothing else, these advantages will help you wait out hardware even longer.

 

[bradyapba]

I would wait for the 950s, as that seems probably the target for you. If budget and time is also what your looking at, I would consider a 750ti. Due to the release of the 950, the 750 ti has dropped into the $120 range. Esp since you are playing at 1440x900.

This for 119.99 might be hitting your sweet spot, and at least new you have a warranty, and not someones used card, to which you have no idea what they did to it.

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...ie=UTF8&qid=1439195254&sr=8-1&keywords=750+ti

 

[sm625]

Also don't forget that these sites are designed to get you to upgrade needlessly. Check this out http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/i...ignificantly-bottleneck-gtx-970.html#15446588

-Guy with a Q9450 upgrades his CPU to a pretty pricey platform upgrade to a 5820K Haswell 6-core. No change in minimum FPS.
-Buys a GTX970, finds his minimums increase.
-Tries the GTX970 in his old Q9450 to test. Same minimums.

That is clearly an outlier. He is talking about one specific game. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests both minimum and average frame rates do increase significantly when upgrading from Core 2.

 

[DustinBrowder]

Get an AMD r7 260x, it goes for around $110-120, its pretty much the same performance as the 750ti, a tad bit slower, but its $30 cheaper.

 

[therealnickdanger]

This will sound stupid, but I had an old GT 430 1GB sitting around, so I put it into a Q8400 system and to my surprise it could play Borderlands 2 really well with most settings at medium to high at 900p. Very smooth with the exception of epic loot 'splosions.

That said, the GTX 470 1.2GB and HD6870 1GB could both play ultra everything no problem on that same system. Just about any GPU at or above the performance of a GTX 750 should be just fine for playing games on your Q6600, but like others have said, just get the best GPU you can afford and OC that CPU!

EDIT: It wouldn't hurt to get a GPU that offers the best DX12 features either just for a bit of future-preparedness, as long as you're loading Windows 10 anyway. The 950/Ti might just be the right card at the right price...

 

[RussianSensation]

Get an AMD r7 260x, it goes for around $110-120, its pretty much the same performance as the 750ti, a tad bit slower, but its $30 cheaper.

He is in Canada though. It's easy to find 1Ghz 7970 for $150 CDN. I bet if you offer these guys $140-145, they will take it.

Gigabyte Windforce 7970 1Ghz OC = $150 obo

Sapphire Dual X 7970 - $150 obo

HD7970 Ghz is 2X faster than a GTX750Ti/R9 260X.

Since the OP is playing at 1440x900, he will be CPU limited but with a 7970, he can crank AA to the max and not really care. This is where the huge advantage of a more powerful used GPU comes in.

I'd wait for prices of 950 in Canada and then decide. But considering the going Canadian prices of GTX750Ti (don't forget to add tax!), the chance of a GTX950 offering good value against a used 7950/7970/760/670 is basically close to 0%.

Just keep in mind that even with a GTX980, even a 3.0Ghz C2Q9650 is a huge bottleneck in some modern games, so have realistic expectations of the performance depending on how modern the games you play are.

http://www.techspot.com/article/1039-ten-years-intel-cpu-compared/page5.html

 

[SimianR]

Yeah - I think I'm still leaning towards a used GPU but I am curious about the 950. It's hard to ignore the value in a used 7950/7970 though. Since it's only another week I'll probably wait for the 950 reviews and make my decision then.

I wish I had known about the Xeon sticker mod - the Xeon 5450 seems to be pretty decent. I wish I could find some gaming benchmarks for the xeon though.

 

[TheProgrammer]

That is clearly an outlier. He is talking about one specific game. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests both minimum and average frame rates do increase significantly when upgrading from Core 2.

Yes, but it may not matter enough. My point was as long as he's staying above his refresh rate- nothing else matters. You could go to Skylake and if you were above 60hz/fps consistently in his game of choice, it was a waste (if you upgraded just for gaming on that title).

More time can be spent profiling performance in existing rigs, it would've prevented a lot of wasted upgrades/money and of course needless use of world resources for products that weren't needed.

Of course there's the "because I can", but for me the CPU and GPU market plateaued long ago. Most websites bench at AA/AF, now with DSR, stuff I never did use much and don't even care for. They'll do everything they can to make it seem like an upgrade is necessary.

For me, unless I buy into SteamVR (which I probably will), I'm not moving off of 1080P until they no longer make 1080P panels. It's just good enough for me.

But I also went from a Commodore 64 all the way to today, I've seen enough technological churn and just don't believe the resolution race needs to continue. 1080P is a good stopping point for the most part.
I want higher resolutions for actual gains, meaning VR. My desktop is fine as-is. I can see why people legit want 120/144hz. If I still played FPS a lot like in their 90's heydays, I'd buy into that.

OP will be fine with a cheap Crucial MX200 SSD + GF950(Ti) and very surprised how far that rig will go with those.

Then, wait till 16nm GPUs and if he wants VR- build a Pascal or Arctic Islands rig with Skylake. Otherwise, that E6400/GF950 rig will work great for everything he throws at it off the Steam top 10 list and top 10 from Twitch.tv. No AA/AF and he'll be set.
Meaning relevant games, not the games used in these benchmark sites.

 

[SimianR]

So I ended up going with an R9 280x.. because the price was too good to pass up.

1 of: Sapphire 11221-22-20G Radeon R9 280X 3 GB GDDR5 DL-DVI-I/SL-DVI-D/HDMI/Dual Mini DP Tri-X OC Version PCI-Express Graphics Card
Sold by: Vision Store USA (seller profile)

Condition: New
CDN$ 69.29

Now.. whether or not they end up shipping this thing at this price is another matter. Let's hope Amazon will cover me if this ends up being bs.

 

[Blue_Max]

I'd advise one of two choices:

1) Go for the card you plan to keep for ~2 years NOW. Use it with the Q6600, then continue using it when you upgrade your CPU/mobo/RAM.

or

2) Go cheap! The Q6600 and 4GB DDR2 should be very inexpensive to bother spending the money to upgrade - otherwise save that money for new stuff. Similarly, you can find used video cards that are "decent" for cheap. For example, I got a PAIR of GTX 570's for $50 each. One for each of my kids with the same CPU class as you. That's not a rare deal. I see cards like the Radeon 7770 go for $40 pretty regularly. And that's $Canadian, just like you.


So, go big or go cheap and save your money for that upgrade. You've already bought the DDR2 and Q6600 so it's too late to advise you not to. You're locked into the plan of using the Q6600 until you can afford the CPU. I'd go with route #2... get the cheapest "good" card for the games you play. But put the money you saved in a jar (real or otherwise!) so it doesn't get spent on something else while you wait. (Don't let the wifey know you have it!)

I know what it's like to want computer toys but have next to NO spare cash to do it. Hang in there.

 

[bradyapba]

id be curious to see if you get any of the cards at that price. None of them stayed at that price long, or are in stock. Did you get the card?