Best bottleneck-free video card for e6550 (stock speed)?

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The BBC American

The BBC American

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May 3, 2014
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Did some searching here, but couldn't quite find what I was after.

My biggest question is what is the absolute best card I can get, irrespective of price, that my system won't bottleneck. That also means, ignore the possibility of using it in a future system. Just looking for what will run best in the current one.

Since I'm looking for the best card my system can get full use of anyway, it's probably irrelevant what I want to play, but just in case it helps, my biggest goal is to play Skyrim modded as much as possible.

Considering a couple of cards, both DEALS EXPIRE THIS WEEKEND.

Radeon R7 260X
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202081

Radeon 7730
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8673878&Sku=RSC-102109739

Other perhaps incidentally affecting specs:

-Windows 7 Home, 64-bit
- 8800 GTS 512MB card (1 card)
- nForce 680 SLi mobo
- 2GB of RAM (I know I should boost this to at least 4GB, and ideally the max of 8)
- 7200 RPM HDD
- 700w PSU

Also would I be able to get a stronger card by overclocking the CPU versus stock speed? Card suggestions for both stock and OCed CPU are welcome.

Thanks for any help. Double thanks for help before the deals expire. :)
 
Solution
I
You can't go far with Core Duo cpus. Stay below gtx 750Ti and you should be OK. So either of those cards you're looking at should be fine.
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The BBC American

The BBC American

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May 3, 2014
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This might be the closest to the mark, as you noted a specific ceiling model. Thanks for the quick word, i7Baby!

RickMa, you read my mind. I didn't want to limit the answers to a budget, though. Wanted to get the ceiling and then dig around for a deal, knowing what my tech limit is.
 
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The BBC American

The BBC American

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One follow-up: In trying to run graphic improvement mods in Skyrim, will more GDDR3 memory be better than less GDDR5 VRAM? I'm wondering if it's a difference between at least being able to run them in GDDR3 (with 2GB) and not being able to run them at all with 1GB even if it's GDDR5.

Perhaps the limitation of the dual cores makes that irrelevant, but just wondering.
 
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Aravind92

Aravind92

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Apr 1, 2014
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The gddr5 is ofcourse a faster version...But still skyrim with more and more mods will take more vram but still i don't think the 7730 will give playable framerates after you reach 1 gb with it..So you should rather go with the gddr5 version and have better perfomrance at reasonable settings..
 
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The BBC American

The BBC American

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Your answer along with the others suggests my rig can handle the 2GB 260X card. It's a little more money than I wanted to spend on this ageing build, but since I may not be building a new rig for quite a while I may just indulge and grab that one.

These answers have helped, but I might have stacked the deck a bit by pitting (these) two specific cards against each other. If anyone has a stronger / strongest card to suggest that would give me absolute peak performance, feel free to still chime in.

Thanks so far for the helpful comments.
 
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Aravind92

Aravind92

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I gues you would have slight bottlenect with that processor,rathher than a bottleneck i would say some cpu intensive games will not perform to the level which the card you choose can provide.. You can check this guy's videos out for reference - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAfQQPLOoRHCf1t5bGq7ke8bDJ3DNiXwK ,he benchmarks lots of games with the same gpu with a stock and oced e8400...And if you choose to accept that perfomance hit i would suggest you to go far a gtx 750 ti rather than 260x(coming from a 260x owner)..With 750 ti you will have slightly better performance in some games along with nvidia's drivers..
 
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The BBC American

The BBC American

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May 3, 2014
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Thanks for the input, guys. All of it was helpful. Looks like the 750 ti is the ceiling for the components I have, so I'm giving the final solution vote to i7Baby for being inb4. I was hoping I could make use of a 3GB or 4GB card, considering my Skyrim mod-use hopes, but I guess that's too ambitious for my CPU.
 
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