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Recommend me a card to pair with this E8400!

Red Storm

Red Storm

Lifer
I'm donating one of my current rigs to my little brother, and the 8800GTS in that machine finally died out, so now I've got to get a capable card to run it with for him. He games at 1080P, and the PC itself has an E8400 running stock (3Ghz) with 8GB of ram, and a more than capable power supply (Corsair 650W).

So, what should I get? A 460? 6850? The $200 5870 that expires tonight? I'm not sure how high I should/could go before the CPU becomes the bottleneck in games.
 
If you can get a 5870 for $200.. that would be my first choice!

For the love er.. hate of bottleneck.. please OC your CPU.
 
Ordered the 5870, I'm sure he'll be happy when I surprise him with the rig.

busydude said:
If you can get a 5870 for $200.. that would be my first choice!

For the love er.. hate of bottleneck.. please OC your CPU.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I haven't actually OCed anything in a while (I run mostly server builds that need stability more than speed)... what would be a reasonable OC expectation for an E8400 with stock cooling?
 
Red Storm said:
Ordered the 5870, I'm sure he'll be happy when I surprise him with the rig.



Hmm, I haven't actually OCed anything in a while (I run mostly server builds that need stability more than speed)... what would be a reasonable OC expectation for an E8400 with stock cooling?
Click to expand...
I would not oc with the stock cooler. you could get a fairly cheap Arctic 7 and do a quick and easy 3.6. honestly with an E8400 I would have saved 40-50 bucks and gone with a cheaper gpu. for 200 bucks though it is a pretty good deal.
 
The E8400 easily goes up to 3.6GHz without any serious tweaking, get an after market cooler though...

I play at 16x10 and my overclocked GTX 460 1GB is plenty for me, actually my old GTS 8800 512 was plenty for everything except crysis too.

Here in Toronto the prices are a little out of wack, so i cant compare to the deals in the states, but the GTX460 1GB is great for this processor. it also depends what games your brother likes to play i think
 
HD 5870 sounds like a great deal, if you can put up with infamous Catalyst issues like stuttering and grey screens. I would prefer a solid GTX 460 1GB or drop a few bucks more and get a GTX 470, It consumes more power than the offerings from ATI, but the brute force of the 470 will show itself with high framerates.
 
Ataristic said:
HD 5870 sounds like a great deal, if you can put up with infamous Catalyst issues like stuttering and grey screens. I would prefer a solid GTX 460 1GB or drop a few bucks more and get a GTX 470, It consumes more power than the offerings from ATI, but the brute force of the 470 will show itself with high framerates.
Click to expand...

Well I must be one of the lucky few that doesn't get these issues. I've had very few problems from either side over the years actually.

Went ahead and got an Arctic 7 to OC the 8400. I want this rig to last a bit more, and that's exactly what a few hundred more MHz will give me.
 
Red Storm said:
Well I must be one of the lucky few that doesn't get these issues. I've had very few problems from either side over the years actually.

Went ahead and got an Arctic 7 to OC the 8400. I want this rig to last a bit more, and that's exactly what a few hundred more MHz will give me.
Click to expand...

I think you will be happy, yeah the 5870 will be overkill for your current CPU but now when you go to a new CPU in a year whether it be SB or bulldozer you can always grab a second 5870 for cheap and then still have a great GPU setup.
 
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