Just upgraded to a GTX 460, Few Qs

[grechzoo]

After having a very subpar 9800gt green edition for a year or so I have finally bit the bullet and bought a GTX 460 (1gb MSI cyclone OC edition). I have a few requests for advice to get the most of it.

1: What can I overclock this too WITHOUT having to adjust the voltage?

I know the card itself can manage it but I'm afraid my PSU might not be able to, as I only have a 600w PSU. (ATX 12v compliant) Add an overclocked q6660 @ 3ghz, and I'm worried I might be pushing the PSU too far. (Advice on whether this is true would be nice as well, or should 600w be fine)

2: What modern games are out there that I can really take advantage of and enjoy with this improved GPU? (I know it’s not top of the line, but it is far and away anything I have had before)

I haven’t played too many modern PC games, not in the last year or two anyway. So I am excited to firstly finally complete The Witcher, and hopefully enjoy The Witcher 2 on high settings. And of course expect portal 2 to be one of the highlights of the year. But any games suggestions (upcoming or some that I might have missed) in terms of pushing this card, would be greatly appreciated.

Hope you guys can help, first post on this site, but I have visited many thread on here for priceless info many times so thanks for that as well

 

[grechzoo]

Thanks a lot.

The PSU was an Extra Value Gold Power Supply from Ebuyer.co.uk, so not Corsair or anything like that, so I know it won’t exactly be 600w However I’m not SLI'ing or anything, only have 1 hard drive; don’t even have a DVD drive. So I’m hoping it can hold up under an OC'd CPU and a small increase in clock speed for the GPU.

Also another question:

I have had a change of mind about my CPU, mainly because OCing it to 3.0ghz makes the motherboard force to 1.328v (too hot, 46 idle, 75+ load), instead of the normal 1.120v @ 2.4, and manually changing the voltage results in a failed bootup every time.

So basically the other question is, will a 2.4ghz quad core CPU (basically stock q6660) be good enough alongside a GTX 460 (Oc'd) to play most games coming out this year? (barring Battlefield 3, as that looks to be a level up) I'm concerned with mainly the Witcher 2 and Elder Scrolls V

---

In terms of games recommendations, I love original and story based games, but I am fine testing out the card's capabilities on an FPS/TPS if you want to recommend any recent ones that will take advantage of the card.

Is Metro 2033 playable with my card? Or should I not bother with that? And I would play Crysis 2 but it’s not DX11, might give Crysis 1 another go soon enough.

But yeah any suggestions for games that really show its power would be great.

Thanks again

 

[grechzoo]

thanks a lot, a PSU is definitely my next upgrade for sure.

but if this can last a year or so, ill be rebuilding a new pc hopefully by then. (need money! )

I do have 4gb of ram.

i guess long load times on a q6660 is normal these days. for modern games. as long as i get good frames per second from games like Witcher 2, Crysis, and Shogun 2 ill be happy enough. waiting a minute for something isn't exactly the end of the world.

thanks sooo much for your help, especially easing my worries about my PSU.


Sorry to ask again but:
Is a q6660 quad at stock clocks (2.4) fine for gaming at least this year? (TW2, elder scrolls, deus ex etc.)

obviously the gtx 460 will be doing most of the work, just want to make sure that as long as the games have multi-core support 2.4ghz is an okay speed to be running at.

 

[grechzoo]

wow, witcher is stuck below 20fps in the temple quarter, a 4 year old game. (oc'd to 840/1900 too)

Shogun 2 and AC brotherhood are running good though 30-60 most of the time.

i really think this upgrade is not a good decision maybe?

waiting until i have i7 speedier ram, new PC built etc. might be a better idea.

im considering a return anyway. if the age of my pc is just too far gone for this. as even in the first shogun 2 tutorial map im looking at 25fps averga (although the naval tut is @70 and the second tutorial battle map is at around 50fps/)

My main reason fr upgrading was for the witcher though.

seems the witcher 1 runs worse than on my old crappy card. who knows what the witcher 2 will be like.

 

[grechzoo]

think its the processor.

OC'd it to 3 and it was slightly better, still not great, its a single core game so its suffering.

witcher 2 is multi-core so i should be okay there.

thank for all your help

 

[grechzoo]

1400x900. but tried them all without much imrprovement.

imfully virus checked, CCcleaned, and defragmented too. dont really get it, think maybe my CPU, and ram speeds and maybe the age of those components might be affecting perf or something.

 

[HEXiT]

unlikely the q66 should have enough grunt at stock to handle the 460.
1 possible reason is that the witcher isnt pushing the gfx card enough even at max settings so its bogging down the cpu.
try maxing out witcher and even using your nvidia control panel select the witcher game profile, if its still there, and turn up the settings in there too. such as moving multi sampling up to super sampling. forcing 16x anno and 16x fsaa over riding the games settings.
if your minimum fps goes up its a heavy cpu bottleneck... that will ease off the more demanding a game is of gfx.