GingerMass: Looking for a NEW card? Need help?

[GingerMass]

1) What are your system specifications? Give us full specs:

CPU = Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 Kentsfield Socket 775 LGA 65nm @ 2.66GHz and I am cooling it with Cooler Master Seidon 240M - Liquid CPU Water Cooling Kit with Pre-filled Coolant and Copper Heatsink.

Motherboard = ASUSTeK Rampage Formula

RAM = Kingston HyperX 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2/2G - TOTAL of 8GIG

PSU = Thermaltake 750watt

Current Video Card = XFX HD6950 2G (not the one that can chip to 6970)

Monitor: Main is a Acer 27" S271HL running DVI and my second monitor is a LG 32" 720p.

HD: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 ST1000DM005/HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM
Cache Drive: SanDisk ReadyCache SDSSDRC-032G-G26 2.5" 32GB


2) What is your budget? The best option, you get what you pay for...

3) For how long are you planning to have this new card? not long, but after doing some bench mark on Heaven and it only pulls 20 FPS and score a little over 500 - got me to thinking maybe my gpu cannot support the real-estate I have...

4) What will the new Video Card be used for?
--- a) Hard-Core Gaming - LOVE GAMING!
Plus, photoshop and video editing/production.

5)If Gaming, please tells us the games you're planning to play. Please list as many as you'd love to play.
Current Games:
COD2
COD4
Counter-Strike Condition Zero
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Future Soldier
PlanetSide 2
Dead Island
Left 4 Dead 2
DayZ
WarZ
Assassin's Creed Revelations
Dirt2
Sim City 4

Want to play:
It play pretty much most I have thrown at it already, in some of the above I cannot max - like dayz or warz, it shutters a little.


I have been debating from reading article here and other site if I should do the following.

A) Add another HD6950 2G to run crossfire, maybe the second card would improve benchmarking.

B) Buy a new card, the like following...
HD7970:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?Ntt=HD7970&N=
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150632

or the Nvidia GTX top series or Titan card.

C) Upgrading the CPU up, for example this setup.
MOBO: ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core
RAM:G.SKILL Trident X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866

And using the same 750w psu and cooler and figure out which GPU.

Well, this is my first post here with you guys, spent some time reading here a lot the past year or so. Been reading on the overclocking of the Q6700 to see if that would help performance on benchmarks and it seems as though there is still a bottleneck... or maybe I am just expecting too much out of this setup.

Big thanks to my bud Tom for giving me this thread to help me structure my post to be the most informative to the pros here.

Cheers, Jason

 

[petteyg359]

Your current GPU is not likely to limit any of those games. You'd probably be better served by the CPU (+mobo +RAM) upgrade.

 

[wingman99]

I would suggest a HD 7970 and that will make a big improvement and if it not enough overclock your CPU to 3.8GHz and that will max the HD 7970..

 

[soldierguy]

Thanks for all the data with your question..Wish I knew more about the cpu your using. Never had one of those..but I do have AMD 7970's and have had the 6000 series cards as well.. And both seem adequate for the games your playing and such. Although I'd stay away from any setup where one has two gpu AMD processors. For instance Crossfire or a big AMD gpu with multiple processors on it, because recently they've received plenty of criticism for their driver related problems with multi gpu processors.

Apparantly Nvidia does not have the same problem. Funny AMD didn't compare its multi processor drivers and such to them.. I guess AMD never even considered it. But just this week I hear they agreed there was a problem and have already brought out beta driver to try for solution..not available to public as yet. So they're working on it anyway.

My guess would be to recommend the cpu/mobo/ram. Especially since your doing video editing..Can't go wrong with more processing on the board..The 6000 series should be close enough to a 7000 in my opinion, but don't have any numbers to substantiate my opinion. Just my best guess from my experience in general.

Edit: btw if you have a friend or? who could loan you a 7000 series card or GTX 680etc or..you could swap out your existing gpu and check performance quickly without spending any money.

Goodluck

 

[GingerMass]

Thanks for all the replies guys -and I will what I can do soldierguy on that check before buy... Probably not going to be that lucky, never know.

wingman - 3.8GHz? wow, I would guess that was on some serious water cooling. It is currently running at 3.0 GHz with the Asus level up software.

 

[manu2b]

I would suggest a HD 7970 and that will make a big improvement and if it not enough overclock your CPU to 3.8GHz and that will max the HD 7970..

Yes!

 

[wingman99]

Thanks for all the replies guys -and I will what I can do soldierguy on that check before buy... Probably not going to be that lucky, never know.

wingman - 3.8GHz? wow, I would guess that was on some serious water cooling. It is currently running at 3.0 GHz with the Asus level up software.

That is what it took for my Q9550 to max the video card out.

 

[manu2b]

Well, even at 3.2/3.3GHz, your CPU would not be much of a botteleneck!