Most powerful GPU that makes sense in an old Core 2 Duo

[mpat]

I have an old PC built around one of the first Core 2 Duos, E6400 at 2.13 GHz with 3 gigs of DDR2 RAM (XP 32-bit). It has had a couple of different GPUs over the years, and I've been playing with the idea of getting it up and running again. I'm thinking a small SSD (that I have already), newer Windows version and, most importantly, a new GPU. Assuming that I don't touch the CPU, motherboard or RAM, what is the most powerful GPU that makes sense? The CPU has always overclocked easily, and ran at 2.67 GHz for most of its life and 3.2 GHz for long stretches, if that changes the answer.

Mostly a thought experiment at this point, so ignore questions of PSU capacity for now.

 

[pauli]

i've got a 6950 paired with my e6750. works well.

 

[baseline]

I'm not really sure if this is optimal, but I've got a 6870 paired with my Q6600. It works very well and was an improvement over the 8800gt i had in there originally.

 

[Josh A.K.A CLF]

I have an old PC built around one of the first Core 2 Duos, E6400 at 2.13 GHz with 3 gigs of DDR2 RAM (XP 32-bit). It has had a couple of different GPUs over the years, and I've been playing with the idea of getting it up and running again. I'm thinking a small SSD (that I have already), newer Windows version and, most importantly, a new GPU. Assuming that I don't touch the CPU, motherboard or RAM, what is the most powerful GPU that makes sense? The CPU has always overclocked easily, and ran at 2.67 GHz for most of its life and 3.2 GHz for long stretches, if that changes the answer.

Mostly a thought experiment at this point, so ignore questions of PSU capacity for now.

What are you planning on using this PC for? Honestly, with a C2D you're now three processor generations behind. You are most likely going to be CPU-bound to some extent on new gaming releases, but titles from 3-5 years ago should run ecstatically well on a 6770/7770 on the red side, or 460/560 or higher if you prefer green, as long as you're not planning on gaming at HD resolution (1920x1080) or higher .

If you're not planning on gaming, it might make more sense to use the funds you have allocated for the SSD and GPU additions to purchase an i3 and motherboard with integrated video (might have to spring for some DDR3 RAM). The Intel integrated GPUs aren't suitable for gaming, but will be absolutely fine for standard computing tasks.

 

[mpat]

I figured this as a thought experiment, but maybe the circumstances are worth mentioning.

My main computer is a an iMac 11,1 with an i7/860, 16 GB of RAM and a Radeon 4850 (yes Mobility, but it overclocks in software to the desktop clocks, so just think Radeon 4850). I play some games on it, and I have a Bootcamp XP 32-bit partition. The problems are that this is not very convenient. It's annoying to reboot, the XP partition is a bit cramped, getting new graphics drivers installed is a pain, I can't nuke&pave because Bootcamp doesn't support XP anymore, and most importantly a Radeon 4850 isn't even remotely enough to run the native 2560*1440. And so I had the idea that maybe I could use a KVM with the display passthrough of the iMac from a regular gaming PC.

The issue is that I don't game enough to make me want to invest anything. I have this old Core 2 PC as I described, and the idea was really to check if it would make sense to JUST put a new GPU in there. From the other posts, it sounds like this idea might have some legs after all.

 

[Josh A.K.A CLF]

The issue is that I don't game enough to make me want to invest anything. I have this old Core 2 PC as I described, and the idea was really to check if it would make sense to JUST put a new GPU in there. From the other posts, it sounds like this idea might have some legs after all.

2560x1440 is a pretty hefty resolution with any CPU/GPU. You're going to want something pretty beefy to play recent games at that resolution. Perhaps a 660 would do the trick, but they aren't released yet so who knows. You'd definitely fall short with a 460/560.

 

[mpat]

I know, which is why I didn't mention the res at first - figured it would distort the discussion. I'm really just interested in what might make sense, given that cards like the upcoming 660 and the 7800 series (with a rumored price drop) seem like very good bang for buck.

