Video card for q6600

[msmy300z]

Long story short I have decided to improve my Q6600 @ 3.06 Ghz instead of building from scratch. I currently have an ATI 2900 xt and will shortly have 6 Gb ram.
I have my system in a dual monitor configuration and want a new graphics card that will....
Blow the doors off of my 2900
Use fewer watts (maybe)
Support dx 11
Improve video acceleration
Give me the power to live out the rest of this system...

I know Fermi is coming but out of the Ati cards. Would my Q6600 be strong enough to supply a 5870? I'm affraid that a 5770 may not have the juice to do dx11 justice. Thank you for your input!

 

[happy medium]

5850 or 5870 are your best choices. Your cpu is fine for either.

 

[toyota]

unless you can find a good deal on the 5870 then go with a 5850. a 5870 is not worth the extra 100 bucks especially if you are going to overclock the 5850. I would probably hold out for about 4 weeks if you can to see what happens with Fermi.

 

[MrK6]

unless you can find a good deal on the 5870 then go with a 5850. a 5870 is not worth the extra 100 bucks especially if you are going to overclock the 5850. I would probably hold out for about 4 weeks if you can to see what happens with Fermi.

Agreed. Unless you demand the fastest single GPU out there, the 5870 isn't worth the extra $100. The Q6600 at 3.4GHz is more than sufficient to push a 5850 or a 5870, you should have no worries. I don't think Fermi will do much to the 5850 price, since it isn't in competition with it, but who knows.

 

[cbn]

I'm affraid that a 5770 may not have the juice to do dx11 justice.

Well yeah, according to the Unigine engine benchmarks going from DX10 to DX11 drops FPS by quite a bit. (I think it was something like a 70% performance hit)

EDIT: Here are the benchmarks http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/06/unigine_heaven_benchmark_dx11_tessellation/

It looks like Tesselation (rather than DX11) is what lowers frame rates.

 

[happy medium]

By the time they come out with a direct x 11 game that uses all the direct x 11 features and tesselation ect. ect.ect, the 5850 will be struggling with them.

 

[MarcVenice]

By the time they come out with a direct x 11 game that uses all the direct x 11 features and tesselation ect. ect.ect, the 5850 will be struggling with them.

This will only hold true to a certain extent. Battleforge runs FASTER with DX11, not slower.

Also, I think the unigine-benchmark is a bad example. Games like AvP will make use of tesselation in a way that it shouldn't tax the gpu much more then it would be without tesselation.

Either way, a 5850 will blow your 2900 out of the water, it's roughly 3 times as fast.

 

[happy medium]

this will only hold true to a certain extent. Battleforge runs faster with dx11, not slower.

Also, i think the unigine-benchmark is a bad example. Games like avp will make use of tesselation in a way that it shouldn't tax the gpu much more then it would be without tesselation.

either way, a 5850 will blow your 2900 out of the water, it's roughly 3 times as fast.

+1