Best video card for Q9400?

J

J87X

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 7, 2006
Messages
270
I currently have a radeon hd 5850. What is the furthest I could go with this cpu that would make a difference?

edit: I have an 850w corsair psu.
 
Last edited:
Check out this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1837157

Guy put an R9 280 in his Q6600 system. Provided a good bump up from his old 4870. I myself just recently went from a 5870 to an R9 285. No official numbers, but seat-of-my-pants comparison says the new card is faster.

What's the rest of your system look like? Are you OCed? What PSU do you have? Do you want to stick with AMD, or are you open to nVidia too?
 
Personally... When it comes to older systems I usually just throw in 750 ti and call it good.

The 750 ti is surprisingly powerful (pretty close to a gtx 570) without being completely overkill for setups with older CPUs that can become easily bottle-necked. They are efficient enough to be powered by the PCI-e slot alone... So no worrying about having a six pin power connector or if an aging PSU is going to have the power. And lastly they're cheap and you can expect them to keep a decent resell value if you decide to build a new system from scratch later down the road.
 
Fixall said:
Personally... When it comes to older systems I usually just throw in 750 ti and call it good.

The 750 ti is surprisingly powerful (pretty close to a gtx 570) without being completely overkill for setups with older CPUs that can become easily bottle-necked. They are efficient enough to be powered by the PCI-e slot alone... So no worrying about having a six pin power connector or if an aging PSU is going to have the power. And lastly they're cheap and you can expect them to keep a decent resell value if you decide to build a new system from scratch later down the road.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. It doesn't make much sense to get anything thats cheaper unless you are buying used because performance drops off a lot once you go below the 750 ti.
 
I would go with an R9 270. It is faster than a 750 Ti and costs about the same.
 
jadesaber2 said:
Check out this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1837157

Guy put an R9 280 in his Q6600 system. Provided a good bump up from his old 4870. I myself just recently went from a 5870 to an R9 285. No official numbers, but seat-of-my-pants comparison says the new card is faster.

What's the rest of your system look like? Are you OCed? What PSU do you have? Do you want to stick with AMD, or are you open to nVidia too?
Click to expand...

I have an 850w corsair psu. I'm sure I can easily OC to 3.0 ghz.
I'm fine with either radeon or nvidia.
 
OP, just saw this Powercolor R9 280 for $149.99 with a $30 MIR on newegg. Not sure how long that lasts, but the 280 is a 7950 so your NVidia options are a 760 and 770 and both of those cards are starting at $200 and up.
 
750ti seems like the best option from Nvidia camp. I have a gtx 660 and it was bottlenecks by my 3.2ghz q6600. I just built a small computer with a g3258 and reusing my 660 improved my framerates in WoW and LoL by a pretty good margin. 660 is supposed to be a little more powerful than a 750ti.
 
jadesaber2 said:
Check out this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1837157

Guy put an R9 280 in his Q6600 system. Provided a good bump up from his old 4870. I myself just recently went from a 5870 to an R9 285. No official numbers, but seat-of-my-pants comparison says the new card is faster.

What's the rest of your system look like? Are you OCed? What PSU do you have? Do you want to stick with AMD, or are you open to nVidia too?
Click to expand...

I posted on this thread with some of my results when I went from a 5850 to a R9 280 on my Q9550 system. I only had a Corsair 520 watt PSU and it works great. I used to have to run all my games at 1080p. Now I can run at my native 1440p and actually use higher detail settings than I could with my 5850 at 1080p.
 
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