Best graphics card for an Intel E8400

[nekama]

I'm about to install Windows 7 and thought I'd just do a bit of a hardware upgrade while I'm at it. My current specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Asus P5Q Pro
2 x 2GB DDR2
HIS X1950XT IceQ3 Turbo

Obviously the graphics card is the major issue and so I appreciate any suggestions for a suitable replacement. I do play games on this machine but don't plan to upgrade the entire machine at this stage.

 

[smoggy12345]

What games and what resolution....and also where are you?? UK, USA?

 

[nekama]

Hey Smogy,
Call of Duty
1280x800
Australia

 

[smoggy12345]

Sorry forgot to ask, have you got a budget?

Do you want to be able to play the games at best possible settings etc...?? or jus something that will get you by?

 

[nekama]

Looking for higher end rather than something to just get by but I imagine that the CPU and RAM would bottleneck a high-end card though?

 

[HibyPrime]

I'd look at something around a GTX260/5770 type of thing.

The CPU will hold you back, especially at 1280x800.

 

[smoggy12345]

yeh 5770 is a good choice as its DX11 also....

Although your CPU will bottleneck your card....it wont really matter as you'll be hitting well above 60fps in most games with that card....and when games become more and more demanding on the GPU then your CPU will become less and less of a bottleneck.

A 5770 is a good choice for future proofing your rig for a year or two.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Two years ago the E8400 was not 'bottlenecked' @ 1280 x 800, how comes it is now?

 

[HibyPrime]

Two years ago the E8400 was not 'bottlenecked' @ 1280 x 800, how comes it is now?

The CPU isn't bottle necked at 1280x800, the bottle neck is the CPU at 1280x800. There is a huge difference between the two statements, one is saying the E8400 is more than powerful enough at 1280, the other is saying the CPU is the determinate factor for performance at 1280.

Basically a $100+ GPU right now isn't going to be truely taxed at 1280x800, the CPU is going to be what is getting maxed out. Make sense?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Not really, I've been running an E8400 for the last two years and I reckon SLi'd 8800GT's will give a 5770 a run for it's money at 19 x 10 and at lower res the details can be fully maxed and I don't think a 5770 is going to max the settings any more than the max that a pair of 88's can as the max is the max, make sense?

 

[HibyPrime]

Grab a 5870, hook it up with an E8400 and an i7 920 @ 3.8GHz. Run a bench at 1280x800 and show me that the E8400 even comes close to the i7 920 at maxed settings on any recent game.

This is what I mean by the bottle neck is on the CPU at that resolution with recent GFX cards. Without a CPU upgrade, it doesn't make much sense to go too much farther than a 4870 type performance.

Anyways, at this resolution, and these performance levels, we're talking about future proofing, not current gaming. An E8400 and even a 4770 could likely max out nearly every game at 12x8

 

[Mousemonkey]

Grab a 5870, hook it up with an E8400 and an i7 920 @ 3.8GHz. Run a bench at 1280x800 and show me that the E8400 even comes close to the i7 920 at maxed settings on any recent game.

This is what I mean by the bottle neck is on the CPU at that resolution with recent GFX cards.

So as far as you are concerned the term 'bottleneck' should be applied to anything that is not brand new top of the range and cutting edge?, even though it was originally used to describe a situation where the framerate became a slideshow and the term 'bottleneck' was used to describe the component that was causing the slowdown.

 

[Raidur]

@Hiby
E8400 doesn't bottleneck anything (nearly). Especially when you OC it to 3.6 and above. Don't forget guys most games don't even use quad core yet. An E8400 still performs just as well in nearly all games as a Phenom II or C2Q.

Also the low resolution is not going to make him bottleneck either. It doesn't make sense for a lower resolution to bottleneck him compared to a higher one. Your FPS does not go down when you lower the resolution. The reason we see the CPU mattering more at a low resolution is because the GPU bottleneck is lifted. That is good for comparing CPUs considering the GPU is usually the bottleneck when gaming. Any game/resolution that lifts the GPU bottleneck is going to be more than playable, especially if it was playable at a higher resolution.

 

[HibyPrime]

He said he was looking for something higher end, to me that spells out spending over $100 on a GFX card. Anything over $100 is going to be more than powerful enough to max out nearly every game at 12x8.

Bottleneck should apply to the slowest component in the chain, it has nothing to do with what frame rates you're getting. People call hard drives bottlenecks all the time, yet they have nearly zero impact on frame rates once the game is loaded up. Hell I'd call a monitor a bottleneck if it had slow enough input lag or response time.

I know that the E8400 is a powerful CPU, I know that it is more than satisfactory. All I'm saying is two things. 1. The E8400 is not high end by todays standards, so if the OP wants a higher end GFX card, he is going to be spending more than he probably needs to. 2. At 12x8 any $100+ card is going to move the bottleneck over to the CPU regardless of what cpu is in the socket.

The reason we see the CPU mattering more at a low resolution is because the GPU bottleneck is lifted. That is good for comparing CPUs considering the GPU is usually the bottleneck when gaming. Any game/resolution that lifts the GPU bottleneck is going to be more than playable, especially if it was playable at a higher resolution.

