GPU for old Core2 system (don't laugh!)

[crisium]

I would not buy a pre-GCN AMD card, period. And for a slower C2D system I think Nvidia would be preferred.

 

[Headfoot]

Check somewhere other than eBay. The good deals are found in forums like this and on ArsTechnica and HardOCP in the for sale / trade forums. Try OverclockersUK as well for UK specific target audience. You should be able to get a used 7950B/7970/280/280x/670/680/760 for pretty cheap

 

[Baron Fel]

I would not buy a pre-GCN AMD card, period. And for a slower C2D system I think Nvidia would be preferred.

I do not know what you are talking about. Proof? Also could be only relevant to recent GPUs, not the 5850.

 

[MrTeal]

Just be careful with the old 5870s. A lot of them have lived very hard lives.

 

[crisium]

I do not know what you are talking about. Proof? Also could be only relevant to recent GPUs, not the 5850.

All pre-GCN AMD GPUs are officially on legacy support. Fermi is not. The importance of this should not be ignored. I would consider a pre-GCN AMD purchase in December 2015 untenable when compared to Fermi and Kepler.

Also it is somewhat common knowledge that AMD generally performs worse with DX11 on weaker CPUs than Nvidia.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1495236/amd-vs-nvidia-cpu-overhead/0_100
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=398858

Also it is standard to see AMD GPUs get faster than Nvidia's at higher resolutions, that is an example of the CPU overhead (see any TPU performance summary).

I wouldn't necessarily recommend a noticeably slower Nvidia GPU over a faster AMD GPU on a slow CPU. But if price and performance of the cards (when benched with fast CPUs) are comparable then it is wise to choose Nvidia on a slow CPU.