Upgrading from Geforce GTS 8600

[Pyramix]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a new graphics card. I have an old PC I put together in 2007 and the card now needs upgrading. My budget is $300 and I plan to play the new XCOM 2 game (but want the card to last another 7 years, which should be fine since I don't really play too many demanding games).

Motherboard: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2746#sp
Power supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139001
Current card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127287
PC case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129018

I have done some research and it seems that GTX 970 is the one to go with in this price range, and it looks like I should be able to use it with all my hardware. My concern is just that my hardware might be too ancient to extract the most out of this card. Should I go with a 960 instead?

If 970 will be fine, do you guys have any recommendations as to which one specifically? I am not sure that I can fit the new very long cards in my case, so preferably I'd like to keep the card length under 10 inches.

 

[Arachnotronic]

GTX 970 is a great card but it will be severely bottlenecked by your current CPU. Are you planning to upgrade your CPU/motherboard anytime soon?

Honestly in your situation I'd hit up the used market and grab something for dirt cheap like a Radeon 7950 or GeForce GTX 670.

 

[Pyramix]

Nope, not planning to upgrade my motherboard/CPU. I current have a Core 2 Duo, but can upgrade to this Core 2 Quad 2.83 GHz (the latest one my motherboard can support):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012WDMNC
Do you think the CPU will still be the bottleneck with that upgrade?

 

[AtenRa]

Since you are going to keep the GPU for a long time and DX-12 games are coming in a few months I would go for the AMD R9 380 4GB or R9 390 8GB.

You can find the R9 380 4GB like the XFX (less than 10 inches) currently at $170 AR from Newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150730

Also the Gigabyte R9 390 is 10.08 inches currently at $303 AR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125805

 

[AtenRa]

Nope, not planning to upgrade my motherboard/CPU. I current have a Core 2 Duo, but can upgrade to this Core 2 Quad 2.83 GHz (the latest one my motherboard can support):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012WDMNC
Do you think the CPU will still be the bottleneck with that upgrade?

If you can OC that Core 2 Quad to 3.2GHz and above, you will be CPU limited in DX-11 but you will be much better in DX-12 games using the R9 390.

But even in DX-11 games you will be able to play almost every game at max Image Quality settings. You will not get 80-100fps but say 50-60fps, that is more than enough for the vast majority of games.

Have a look at my Intel Core 2 Quad 9450 Gaming upgrade path – CPU or GPU ? review. The 3.2GHz Core 2 Quad is just fine for lots and lots of games with the HD7950 1GHz (almost same performance as R9 380). Im sure it will be fine paired with the R9 390, especially in DX-12 games.

Edit: Just realized the price of the Core 2 Quad 9550 on the Amazon link. I sure hope you are not going to spend that amount for that CPU today because for the same price you can get a new Mobo + CPU + Ram.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Instead of spending $300 on a GPU, I'd spend maybe $150 on a GPU, and then the rest on upgrading your CPU, motherboard and RAM. The game will be much more playable than with a $300 GPU and an ancient CPU.

 

[mikeymikec]

XCOM 2 isn't really a demanding game by the looks of it. I'm playing XCOM EU/EW 1080p with a spare 6670 while my 750ti is out of commission, no problems.

I second Arachnotronic's advice even if you replaced your CPU with a C2Q. However, I think either CPU is barely scraping the minimum system requirements for XCOM 2.

Alternatively, if you plan to do a platform upgrade (CPU + mobo + RAM) in the foreseeable future, then by all means splash out on a higher end graphics card (if it's compatible with your current board, I wouldn't say it's guaranteed to be; I'd do some googling for motherboard chipset compatibility with the 970 as well as perhaps PCIE revision compatibility and not settle for the expression "it ought to be"). Otherwise a 970 with your current platform looks as inappropriate as kitting out grandma's PC for Solitaire with 16GB RAM.

The other thing I'm wondering is whether it's worth buying a 970 even in that alternative scenario. I'm guessing that your budget is limited in a general rather than short-term sense; when the time comes, would your platform upgrade be significant enough to make good use of a 970 before the 970 is no longer considered adequate? I'm not trying to be nasty, I just don't want you to buy a 970 that potentially never gets pushed to its full potential and the end result to be enjoyable. IMO I'd have to be nuts to buy a 970 with my priorities and budget even with my i5 haswell rig, and your gaming needs sound similar to mine. I've played a lot of SC2 and XCOM in recent years to give you an idea of my gaming habits.