Unless the components are 100% equal in speed, the bottleneck can never be lifted, only moved. An old Pentium D 3.73GHZ will probably run most games pretty well, save for the hardest games out there. Throw a 5870 in that system, and drop the resolution down to friggen 320x240, the bottleneck is obviously on the CPU. Raise up the resolution to 2560x1600 with 6 monitors in eyefinity, the bottleneck is surely going to be thrown back to the GPU. This is an extreme case but it gets the point across.

 

[Raidur]

Unless the components are 100% equal in speed, the bottleneck can never be lifted, only moved. An old Pentium D 3.73GHZ will probably run most games pretty well, save for the hardest games out there. Throw a 5870 in that system, and drop the resolution down to friggen 320x240, the bottleneck is obviously on the CPU. Raise up the resolution to 2560x1600 with 6 monitors in eyefinity, the bottleneck is surely going to be thrown back to the GPU. This is an extreme case but it gets the point across.

I didn't mean lifted completely, I meant lifted from the GPU and moved to the CPU.

The bottleneck will be moved back to the 5870 but the FPS will not gain at the higher resolution.

The E8400 is strong enough to play any game at max settings on 12x8. It is not like the GPU has to do less % of the work load compared to the CPU at a low resolution, it just doesn't have to work as hard.

The Pentium D will not run games better on any higher resolution than it would on 320x240. Once the CPU is the bottlenecked then the FPS is stopped no matter how high the resolution or how strong the GPU is.

 

[Mousemonkey]

High res with a crap CPU will cause a slowdown or slide show effect because the CPU cannot supply data to the graphic sub system fast enough, I have experienced this with SLi setups more than single card rigs but still, to arbitrarily label an E8400 as the choke point when talking about 4370's and the like is just wrong IMHO.

$100 = £61.06, http://www.scan.co.uk/Index.aspx?NT=1-0-94-634-0

Anyhow enough of this as it's gone way

 

[Raidur]

Yeah really lol... sorry OP.

+1 5770. That should be plenty enough for your resolution for some good time.

And if you plan on getting a new monitor in the future with higher res then your E8400 should still keep up nicely with a better GPU. If you feel like your CPU is holding you back try a little OC. And if you aren't satisfied you can always just replace the CPU and/or cpu/mobo in the future, but an E8400 should run nearly any GPU setup (besides Trifire 5870 ect hehe) just as good as new high end CPUs on most games.

 

[jonpaul37]

now i want to see the comparison of an E8400 and an i7 920 both with a 5870 running 1200 X 800! I'd be willing to bet that the difference is not that great there... 5 FPS max...

 

[HibyPrime]

OY... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280-10.html fairly noticeable difference. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-cores-performance,2373-10.html BIG difference.

 

[Mousemonkey]

OY... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280-10.html fairly noticeable difference. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-cores-performance,2373-10.html BIG difference.

The first article is using a Q6600 on a GTS250 and the second is a 955 & 550 also on a GTS250, how is that an example of an E8400 and an i7 on a 5870?

 

[brockh]

OY... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280-10.html fairly noticeable difference. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-cores-performance,2373-10.html BIG difference.

Interesting the triple core is on par or better with the quad core... Hmm, guess I lucked out!

 

[jonpaul37]

lets not forget the multitasking benchmark that was thrown in there... completely useless... Also! The resolution was not 1200 X 800, thank you, drive thru!

Hiby, there are apples and there are oranges, you sir have compared the two quite well!

 

[HibyPrime]

Oh my lord, you people are being quite dense.

Would you say that 1920x1200 and 1920x1080 are comparable resolutions? Well 1280x800 and 1024x768 should be fairly comparable as well then - there are only a few hundred pixel differences between them.

The example was meant to show that a quad core WILL provide benefits over a dual. This is even ignoring clock and/or architecture improvements.

This is seriously simple and commonly understood concept:

THE E8400 IS A DECENT CPU, HOWEVER IT IS NOT HIGH END AND PAIRING IT WITH A HIGH END GRAPHICS CARD WHEN USING LOW RESOLUTIONS WILL WASTE MONEY. AT HIGHER RESOLUTIONS THE GPU IS MORE OF A FACTOR AND THUS WILL REQUIRE MORE POWER.

Edit: the multitasking benchmark is there to show what the average user would experience. People generally leave things like MSN, firefox, and even virus scans running in the background while gaming.

 

[Ed Brown]

I'm using a 4850 on an E8400 at 1366x768.

Only the top end games, (crysis, farcry 2, Anno 1404), require reduced gfx settings and slight overclocks (card core to 700MHz from 625MHz, CPU to 3.6GHz) to make comfortably playable.

If my 4850 failed today and I had a limited budget, I'd opt for a 5770.

The "midlife" upgrade for this computer, though, is going to be a Q9550 CPU and probably a 5850. Even though that's not enough CPU for that card, I can move the 5850 to the next "full" upgrade box and still have the 4850 for this one to give to my kids or whatever.

 

[jonpaul37]

Still, i would like to see a benchmark in ALL the games that Tom's uses as benchmarks @ 1200 X 800 and then average it out to see what the overall result would be...