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Q6600 still viable?

Spacedeck

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Mar 23, 2011
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Ah right, is the Power Supply upgradable in this? Oh and one thing to consider the case is a Antec 300 so not sure if this will limit anything. What kind of frame rates pushing could I expect from a 9800 and the card you suggested? A big difference?

When I receive the system which will be within the next month ill need some help regarding the overclocking as never done it nor built a pc before, he did say he did have the Q6600 overclocked to 3.4 but since he hardlygames on it he brough it back down to 3.0.

Thanks again for all the help, I'm really excited to get into PC gaming :p
 

dma0991

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Mar 15, 2011
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399
The length of a HD6970 is about 10.6 inches while your casing supports till 11 inches cards. Although it is a tight fit I think it is possible without putting a HDD at the lower part of the casing.

Can't really tell how big of a difference because there are no comparisons for a Nvidia card that is few generations behind the current GTX500 series cards. But I can tell you that since this card is the 2nd fastest GPU from AMD and it is faster compared to a GTX570 so you can actually feel a lot of performance gain. It is even faster than the GTX480.

An extra 400Mhz to your CPU should reduce some bottlenecks. Most overclocking is done in the BIOS to alter the multiplier, clock speed and voltage. Ask the person that brought it down on how he overclocked it to 3.4Ghz before actually attempting if you're not too sure how to actually do it. Probably he downclocked it to 3.0Ghz to reduce the stress and the heat from the processor.
 

Spacedeck

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Mar 23, 2011
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Huddersfield, England
What size is the card I'm getting? :eek: so if I bought that card how much are they in pounds? And also it is vital to overclock the 6600 to keep the system from blowing? I might do that then, what do you mean by bottleneck?

Where are the main harddrives situated? At the top of the case? My only concern if I get that card is that the cpu will overheat and blow up and the PSU 650W isn't enough to keep the card and it's heat stable under full settings gaming for hours.
 

dma0991

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I am not familiar with the price in pounds but a quick search from Amazon UK shows that it should be around 265 pounds.

Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card: Amazon.co.uk

Not very vital to actually overclock since your processor is already at 3.0Ghz but if you could push it till 3.4Ghz all the better. You don't have to overclock to actually use it. Bottlenecking is when one of your components does not have enough performance to cope with your other hardware. In this case your processor is probably bottlenecking your graphics card. You don't have to overclock if you are not sure about it.

From the middle of the case to the bottom you can put your hard disks. It is called a 3.5" drive bay. So if you want to fit the HD6970 then you would have to put your hard disks at the lower part of the 3.5" drive bay.

So very unlikely that a processor AMD or Intel would potentially blow up these days. The processors are made to shut itself down in case of exceeding the temperature threshold to prevent permanent damage. A 650W is more than enough for a single HD6970 as a 600W PSU is more than capable of handling HD6870 in dual Crossfire. AMD does make one of the cooler cards around and under gaming load it won't overheat.

Anyway if you're not confident with AMD graphic cards then get the GTX570. It is slightly less powerful than the GTX480 but it has less heat and power consumption.

EVGA GeForce GTX 570 732MHz 1280MB
 

Spacedeck

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I wouldn't have a problem getting a AMD which is ATI? card, the worry comes when trying to fit it in. I'm unsure where the drives are placed in this system as not picking it up yet but I asume it shouldb't be too much of a problem changing them over if needs be. When I get the system will post a picture of the inside so can get a better picture as to what could fit or not.

But if like you say my cpu is bottlenecking the graphics card shouldn't I need to worry about that as when I upgrade the graphics I assume it will definitely bottleneck?
 

dma0991

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AMD bought ATI so now ATI branding has been replaced to AMD. I've checked the specs of your casing and like I said earlier you can fit the HD6970 if that is the GC that you want. Else just get the shorter GTX570 which will definitely fit in your casing as it is shorter than the HD6970. Drivers for hardware are abundant as long as you have an internet connection or use the outdated drivers included in the supplied drivers disc with every GC.

Bottlenecks exist with any system. It is not something that can be avoided by simply getting even faster hardware such as a processor to compensate. A faster processor can only reduce the bottleneck but not eliminate it totally.
 

Spacedeck

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Ah right so bottlenecking can happen anytime at anytime. Anyway it's almost lunch at work so I will look at the benchmarks for the 2 graphics cards suggested but more then likely I'll go with AMD anyway as always liked them cards. So regarding RAM like this will have DDR2 8GB but what difference does that make to having DDR3 RAM?
 

dma0991

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I'd say there is a performance advantage of DDR3 compared to DDR2 but for an average user who are not overclocking and benchmarking looking for the golden number it does not bring about a huge performance difference like say changing from a low end GC to a high end GC or a low end CPU to a high end CPU.

Besides it is physically impossible to fit a DDR3 RAM into a DDR2 slot because they have a notch at the bottom and it will prevent from accidentally fitting it the wrong way or a wrong RAM module. You currently have 8GB of RAM which is more than enough. For the average user, more RAM is more important than faster RAM.
 

Spacedeck

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Right ok mate, I've decided when I get the card I'll go with the AMD:thumb:

Just hope it's not too much pressure with the rig. Thanks for all the help, oh and I'm hoping that in future I will be able to play Battlefield 3 when it comes out... it looks :shok:. Do you reckon game will be more demanding then Crysis? Hope the card can handle it though and system can handle it though.
 

Spacedeck

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