Balanced GPU

[Whomastadon]

What graphics card do you think will be balanced with a 4GHz e8500, MSI p7n Platinum ( 750i sli chipset based ) and 8Gb of ddr2 ram. I was going to get a GTX 560ti but i'm not sure if it's going to suffocate by bottleneck. I don't want to spend more money than i have to on the gpu if the power isn't going to be useable.

edit: ( Please don't tell me to upgrade my pc. This setup is about 3 years old I am hoping to run bf3 and Diablo3 on low - medium with a good framerate as i plan on building a new rig in the beginning of next year. )

 

[tsnor]

Some games will bottleneck on CPU, some will be happy with an underclocked e8500 and still want more graphics than the 560ti. Suggest you google the game you want play and see if it needs a lot of CPU or just a lot of graphics.

The size of the graphics card you need is a function of the screen resolution of your monitor. Are you running 1920x1080 ? or something else.

Google for articles like this one: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gpu-upgrade,1928.html which cross tests several graphics cards and several cpus to see what is the bottleneck for that game.

Hint: some games run in a loop so always appear to be at 100% cpu (or 25% on a quad processor or 50% on a dual core). You can't trust reported CPU util to tell you if the CPU is stresses.

Suggestion: Set your E8500 back to stock clock. Play the game you like and see framerate. Now overclock the E8500 back to your 4Ghz OC. Big difference in framerate -- you are CPU bound. No difference in framerate -- you can benefit from a better graphics card.

p.s. aside: google around and find the life of a 4ghz e8500. Google 'electromigration' google 'safe voltage e8500'