Update or Replace PC

[Zoney]

IIRC it was Kanth who said she got some 150 FPS on her LGA775 system, Core2Duo E8400 using a 1060.

If you're not going to invest on a tighter resolution than 1920x1080 or a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz, and/or if you're not planning to get VR goggles, the 1060 will be more than sufficient. The Environment Map slider is the only setting to be cautious with, but that's a killer for any card.  I'm trying to convince myself to get one, calculating my gaming hours versus the 300€ price tag they have here.

Some manufacturers build better than others, and there's also variations within a single brand. Stick with the big names and choose a model with a back plate and improved cooling.

Fixed

[Puma44]

Thanks gents!  Checking my build sheet, it lists an Intel 2 Quad CPU Q9650@ 3.00 Hz. I don't know if it's overclockable.

At this point, I'm not leaning toward VR.  That's probably for a follow on system.

As far as manufacturers, I've seen all those listed in your post while browsing.  Are there any know bad actors to stay away from?

It seems the 1070 or higher would satisfy my desire to run with everything full up and still get the steady 60 fps I used to get in AH2.  Any other limiting factors I should be aware of?

Skuzzy's initial reply was not a surprise to me considering the age of my system.  I just want to squeeze some more time out of the current rig.

I sincerely appreciate everyone's input and suggestions.  I'm learning a lot and still don't know more of what I don't know. 

[Spikes]

The Q9650 is overclockable, but your motherboard needs to have the necessary options in the bios as not all motherboards support overclocking.

I don't think there should be any limiting factors, the 1070 is PCIe 3.0 while your motherboard is more than likely 2.0, but the card is backwards compatible. That said, it'll be great for when you do an upgrade, you can carry the card over.

I'm not too sure on any bad mfg's. EVGA had an issue where cards were catching on fire on their 1070(?)/1080s but that problem has since been fixed, but they have good support. Asus tends to have terrible customer support if there is ever an issue. An example from another forum is someone was on their chat support and had some issue with a component completely dead, Asus' response was literally: "Ok, thanks for contacting us about this! Have a great day!"

A lot of the new cards have a "feature" where if the card isn't working hard, the fans don't spin up until it does something (ie fire up a video game). This is generally dependent on temperatures, however I disabled this (just set the card's fans to spin at all temps) because my friend was having an issue with the card not spinning up while in games, causing some FR drops. I doubt this is a huge problem as I haven't heard too many other instances.

[Puma44]

Thanks Spikes, great info!

When you say is needs to have the necessary options in the bios, do you mean the options are there and just need to be enabled?  Or, is something else required?

[Bizman]

I have high doubts about your bios providing the overclocking option. It's a Dell, and the <brand> systems usually have very limited overclocking facilities. This article might tell you the possibilities: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/80318-hacking-dell-overclocking-the-xps-630

About your avatar, are you really sure it isn't flashing on and off several times a second?

[SIK1]

I have high doubts about your bios providing the overclocking option. It's a Dell, and the <brand> systems usually have very limited overclocking facilities. This article might tell you the possibilities: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/80318-hacking-dell-overclocking-the-xps-630

About your avatar, are you really sure it isn't flashing on and off several times a second?

Bizman, I don't see any flashing from Puma's avatar.

 
Sik

[Bizman]

Thanks, SIK1. Neither do I as of now, but it was very obvious earlier. No matter what I did, it did the same on his profile page, too. I power cycled my router a couple of hours ago, maybe that fixed it? I've been having issues with another forum lately, too, and having booted from a USB Linux stick I can tell for sure it's not something in my computer. Rebooting the router didn't fix that, maybe I should reset it back to defaults. It is possible that the router has got a virus, I've seen that happen for a couple of customers.

[Edit] I just finished resetting the router, no changes in the issues on the other forum. But Puma's avatar doesn't flicker any more.

[Puma44]

Thanks guys! I've done some reading on overclocking and understand it better. 

With an appropriate graphics card that will allow me to run the game options full up, is there any significant advantage to overclocking, if available?  Just trying get a feel for the risk vs payoff of overclocking since I've got no previous experience with it.

 

[Spikes]

Well you should be able to plug and play the card in fine, I'm just saying if there is any bottleneck (ie performance hit while playing a game) it more than likely wouldn't be the card, but the CPU showing its age. This can be combated by overclocking to squeeze some extra performance out, but wouldn't be necessary.

[Puma44]

Understand Spikes.  Thanks!

[Bizman]

Puma, your CPU already is on the magical 3 GHz line Skuzzy once recommended for AH3 back during the alpha/beta testing.

That said, I've managed to raise the bus speed of my E8500 of the same era to 800 MHz, raising the clock speed from 3.16 to 3.8 with the cost of occasional stability issues which cause the motherboard revert to standard settings.

Here's some good looking reading about what to expect: http://www.techradar.com/how-to/computing/how-to-overclock-your-cpu-1306573. The introduction chapter pretty much sums up the issues involved, the rest telling you that it's not a simple set-and-forget task. 

Also notice, that according to studies a regular user won't notice performance boosts lower than 20%.

If I were you, I'd start by seeing how much a better video card can do. If you get a solid 60 FPS in all situations without major hiccups, overclocking won't improve that.

[Puma44]

Excellent Bizman!  I'm hoping that a new card will give me the 60 fps without overclocking.  I'm all about keeping it simple if at all possible.  But, if needed, you've answered the question of how much to overclocking.   Is it common for those who over clock to have hardware failures as a result?

Thanks for the link.  I've read a couple others also that give similar instruction on the process.

[Bizman]

When someone runs into stability issues in the game, Skuzzy has often asked about overclocking as it can provoke instability. As they say in the Techradar article, "You might get lucky with your [processor], or you might not."

[Drano]

Overclocking can be fun for tinkerer types like me. Ya gotta have patience because you should be testing in baby steps to find the limits of your hardware. And those limits are gonna be different between identically equipped systems. It's just the nature of the components. So there isn't a set this here and that there that would be good between similar rigs. Takes a bit of time to get right. My i7 2600k likes it at 4.7 on air. Think I got a good chip.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Spikes]

Bizman has it right. I didn't mean to make it sound like you'd need it, it is more of a last ditch effort. However, the Q9XXX series are monsters at OC'ing so the option is there, but I didn't realize it was a prebuilt Dell mobo, probably can't do much with that. but you shouldn't need to.

There are fail safes with overclocking, which basically just causes the computer to crash and sometimes revert back to default settings.