Best graphics card for an Intel E8400

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.

Hey Smogy,
Call of Duty
1280x800
Australia

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?

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.

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?

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

@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.

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.

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.

OY... http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 80-10.html fairly noticeable difference. http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 73-10.html BIG difference.

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

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.

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...

So to get back on topic, has the OP's question been answered to their satisfaction?

Thanks everyone for your input. I have decided to go with a 5850 just so that I can be a tad more future proof. Assuming that I use max settings, what do you think the highest screen resolution I'd be able to play COD on before I start to see a noticable drop in fps?

you guys want to know something funny AND hypocritical? I don't visit these forums as much as I used to, but a few months back, "a 4870 was way overkill at 1280x1024"

but now, a hd 5770 will suffice?

your e8400 will be fine, get yourself a nice hd 4850 for $100, or a hd 5750 if you want the dx 11 for future games. it's as simple as that, you'll run most of your games maxed out at that resolution.

i only recommend these two cards if you decide you will NOT get a new monitor