what kind of bottle neck with Dell Inspiron 530 (q6600) and HD 5850

[paradigmGT]

I have an old Dell Inspirion 530 machine (Q6600 core2quad, 3gb ram, pci-e 1.0 port) that I want to throw a sapphire HD 5850 into. I understand the HD 5850 is a pci-e 2.0 card. I will be upgrading the stock power supply to a Corsair CX-430 (430w 80+ supply).

Should I expect huge bottle necks running the card in a pci-e 1.0 port instead of the usual 2.0 port? Will it run only at half speed? Should I expect very bad gaming performance?

Thanks!

 

[T_Yamamoto]

It'll be just dandy. Don't worry

 

[paradigmGT]

Cool.

Also, would I see significant improvement in performance if I upgraded the system RAM from 3gb to 4gb? It uses DDR2 PC2-6400 or DDR2 PC2-5300 (non-ECC) and can take a max of 4gb.

 

[SPBHM]

PCIE 1.x speed is not going to be a big problem... actually the speed of the CPU (and also VGA) is going to be a more visible limitation...

but it really depends on the game and settings you use...

I don't think there is much reason to worry about, if you have a slower card with the q6600 it can be a nice upgrade... you can play most games decently with a q6600 and 5850.


if you could overclock the q6600 it would also help.

3 to 4 GB is not going to improve performance in most games, but in some it can have a significant effect.