 

[Ardax]

and most importantly a Radeon 4850 isn't even remotely enough to run the native 2560*1440.

What about gaming in 1280x720? It's pixel doubled so you won't have the fuzzies and reduces your GPU requirements drastically.

 

[Mindphaser]

Im still on a E8400 3ghz with 4gb ram and a 6850 1gb. I can play most games fine (Skyrim at 60fps easy with all options except shadows on high), but it'll struggle with GTA4 or BF3. Its still a great rig, but yeah its showing its age. Problem is upgrading it is impossible now. Aside from graphics card (got the 6850 because my GTX260 died) you cant buy ram or upgrade the CPU. Paying actual monies for a Qxxxx CPU would be silly. DDR2 ram is far too expensive. It would cost $400 minimally to get a i5 3ghz, 8gb DDR3 ram and a decent mobo.

And I just cant throw out my beloved Gigabyte DS3L. Its just been too good to me. I dont use paypal so I cant sell it on ebay or Agora, craigslist is fucking useless for tech in my city (listed a bunch of stuff and never got a reply, easier to throwout/recycle than go through that again) so Im pretty much stuck with it.

Anyway I think for that CPU a GTX260 or equal Radeon should suffice. I game a 1680x1050 on a 20" btw. The 6850 is a fine card if you can get it for cheap. I bought it new after my beloved evga gtx260 bit the dust. A GTX260 can be had for about $80 on ebay so thats where I'd look.

 

[tenton]

Mindphaser, you pretty much have what I have, except I have a E8500 and I managed to snake an extra 4GB of RAM from a friend who upgraded his machine.

There are games that hit the CPU hard (you mentioned a couple of them), but there are still a lot of fun games that are very playable at 1920x1200 (my monitor).

For me, the 6850 was a decent upgrade from an 8800GT; helped out with making some games playable with more eye candy. When it's time to retire this box, I think I'm going to move it to HTPC duty, since it's been my workhorse for so long and showing no problems.

 

[ChrisG]

I ran a Geforce 295 with a Q6600 at 3Ghz; roughly equivalent to a Radeon 5870. It was pretty CPU-limited, though - replacing the Q6600 with a 2500K boosted framerates by >40%.

 

[Topinio]

The most powerful GPU that makes sense in an (overclocked) Core 2 Duo is the most powerful GPU you can afford.

Most games are more GPU-bound than CPU-bound, especially ones aimed at selling a lot of copies - and OC'd CPUs of that era still do ok versus modern CPUs. Yes, when you have an older CPU the point at which the improvement from GPU xxAx to xxBx isn't worth the price difference is lower, but that varies from game to game and on your personal budget - and faster is faster.

Are you ever going to replace the motherboard, CPU and RAM, or own another PC after this one into which you can transplant the GPU? If so, it does you no harm to get a new GPU now. Even if you're not, you can still squeeze couple of years out of this machine paired with a decent GPU - though, of course, the old parts might fail on you...

 

[mpat]

and most importantly a Radeon 4850 isn't even remotely enough to run the native 2560*1440.

What about gaming in 1280x720? It's pixel doubled so you won't have the fuzzies and reduces your GPU requirements drastically.

That is exactly what I do. Works quite well performance-wise, as long as I tune down the FSAA and anisotropic filtering from insane to something more reasonable - the 4850 only has GDDR3, so memory bandwidth is a concern.

Are you ever going to replace the motherboard, CPU and RAM, or own another PC after this one into which you can transplant the GPU? If so, it does you no harm to get a new GPU now. Even if you're not, you can still squeeze couple of years out of this machine paired with a decent GPU - though, of course, the old parts might fail on you...

