New low budget Graphics Card and Overclocking

[$hawn]

So, I'm planning to upgrade my system within a budget of 5500/- INR [$100], in a few months time.

I currently run a E8400 at stock settings, with 2GB RAM, and Windows XP/7 dual boot, both 32bit editions. My screen resolution is 1400x900. My previous card was a Geforce 8400 SE that died about a year ago.

I'm planning on getting an Asus HD 6570 1GB DDR3 for around Rs. 4000, and then overclock it to near 6670 specs (both have 480 shaders).
The goal is to achieve atleast 35fps in games like TC HAWX2, and NFS titles with 2x AA.

The rest of the money would be spent on another 2GB RAM stick so that I can finally do a clean install of Win7 64 bit. Prices of components where I stay are very similar to flipkart.com

Questions
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1. Is the 6570 the best card for 4000/-, or is there something better. I'm open to both AMD and nVidia, but the card should be only an asus, gigabyte or an XFX one.[Check Indian websites for prices only]
2. Can I survive with 2GB of RAM, and should I spend the whole 5.5k budget on a graphics card? I notice significant performance drops when running Virtual box on Win7 as I keep running out of RAM already.
3. Should I wait for a few more months? Would I get a 28nm card in the same budget once AMD releases the HD 8000 series?

OC'ing Questions
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How easy would it be to OC the 6570? Is it true that if I overclock at stock voltage settings, and keep the card cool enough with a big fan, I won;t be reducing the life of the card? I want this card to last me atleast 3 years.
How high can I clock at stock voltages? I'm planning on using MSI Afterburner. [My previous card died as a result of overclocking without keeping temperatures under control ]

Thanks in Advance

 

[shamsmu]

first off, the low end cards usually dont have much overclock potentials cause they usually come with basic/minimal cooling systems and don't support overvoltaging. I remember trying to overclock my 9500gt and gts250 and it didn't go so well for me. If you have some decent overcloking in mind, you need to get at least a hd7750.

However, since your budget is tight, I would recommend a hd6670 DDR5 model it would make a decent amount of
difference(around 30-50%)-

note that the hd6570 is somewhere between hd5570 and hd5670.

If I was you, I'd wait for the price of the hd7750 to go down or if I urgently needed a gpu, I would get the hd6670 for its DDR5 memory bandwidth.

http://www.flipkart.com/sapphire-amd-ati-radeon-hd-6670-1gb-ddr5-graphics-card/p/itmdfygjystmyqrx?pid=GRCDFYGJGKEGHRDQ&ref=e53798bb-eee3-4059-be59-2189b742d5db

This card gets my vote and apparently, you should be able to find one cheaper in india since the online prices are always bit higher than normal price.

 

[$hawn]

Thanks for your input. I'm aware of the 6670 Gddr5, but the 5.5k budget was for both GPU+RAM.
I can only afford around 4,200 for the GPU, and that's why I was inclined towards getting a 6570.

Also, the 6570 and 6670 are the same chip physically, the only difference is that the 6670 is a better bin, and is clocked 150MHz higher.

Since these are old 40nm chips, I'm pretty sure that AMD's getting pretty good quality chips with a high yield from TSMC on this old mature node. So, I'm guessing there's a very high probability that I'll be able to get a significant OC

Do you know how much I'd be able to push a 6570 safely without overvolting ?

 

[shamsmu]

According to what I heard from some other hd6570 user a year ago, the maximum clock you can push it to is 845mhz but it really depends on your luck.

also I will recommend you to go ahead and upgrade your ram to 4gb, 2gb is way too low for any windows os(excluding xp)

 

[$hawn]

Hmmm.....that's the same achieved here, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6570-radeon-hd-6670-turks,2925-13.html, but I want to know if it was done with an increase in voltage, or a stock clocks.
Also, that was with a reference card provided by AMD, so you can bet it was a specially hand picked one. I really doubt if most 6570's can push the clock till there. Something like 750MHz+ is definitely doable though.

 

[shamsmu]

Hmmm.....that's the same achieved here, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6570-radeon-hd-6670-turks,2925-13.html, but I want to know if it was done with an increase in voltage, or a stock clocks.
Also, that was with a reference card provided by AMD, so you can bet it was a specially hand picked one. I really doubt if most 6570's can push the clock till there. Something like 750MHz+ is definitely doable though.

yeah well its really hard to estimate overclock potentials without actually having the card all we can do is to speculate based on what we see on the net

I guess you will find out how much it overclocks when you actually try to overclock it. I am an extreme overclocker myself I have overlocked all my gpus to the max, my last 3 gpus were-

gtx560 ti- 1006mhz/4580mhz
gtx580- 984mhz/4250mhz
gtx670(Current)- 1346mhz/7150mhz