 

[Gikaseixas]

This a tough recommendation but let's try
Make sure you do go ahead and upgrade the cpu to a Core 2 Quad and oc it to at least 3.6ghz - 4ghz if possible.

For the GPU i would get a R9 390 w/ 8GB of memory since that should last longer than the 970 which is 3.5+5GB setup

 

[Headfoot]

I would just get a used GTX 760, 670, or 7950B/280 for cheap for a build thats otherwise that old. For the rest of that $300 budget you could get a used i5 760/750 and a decent overclocking p55 board and be quite a bit farther ahead

 

[therealnickdanger]

Generally speaking, there usually isn't a reason to wait, but it may be worth knowing that we are only months away from new GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA that will shake up all the current price points and introduce lots of new features.

If you're really itching for an upgrade right now, then I would go for a 950 and save some cash. Not only will it be a TREMENDOUS boost over your existing GPU, but it offers some features the 970 doesn't have that might matter to you, like hardware acceleration of H.265 (and VP9 via LAV) video that your CPU can't possibly handle on its own. Now that YouTube has ditched Flash and 60fps and 4K videos are on the rise, VP9 will be more important than ever. The 970 would be faster for gaming, but the bottleneck from your CPU would be kind of a waste.

AtenRa's recommendation for the 380 is also really good, but again, that performance might be wasted on your CPU.

 

[MrTeal]

I would definitely be looking used with what you have listed there. Sell the C2D, DDR2 and P35 MB for $40, and add that to the budget.
Not endorsing any particular person, but something like this $150 2500k/Z68 combo with $40 for 8GB DDR3 and a cheap 7970GHz would probably fit in your budget and give a good experience. Alternately, if you live near a Microcenter you could pick up a new FX-8320E/970/8GB combo for $165 ($150AR) and spend the other $150-$200 on a GPU. $200 is getting close to a used custom 290.

Spending $300 on a GPU for a system that old doesn't seem wise, unless you plan to update the MB/CPU soon.

 

[sm625]

You are not going to find a $300 card right now that will last 7 years. Because we've been stuck on 28nm for so long, everything is going to be obsoleted fairly quickly once the newer process node products arrive. If you want to buy a 7 year card then you will need to wait at least 12 more months. By this time next year you should be able to obtain a $300 card that will be roughly as good as a 8600GTS is today (8600GTS roughly equals intel HD4600).

 

[Pyramix]

Edit: Just realized the price of the Core 2 Quad 9550 on the Amazon link. I sure hope you are not going to spend that amount for that CPU today because for the same price you can get a new Mobo + CPU + Ram.

Nope, I'd buy the used one for $60.

 

[xorbe]

I thought nv cards did better with less powerful cpus, but maybe dx12 is throwing a monkey wrench in all that, I don't know.

 

[Pyramix]

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone. I'm glad I posted on here before buying because I hadn't realized the CPU bottleneck issue. While googling, I found this nifty little tool that gives you an idea of which CPU/GPUs are fairly matched:
http://intel.thebottlenecker.com/

My plan is to now upgrade my CPU to the Core 2 Duo Quad Core 2.83 GHz (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012WDMNC) for $60 and get a much cheaper GPU (I'm leaning towards a used GTX 950 in the $120 range).

One more question since you all now have me considering a mobo/CPU upgrade: will I need to reinstall my OS if I were to upgrade the mobo?

 

[SPBHM]

keep in mind that even a gtx 750 is an epic upgrade over that 8600GTS, even the latest Intel IGPs are faster, if you just want to play xcom2, you could probably buy some used $50 card and enjoy it.

also for a cheap CPU upgrade, you can consider the 771 quadcore Xeons
but it looks like your C2D is above the minimum requirements anyway.

 

[mikeymikec]

One more question since you all now have me considering a mobo/CPU upgrade: will I need to reinstall my OS if I were to upgrade the mobo?

IMO you're better off doing that. Even though it's a "it'll boot or it won't" situation (I took an SSD I installed in an S775 system and put it into a new Skylake build and the original OS - Win7 - booted, to my surprise), I wouldn't like to say if the driver installation routine for say AHCI, SMbus, whatever, might mess with Windows settings and not necessarily reinstate the original settings even if the user were to run through the package's uninstall routine. Whenever I do a platform upgrade, I always do a clean install. If weird stuff starts to happen, then you've got one less suspect to investigate.

