Is the GTX 260 too high for dual-core E6500?

[ardib2009]

I'm about to buy the GTX 260. Is it too high for dual-core E6500 or should I get a lower card?

 

[obsidian86]

the new e6500 or old e6500?

 

[masterasia]

It should be fine.

 

[jerreece]

An E6500 with a single GTX 260 should be fine. Especially if you can or have Overclocked the E6500.

Running SLI would be a waste however, so just get a single GTX 260. And also, make sure your power supply meets minimum requirements (for instance, it needs 2 x 6pin PCI-E power connectors).

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Both the old C2D E6500 and the new P2D E6500 are definitely enough for the GTX260. I've seen people pair it with E5200s OCed to 3.0GHz (basically the same as a E6500), and you can OC yours to 4.0GHz easily on air.

I personally have a 4870 (equal to the GTX260, but more forgiving on less powerful cpus due to drivers) and it works fine with my E5300 with a small overclock.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

As the "building a balanced PC" article by tomshardware showed, you need at the very least, a fast dual core w/ 6mb of cache (ie. E8400, preferably overclocked) or preferably a quad core for Nvidia SLied cards. (ATI Xfire is more forgiving due to different driver types)

A GTX295 (performs equal to two GTX260s) paired with a E6300 actually scored lower than a E6300 with a single GTX260 since the CPU couldn't power the graphics card effectively.

 

[Aneesh@4GHz]

Ya a core 2 duo will not bottleneck gfx cards in most times