New Graphics Card Time

Kage

Golden Master
Messages
13,873
I'm thinking of upgrading my graphics card once I have all my hard drives sorted out.

I currently have the 8800GTS 640 and have since I built the PC. It has served me well, but for Crysis 2, and Portal 2 (Battlefield 3), I just feel like upgrading it to max everything out (Portal 2 probably won't need all that much :p )

I'm thinking of either the AMD Radeon 6950 or the Nvidia 660Ti.

I'm pushed more towards the 6950, but I'm wondering whether CUDA will be worth keeping Nvidia for, but they both have the same kind of performance.

My CPU however is the Q6600, so in terms of bottle necking, how bad will it be? Will there be any point upgrading the card to something of that spec?:confused:

I tried overclocking my CPU last night from 2.4GHZ to 3.2GHZ (I haven't changed my sig in a while), and for some reason, even though it could reach that speed when I first got it, now, I set it to that and run a Prime 95 test, and it resets. However Windows, etc boots up fine.

I set the values to 400mhz at x8 multiplier, which also kept the memory at 1:1:1 ratio too of 800mhz.
 
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An unstable Prime95 run means that you're pushing something too hard. Relax it a bit or increase voltages slightly and see if it helps.

Do you utilize CUDA? Distributed computing, etc? If not, it's not anything more than just a weak selling point on the GPU.

The 6950 is a fine GPU. You'll get 90-99% of the performance of an HD 5870, and just to put it in perspective:
Radeon HD 6950 & 6970 review

Your current card isn't even on that list

And just because linking 3DMark feels cheap, here's a game chart too:
Radeon HD 6950 & 6970 review
 
I went from a GTS250 to an HD5770, and I'm /much/ more happy with the ATI card. I really don't miss any of the features. I originally went with the GTS250 because I thought PhysX was the coolest thing ever, and I loved Mirrors Edge. I honestly don't miss it one bit though, none of the games I play now use it anyhow. Very few actually do, and the ones that do are pretty much identical without it. It's over rated imo.
 
I remember the times of myself having the ATI 9800 PRO. I loved that card.
Games somehow looked better too. Since switching to this 8800GTS, even though its proven me well over the years, games somehow don't have the same look...

I think any card in the mid range now will beat my 8800GTS 640 out of the water :p

Thanks guys
 
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