Need some help (probably by the end of today)
- Thread starter d3fu5i0n
- Start date
lol, I was just about to.
Seems there was a bit of miscommunication but you did what I was trying to recommend anyway.
Well actually, DarkMX1000 got back to me and said 6870 as well. He said if I can get my CPU to 4GHz I should go 6870 CF.
He hasn't replied back again (v. busy), but what about 6850 CF? 3.8GHz?
Essentially it's 6870 = £155-£165. 6850 CF = £250. 6950 = £195. I wouldn't unlock some of the shaders on the 6950 by flashing it to a 6970, not only could it be unstable ('binned chips', and less power going to the card - there's a reason for that) but I'd want to keep the warranty.
So a 6950 is a bit faster than the 6870 but a vast amount slower than 6850s in CF, which I'd be wasting power on.
Crank the CPU to 3.65 or 3.7GHz and go 6950?
Grizzly
New member
Lots of people here, myself included, will tell you to get the single most powerful card and add to it later on.
So I'm going to say get the 6950.
Of course if you can happily overclock your CPU higher that will remove the CPU bottleneck if you even have one.
Yup, I agree highly.
But what clock speed would my Q6700 need to be at to alleviate the bottleneck?
To be honest the 6950 in older games only gets 1-3 more FPS than the 5870, so if my 3.6GHz clock speed is fine for a 5870, I don't see a problem with a 6950. If you can confirm basically NO bottleneck, I'm gonna buy it RIGHT NOW!!
And how well would a 6950 fit into an Antec 900? (with the [black] extra fan-mount removed).
For £195-ish, it'd be a 2GB 6950 would you know ;P Would help with all my lovely Anti-Aliasing.
Well, I've purchased the 2GB 6950 for £194 now
If I need to OC the CPU by even a tad (like 100MHz), so be it
Grizzly
New member
Well, I've purchased the 2GB 6950 for £194 now
If I need to OC the CPU by even a tad (like 100MHz), so be it)
Sweet, in response to what you said earlier I have no way of confirming whether or not you'll get a CPU bottleneck, but even if you do you'll only notice it in benchmarks or CPU rather than GPU intensive games.
And there's absolutely no reason why it wouldn't fit in an Antec 900.
So, I'd still get a boost from a 6870 right?
The 6950 seems to be pretty on par with the 5870 in D3D10 and older games, so it'd be unlikely that I even have a bottleneck.
Also, CPU intensive games generally tend to be ports like AC2, AC: Brotherhood etcetera.
But as I said, even if I have to push the BC up by 10 or 15 more (therefore 3.7 or 3.75GHz) that's fine. I'd rather not, but if so, so it is.