 

[MrTeal]

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone. I'm glad I posted on here before buying because I hadn't realized the CPU bottleneck issue. While googling, I found this nifty little tool that gives you an idea of which CPU/GPUs are fairly matched:
http://intel.thebottlenecker.com/

My plan is to now upgrade my CPU to the Core 2 Duo Quad Core 2.83 GHz (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012WDMNC) for $60 and get a much cheaper GPU (I'm leaning towards a used GTX 950 in the $120 range).

One more question since you all now have me considering a mobo/CPU upgrade: will I need to reinstall my OS if I were to upgrade the mobo?

You might want to post in General Hardware and answer their set of questions, it would help people help you. It seems as if you're heavily leaning to an nVidia card even if it's lower performing, is that the case? Is there some reason you need to buy from Amazon? If you'e really set on keeping the LGA775 platform, you'd be a lot better off buying a C2Q for under $20 from eBay and overclocking it, but even then you're going to be really CPU limited on a large number of modern games, let alone whatever comes out in the next 7 years.
On the OS, depends. When I went from Z68/2500k to my current system I didn't, since I plan to update to Win10 soon and don't want to do it twice. You might sometimes have to though. What OS are you running?

 

[skipsneeky2]

If you ever wanted to try out CSGO,i know with a Q6600 that the game ran better on it then it did on a G1820.Considering one is a drop in upgrade and the other is a new platform you could easily put a 750 in there with your Q9550 and get 60+ at 1080p.

Lots of people play CSGO,its one of the newer fps games with a high player base and a game that runs well on about anything 4 threaded.

 

[xorbe]

GTX 950 is the newest chip at a relatively low prince point. I'd get that over the 750.

 

[MrTeal]

GTX 950 is the newest chip at a relatively low prince point. I'd get that over the 750.

Yeah, the cheapest 750Ti is $100A$20R, while you can pick up a 950 for $130A$10R. Given the performance delta between them is greater than 30%, the 750Ti is kind of a turd.

I wouldn't be spending $120 on a used 950 when an extra $20 ($10AR) buys you a new one.

 

[Pyramix]

It seems as if you're heavily leaning to an nVidia card even if it's lower performing, is that the case? Is there some reason you need to buy from Amazon? ... What OS are you running?

Nope, don't care about nVidia vs AMD. Is there a performance difference though? In the low price range, I should get equally well-performing cards from them both, right? What is your video card recommendation? And don't care about buying from Amazon either. I've just become too used to checking on there first. But if it's $20 on EBay, I'm all for it.

My OS is Win7.

 

[Pyramix]

also for a cheap CPU upgrade, you can consider the 771 quadcore Xeons.

Aah, would they work with my LGA775 mobo? They're not in the list of supported CPUs for my mobo. They do seem to be marginally better than the fastest LGA775 CPU I can buy, according to cpubenchmark.net.
C2Q: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q9550+@+2.83GHz
771 Xeon: http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5460+@+3.16GHz

Edit: Looks like I can get an adapter to let me use the 771 processors. Great, thanks for the suggestion!
http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/

 

[Silverforce11]

A video for you as it fits your scenario. Basically the question is can a fast GPU breathe life into an ancient C2D machine? Well, it can for an old Phenom machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leZT85Etj5Y

Most modern games while are limiting on older quad cores of those era, they can at least sustain 50-60 fps. This is the sweet spot for many mid-range GPUs as they can struggle to get above that in new games even at 1080p.

 

[Denithor]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optipl...819625?hash=item3abcb0ffe9:g:3GIAAOSwfZ1WacRO

Dell OptiPlex 790 with i5 2400 (3.1GHz quad), 4GB RAM 250GB HDD W7Pro64 installed) for $190. One note - you will have to remove the HDD cage to fit the video card in this case. A drill with long bits is your friend!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigabyte-RA...532782?hash=item35fa797dee:g:GkAAAOSwT~9Wi~o~

Gigabyte 7970 GHz Edition for $153. I've seen similar cards go for $130-135 if you're a little patient and wait for it.

You'll need a new PSU, something in the 400-500W range from a reputable maker (Seasonic, Corsair, etc). Likely pick up new for like $30-40AR.

Total cost around $370, maybe $350 if you're willing to scour for deals. Very solid gaming build, far better than most anything else at this price range.

I'd suggest an upgrade to a cheap 120-250GB SSD and then the free upgrade to Windows 10.