Mid-range GPUs for my Q6600, thoughts?

[RhynoCZ]

Simple question, would it be still worth investing my money into a modern graphics card for my ''classic'' Q6600 PC? I did this before, about 3 years ago or so, bought a modern mid-range HD6790 (basically double the power and RAM of the old HD4850, which was in the computer since the dawn of times) and it did kick the in-game performance significantly up.

Would a modern GPU with more memory do the trick yet again?

Specs (build '07): Asus P5K/EPU; Intel Q6600 @2.4GHz (can OC up to 3.0GHz)*; 8GB of DDR2 RAM @800Mhz (can OC up to 1.1Ghz)*, 600w PSU, Sata II HDDs, ATi HD6790 (1Gb).

*There's no actual in-game performance improvement, so I run it at stock clocks (only ''old'' games profit from the OC-ing, and those run at 60fps at stock clocks anyway)
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[Going]

One computer of mine has the Intel Q6600 with 8GB DDR2 ram and ATI 7950 graphics card.

Works ok, plays a lot of modernish games that I tried with it. I believe I had a problem with GTA5, not sure if it was because I only had 4GB of ram at the time.

[Jayy]

CPU would probably bottle neck a higher end GPU but not really sure.

I have 2 x GTX 680's here, 4GB cards each. I'm going to put them on eBay for £100 each soon.

[RhynoCZ]

I was thinking about ATi R7 370 or Nvidia GTX 750 Ti. As I've never had a card capable of PhysX, I'd try the GTX. Both are cheap, around £100.
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[prawny1]

a c2q at 3ghz is still a capable cpu even a Conroe.

ssd are coming down in price now with 128gb one's going under £35 delivered, if your motherboard supports ahci for the trim function it would be worth the investment.

I just popped a gtx560 non ti in my q9650 dell (was running an oem hd8570) it came from a car boot sale bargain 2x Athlon x3 455 pc's one with 6gb ddr3 a gtx560 1gb and 850w psu the other with 4gb ddr2 and a gt430 and a 500w psu for £15 the pair , the cpu's fetch £15-20 on ebay

I haven't tried any games on it but the hd8570 played crisis1+2 and all the bioshocks and assassins creed upto brotherhood ok so this should be much better

core 2 cpu's aren't far off more modern amd cpu's clock for clock. (some are better even)
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hellkat wrote:

Some people are only alive cos its against the law to kill them.

[bladerunner]

I updated my Q6600 last year due to the price of Ram as I only had 4GB at the time...and could only run 1 channel of sata 2!! Its only when I got into video editing I could justify the £1000 i7 upgrade tbh as 90% of the time the also 2007 spec Cpu was not getting used to its full potential!! I went from the old nvidea to an ati 4870 and that was glitchy and ran stupid hot!! And now have a gtx750i as mostly its used for photo and video editing...with the odd play of world of tanks ....it runs a 43" 4k display and a HD 22" screen OK but do have glitches now on windows 10 where it flickers after a while and loses the desktop background. It might be due to a windows upgrade rather than fresh install tho. At the end of the day you can fit the graphics card to a later PC when you upgrade ....so long as they don't change the graphics slot again
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Current bikes...cbr929, KDX200's, Rd125lc mk2, RGV250's