New GFX card advice for a old motherboard.

With Diablo 3 coming out pretty soon I'm wanting to get my PC ready for it.

I really need to update my gfx card but I'm hoping to get away with that being the only part I upgrade. I've got 4GB of ram and a Q6600 CPU.

At the moment I have an Asus Commando motherboard, I'm not sure what new cards, if any are compatible with this board. I've noticed that most cards say they are PCI-Express 2.0 or 2.1 and my board is PCI-E x16, I think that's 1.1 right?

Another question I have is about my PSU. I have a Corsair HX-620w, which seems to be enough to run most new cards. As far as I can remember the PSU only has 1 power lead for a GFX card, 4 or 6 pin if I remember rightly? Does that sound right?

Is this still enough, I've read a few things about some cards needing 2 power leads for the PSU.

Could anyone tell me what's the best card I can get into this motherboard please?

Thanks for any help, hope it made sense.

AFAIK its all backward compatable so you could easily put a 680 or a 7970 altough it wouldnt be worth putting a top range card in there as your q6600 will cause bottlenecks with it unless your overclocking the hell outa it and even then you still might have bottle necks. I would suggest a 6870/6950/7850 or a 560/560ti/560ti 448 core and just use a 4 pin molex to 6 pin pci-e adapter with your psu for the extra power required.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dfour

AFAIK its all backward compatable so you could easily put a 680 or a 7970 altough it wouldnt be worth putting a top range card in there as your q6600 will cause bottlenecks with it unless your overclocking the hell outa it and even then you still might have bottle necks. I would suggest a 6870/6950/7850 or a 560/560ti/560ti 448 core and just use a 4 pin molex to 6 pin pci-e adapter with your psu for the extra power required.

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Thanks for the reply.

Good to hear I will be able to install a newish card in there. I can't really justify a whole new system for Diablo 3.

I was looking at the 550ti cards, they're a fair bit cheaper than the 560's and still on the list of supported cards for running D3 on high.

How do I tell what type of PSU lead this will need? I've checked my PSU and it has 1 molex to 6 pin lead.

My Q6600 at around 3GHZ was enough to push an overclocked HD5850 1GB(near HD5870 1GB level performance I suspect) in Crysis2 and Metro2033 at 100% usage. I was using a 975X based motherboard and the PCI-E slot was fixed at PCI-E 8X too!!

Avoid the GTX550TI as it is to put it,not that great for the price.

The cards I would look at are:
1.)An HD6850 1GB for under £100(slightly slower than an HD5850 1GB)
2.)An HD6870 1GB or GTX560 for around £120 to £130(probably around the same as my overclocked HD5850 1GB)
3.)A GTX560TI for around £150 to £160(around HD5870 1GB level)

However,I would check if your motherboard will be fine with the Nvidia cards. It seems that some of the GTX460 cards had issues with certain motherboards,so I would confirm this.

Thanks for the help and advice :)

I think I'm going to give and build a new system. After a little more reading it seems the 560ti works fine in the Commando board but I would need to overclock the CPU and then there is still chance of a bottleneck.

I've never been all that keen on overclocking in the past. It seems to be pretty much standard now though. I even noticed on Scan that they sell pre-clocked bundles.

The new i7 CPU's that run at 3.4, I take it they are quite a bit more powerful than my Q6600 2.4? Would I still need to OC that?

Do you really need the hyper threading of the i7?? If you just gaming and surfing then a i5 2500k would do you better and cost less. You shouldnt need to overclock a i5 but more headroom is always usefull. Buy a Z68 board so you can overclock in the future if you choose.

Just buy prebuilt and overclocked
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ShowSystem.asp?SystemID=1264
£388:79 just plug and go.

or the no brainer today at £552 build it yourself

•Coolermaster Elite 430, All Black, Mid Tower Case with Side Window 120mm Front LED Blue Fan w/o PSU
•550W PSU, Coolermaster GX RS550-ACAAE3-UK, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX v2.31
•Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache 95W Retail
•Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3, Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), VGA On Board, ATX
•1GB Asus GTX 560Ti Direct CU II TOP, 40nm, 4200MHz GDDR5, GPU 900MHz, Shader 1800MHz, 384 Cores, mHDMI
•8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black LP, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V
•Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card & Headphone Ampifier, OEM
•Colors IT ACT KB-8108 Multimedia Office Pro Keyboard, Silver/Black with MIC/Speakers SKYPE Ready
•Samsung WriteMaster SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dfour

Do you really need the hyper threading of the i7?? If you just gaming and surfing then a i5 2500k would do you better and cost less. You shouldnt need to overclock a i5 but more headroom is always usefull. Buy a Z68 board so you can overclock in the future if you choose.

Just buy prebuilt and overclocked
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ShowSystem.asp?SystemID=1264
£388:79 just plug and go.

or the no brainer today at £552 build it yourself

•Coolermaster Elite 430, All Black, Mid Tower Case with Side Window 120mm Front LED Blue Fan w/o PSU
•550W PSU, Coolermaster GX RS550-ACAAE3-UK, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX v2.31
•Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache 95W Retail
•Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3, Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), VGA On Board, ATX
•1GB Asus GTX 560Ti Direct CU II TOP, 40nm, 4200MHz GDDR5, GPU 900MHz, Shader 1800MHz, 384 Cores, mHDMI
•8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black LP, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V
•Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card & Headphone Ampifier, OEM
•Colors IT ACT KB-8108 Multimedia Office Pro Keyboard, Silver/Black with MIC/Speakers SKYPE Ready
•Samsung WriteMaster SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM

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Thanks for the reply. Time and effort is appreciated.

I'm not really sure what hyper threading is. I would be just gaming and surfing, I just assumed the i7 CPU's were a better choice over the i5's. Budget is not really an issue but then there is no point spending more than you have to.

I've got a decent case and PSU already, CM stacker and Corsair 620W. Although the PSU is around 5 years old now, so it may well be worth replacing it. I'd always been an Asus man when it came to motherboards, are the Gigabyte boards up with Asus these days? It always used to be Asus or Abit back in my day (God I feel old)

Thanks again for the help. Over the next couple of weeks I will be looking more seriously at the build. Would you mind if I picked your brains on the final build when I have drawn something up?

Your psu is probably fine, I just built my new pc using my 5yr Corsair 620 and it's fine (though ymmv, of course).

As has been said, if all you want is gaming and general pc use, then an i7 is overkill.