This is an interesting point to consider. Let's say that I put a 7850 or 7870 in there (or whatever the 660 turns out to be) - that's about as far as I'd be willing to push the PSU in any case. If I had relied on one desktop machine for everything, I'd be upgrading it soon enough. As it is, that iMac is my main machine, and it is due for an upgrade in about 2 years (I tend to keep them for 5 years). The rumored top GPU in the next iMac is the mobile equivalent of a 7850. Two years from now, it will be significantly faster, but maybe I could settle for a low-end iMac instead of the idiot-expensive top model. Hmm...

 

[Topinio]

and most importantly a Radeon 4850 isn't even remotely enough to run the native 2560*1440.

What about gaming in 1280x720? It's pixel doubled so you won't have the fuzzies and reduces your GPU requirements drastically.

That is exactly what I do. Works quite well performance-wise, as long as I tune down the FSAA and anisotropic filtering from insane to something more reasonable - the 4850 only has GDDR3, so memory bandwidth is a concern.

At 2560*1440 in reasonably modern games you're going to need something towards the top of the last 2 generations of GPU to drive that at native res, e.g. GTX 480, 570, 580, 670, (660??) or so.

While even a GTX 550 Ti would be a step up from the 4850, it's insufficiently so to overcome on average the deficiency of the C2D versus the i7, so you'd end up no better off ... you're going to need to spend $200-300 to drive that panel at native.

Are you ever going to replace the motherboard, CPU and RAM, or own another PC after this one into which you can transplant the GPU? If so, it does you no harm to get a new GPU now. Even if you're not, you can still squeeze couple of years out of this machine paired with a decent GPU - though, of course, the old parts might fail on you...

This is an interesting point to consider. Let's say that I put a 7850 or 7870 in there (or whatever the 660 turns out to be) - that's about as far as I'd be willing to push the PSU in any case. If I had relied on one desktop machine for everything, I'd be upgrading it soon enough. As it is, that iMac is my main machine, and it is due for an upgrade in about 2 years (I tend to keep them for 5 years). The rumored top GPU in the next iMac is the mobile equivalent of a 7850. Two years from now, it will be significantly faster, but maybe I could settle for a low-end iMac instead of the idiot-expensive top model. Hmm...

So, the PC is 5-6 years old, I guess - is its full upgrade (=replacement) frequency similar to the Mac's just 180 degrees out of phase? If so, is this the beginning of its upgrade?

Or are you (in your last post) considering a beefed-up PC and a slimmed down Mac? Or are you trying to move to one machine to rule them all? If the latter, in your boat I'd be seriously considering the upcoming refresh of the Mac Pro.

After re-reading the thread.

The issue is that I don't game enough to make me want to invest anything.

Does not compute.

I'm really just interested in what might make sense, given that cards like the upcoming 660 and the 7800 series (with a rumored price drop) seem like very good bang for buck.

Radeon HD 7850 is $218 AR on Newegg right now, and GTX 670 is $374 AR so likely GTX 660 will be ~$300+ - it'd help to know if the budget is $200, $300 or something else ...

 

[mpat]

I really only came to ask that question - I haven't decided what to do, and if the answer had been "nothing better than 6670 makes sense" or something, I would have stopped bothering.

The PC is indeed 6 years old, and ought to be replaced, and the question is if I should bother. Original plan was to update it slowly over time, but that turned out to be annoying, and since I bought the iMac in 2009, I haven't really used it. It served as a dedicated HTPC for a while. Back in the early 2000, I had need for a Windows PC on occasion, but now I can just virtualize on the iMac - which works fine for everything but 3D gaming. At the same time, this iMac is turning out to be the best machine I've had, and it still feels plenty fast, so I'm in no hurry to replace it - except for the graphics when booted to Windows. All of this made me think that maybe a decent gaming PC might make the next iMac update later and/or cheaper - getting a good GPU in an iMac is quite expensive. If Apple's future "desktop solution" turns out to have wimpy graphics a gaming PC and a cheaper iMac might be the ticket.

