Like the title said Id be intrested in seeing game results if a 480 is put in a system running an overclocked q6600 say at 3.2, 3.3 Cant afford changing the board ,cpu ,ram at the moment but am looking at graphics card update and can run to the 480 . Maybe in 6 months ill have enough for the other components but it may have to stay together for the next 2 years with a new card. i game at 1900x1200 q6600 at 3.2 rampage formula 4 gig dominators at 1066 geforce 8800 gts 512 ps as nvidia have copped on id be keeping the 8800 for physx 720watt Enermax q6600 is water cooled Other question is in the future if i cant upgrade the system and went for the 480 do ye envisage that i could game reasonably for the next 2 years. Any and all help appreciated
it will be ok, but i think you will be a little short on power if you add that 8800 for ppu.. imo it would be overkill to have such gpu just for physx (for what 3-5 games), still its up to you to decide though :nerd:
A better card will always give you better performance, especially in those games that aren't very cpu bound. But it won't reach it's maximum potential. Though, within 2 or 3 months I'm upgrading my 8800GTX aswell and I'll be in the same situation.
Honestly I think the q6600@3.2/3.3 will handle the 480 without a problem when running at max game setting and res @ 1920x1200. Regarding your question on what the future will be ... well it is hard to say. I think your config will be enough for the next 2 years... I'm part of people who thinks that PC games are "pulled down" by consoles. Let say that the next PC reference could be Crysis2 but so far I was really disappointed by the videos and pictures and I have a bad feeling regarding that . So yes you can go for a 480 but have you considered ATI products? They are cheaper for about the same performance. Since you have a 8800 for physx, this could be considered...
my spec. Q6600 at 3.0 on an abit in9 680i 4gb corsair dominator zotac 480 gtx (it does actually run cooler than ref card) I moved to a 480gtx from a 4870x2 because i wanted to try 3Dvision on a 23.6" Acer 1920x1080 120hz display. as usuall with all modern games the GPU is still the bottleneck as my cpu rarely breaks a sweat. speed wise from my 4870x2 to a 480gtx i see little or no difference. I think the raw power of my 4870x2 was faster but the 480 gtx gives better min lower FPS. where my 4870x2 would be at 100fps and then dip to 40fps at a busy point the 480 would be at 90fps but only dip to 60 fps. what made it for me (and i hope all future games use it) is tesselation. it's awsome, just look at heaven benchmark at the stone walls or tiled roofs to see the WOW factor with tesselation. 3Dvision is great also but only on a few games, games like crysis are slow bugged and it doesnt work well at all, but games like grid , WOW and avatar it's OMG why am i not using it all the time my friend has the all singing and dancing 12gb ddr3 i7-8 cores clocked to 3.8ghz but we dont see any difference in game play from my Q6600.. only when he loads cpu specific video encoding did we see a difference and actually in his system the best performance upgrade he has done is install a fast SSD for hit OS boot drive,, now thats FAST..
sardine much appreciated for the specs Nono06 the issue i guess now with ati is that they are on their 2nd revision and dont overclock as well,first revision if u can get them are commanding a big premium,the 480 runs hotter and more power hungry but is overclockable at the moment but you do pay for it,2nd revision who knows. guess im thinking of if i cant build in 6 months,and this card is needed for 2 years ill need the overclocking head room. the other issue is not somethink i like but nvidia throw more money at game companies and in a lot of cases get better results for the first month or so,not many games that u will still be playing after the month,this is driver wise this may change as ati have ,are dominating the dx11 cards at the moment ati 3 screens no use to me nvidia cuda no use to me nvidia physx ,well id rather have it enabled if its in the game Note it seens the removal of the physx restriction in latest nvida drivers is a bug and not intentional acording to Ryan Smith AnandTech GPU Editor
I don't think ATI is dominating the dx11 cards, at least not dx11 performance wise. The 480 has a much better tesselator as demonstrated by the Heaven benchmark. GTX 480 is getting 2x the frame rate as the 5870 with extreme tesselation enabled, not to mention the 10-15% lead in performance in most games.
I have my q6600 at 3.2 on a 470 SLI and I am seeing minimum and max frame bottlenecks in some games (crysis, Battlefield Badcompany 2, Dawn of war 2) but other games that are more GPU bottlenecked are completely unaffected (metro 2033 sings on these bad boys at 60+ FPS). Basically, 1 GTX 480 will not be wholly bottlenecked. If at all
My q6600 @ 3.2 ghz doesnt bottleneck my 5850 Oced to 800mhz core. Durring BC2, Metro 2033, and crysis im almost always at 99% gpu usage in afterburner. BC2 can dip into the high 80s but still, the cpu keeps up with it fine. And im playing at 1680x1050 at your resolution, it will make even less of a difference. Tbh the bottleneck will be hardly noticeable, the q6600 is still very capable
it think its more chance of been called the 485 so they can make more cash really and charge a lot more for it
I would have to say just one 480gtx at that speed for you q6600 should be fine but there will be a bottleneck but not much but two it will bottleneck the crap our of your system. I didn't think mine would but I have a gtx 295, sli gtx 280's and now my 5970 and none of the second gpu's kicked in for me. Paired my 5970 with this q9650 and it fly's now.
the only game i see a difference in with My Q6600 @ 3.4 vs my wifes machine that has an i5 750 @ 3.4, is BC2. the i5 smokes it! the Q6600 is no slouch but when things heat up the i5 is still completely smooth play .. Wifes Comp: i5 750 @ 3.4 Asus P7P55D PRO 4GB G.Skill RipJaw 2x 8800GTS 640mb @ 600/1400/900
True, all though I would upgrade my CPU and mobo within a 1,5 years. But for now, the performance gain with the new cpu's just don't seem worth it. Back in the old days, games like Metro 2033 and Crysis would be the norm, now they're just 2 special exceptions, probably due to consoles. From what I hear, Bad Company mainly relies on having a quadcore, not that much on the actual speed of the thing.
I'm waiting for that aswell. My 4870x2 is gpu bound in BC2 so need something more powerful but the current 480s are even hitter the my X2 and seems to be even loader aswell. @ OP the Q66 should handle itself well, you won't get max potential out of the card but that will only affect you if you are running lower resolutions and want extremly high fps like 100+ all the time. Naturally if you would ever consider SLI with the 480s you would run into driver resistance and cpu overhead due to the fact your running two cards and that would req a more powerful cpu to keep the pace and not give you diminished returns and bad scaling making the 2nd card not worth the money if you get like 140% out of both instead of 85% out of one as it would be with the Q66 ( hypotetichal nummbers to make a point )
True BC2 is extremly gpu limited once you got 4 cores. And the diffrence from a 4ghz + c2d to an intel quad isn't that great, 10 or so min fps in my case no diff in max fps. /edit This is at 1920x1200 2x aa everything maxed hbao off bloom off, wartapes sound set to 5.1 sound.
i find that clock for clock my core i5 750 easily beats my Q6600 in BC2, much smoother. other games i dont notice a difference, only BC2 sofar ... maybe its a DDR2 vs DDR3 thing? i didnt check the fps on the i5 machine, but it runs a LOT better in heavy battles vs the Q6600 ...
I guess that might be something the op should consider. The Q66 is alot weaker clock for clock then any of the other intel quads. Then again a compromise have to be made either way /edit Q9550 + 5870 + 3rd party cooling wouldn't be bad either.