This is not the thread for Mac rumors, but I have a feeling that the only news coming down the pipe for the Mac Pro is news of its final demise, at least in current form, and in any case they've always been expensive to get GPU upgrades for. Options are pretty much to tough it out with rebooting and a 4850 for two more years, or a GPU upgrade. Since I want to use the iMac as a display (DisplayPort in), I sort of need 2560*1440 at least in the vast majority of games.

Thanks for all your feedback so far though, it's been interesting.

 

[Topinio]

FWIW my solution to a similar situation is to use a Windows PC for gaming (which dual boots as a Linux workstation) and a Mac laptop for work (which talks to the PC's display if necessary).

Have you considered the other (radical) option of moving all your gaming to a console?

 

[Josh A.K.A CLF]

Have you considered the other (radical) option of moving all your gaming to a console?

Dude ... that is an offensive idea.

 

[EmeraldArcana]

FWIW my 24" iMac with 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo and Radeon HD 4850 (1920x1200) ran way way way better than an Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 (2.4 GHz) with a GTS 250 (1440x900). GF had to turn down her resolution and her graphics for games like Diablo III and TERA and I ran fine on medium settings.

Granted the GTS 250 is a pretty damn old card and extremely middle-of-the-road as well, but seeing that cards are mostly aimed at a price point, I am guessing that a new $200 card today in a Core 2 Duo would have a hard time pushing the 27" monitor in your iMac. I guess I'm just saying that if you go too cheap you're not going to fix the problem.

 

[mpat]

FWIW my solution to a similar situation is to use a Windows PC for gaming (which dual boots as a Linux workstation) and a Mac laptop for work (which talks to the PC's display if necessary).

That's a possibility down the line. I've always shied away from laptops as a main computer because of slow 2.5" HDDs, but SSDs solve that issue.

Have you considered the other (radical) option of moving all your gaming to a console?

I have. That's another way to handle it, for sure, but the games I play are generally PC games, except for shooters which I'd rather play with mouse&keyboard - and this thread at least has some people gaming well with Core 2 and modern GPUs.

 

[Ardax]

Well, there is the crazytown option, which would be to sell both to finance a new iMac.

 

[cedric]

I'm not sure what the used market is like for a Core 2 Quad, but I upgraded my old Core 2 Duo to a Quad several years back -- shortly after the first i7's came out. The difference was significant.

I run a 6950 in mine. I've had no issues with any modern games at full quality but I'm also only at 1280p.

 

[EmeraldArcana]

Well, there is the crazytown option, which would be to sell both to finance a new iMac.

That would be great if there was a new iMac to buy.

 

[pauli]

I'm not sure what the used market is like for a Core 2 Quad, but I upgraded my old Core 2 Duo to a Quad several years back -- shortly after the first i7's came out. The difference was significant.

I run a 6950 in mine. I've had no issues with any modern games at full quality but I'm also only at 1280p.

prices on higher end cpus don't drop. demand from people looking to upgrade older machines keeps things like c2qs and faster c2ds pricey, relative to performance.

 

[continuum]

what the used market is like for a Core 2 Quad,

I've been trying to sell one for weeks, but admittedly I've been trying to unload the whole setup.

 

[mpat]

Well, there is the crazytown option, which would be to sell both to finance a new iMac.

The old PC is old enough that I wouldn't get anything for it, and the current top GPU you can get in an iMac is the equivalent of a 6850 or so - an upgrade from 4850, but not too large. It also doesn't solve the issues with Bootcamp and drivers, or the rebooting thing.

prices on higher end cpus don't drop. demand from people looking to upgrade older machines keeps things like c2qs and faster c2ds pricey, relative to performance.

This is my experience as well. I could find a complete used machine based around a Q6600 (with a GF 8600, but motherboard, RAM, HDD, case etc looked to be decent quality stuff) for less than just the CPU. I'm in Sweden, and thought that that might just be the local conditions, but apparently not.