smithyandco Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) Hi guys, Giving my media centre a partial upgrade but I'm stuck on graphics card options. I've got an ASUS P5Q-SE2 so I was limited to DDR2 and skt 775 CPUs. I've upgraded from a E6550 dual core to a Q8300 quad (I have a decent cooler so I plan to overclock to 3.00ghz).I've upgraded the Dell mixed frequency (533 and 667) 3Gb ram to Corsair XMS2 800 8Gb (4x 2Gb in 2 matched pairs). Now for the graphics card... I've got a 9800 GSO 512 (1Gb version) which is spot on for media playback but I want to play games. I've got a 450W Coolermaster PSU. All the numbers baffle me... I've spent hours researching and still have no idea I'm looking at £150 max I've seen the 560GTX Ti but read about driver issues and it needs a 500W psu minimum.Would this be OTT for this CPU etc? I'd prefer to stick to Nvidia as I use the Cuda feature often. What would you recommend? Thanks, Edited March 16, 2012 by smithyandco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 Why on earth would you want to overclock a media centre? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted March 16, 2012 Author Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) Why on earth would you want to overclock a media centre?I want it to be a Xbox replacement and media centre in one. it's in a full size horizontal case designed to look like a HTPC, Aplus or something... So Dirt 3 etc via a wireless Xbox controller on this PC in the living room via a sale special 32" 1080p telly Then Freesat HD and 1080p MKV (and blu-ray when I get a new drive) the rest of the time. Components from this PC will go to my office PC which is a single core thing on it's last legs. Edited March 16, 2012 by smithyandco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markbsi Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Check the ampage of the card your looking at compared with the amps on the PSU. Also the overclock with make your ampage for the system increase so I would sacrfice the OC for power reasons. The board/cpu/memory you have will bottleneck the 560ti, you'd be better off getting the 460 for 40-50 quid cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted March 17, 2012 Author Share Posted March 17, 2012 Thanks guys! I've seen quite a few people use a AMD HD6770 for this kind of setup. Any thoughts on this card? I'll lose Cuda but it seems to require 400w psus. I don't mind upgrading the psu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted March 21, 2012 Author Share Posted March 21, 2012 Ok, another contender... the HD6850 - Currently £89 delivered from CCL... AMD cards confuse me... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottg17 Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 (edited) Ok, another contender... the HD6850 - Currently £89 delivered from CCL... AMD cards confuse me... Thats cheap! guessing thats only the 512 though? I'm running a 6950 and its a great card, AMD stuff has gotten alot better of late Ah just checked the site, 1 gig one! bargain Edited March 21, 2012 by scottg17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 My 2 pennies, i would never bother with an AMD gfx card again as theyre too cumbersome to set up imo, and ive never been happy with the performance either. In fact if i ever build a new htpc i wont bother with a card at all, id use an i5/7 processor with 1155 socket board so that i can use the intel HD graphics thats built into the processor. By all accounts the black magic that theyve achieved with the silicon on the current processors makes the onboard graphics almost on par with a decent graphics card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 id use an i5/7 processor with 1155 socket board so that i can use the intel HD graphics thats built into the processor. That's exactly what i do in my htpc. Works wonderfully, but i have also deliberately left a 16x pci-e slot free just incase future codecs require a bit more oomph! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted March 22, 2012 Author Share Posted March 22, 2012 My 2 pennies, i would never bother with an AMD gfx card again as theyre too cumbersome to set up imo, and ive never been happy with the performance either. In fact if i ever build a new htpc i wont bother with a card at all, id use an i5/7 processor with 1155 socket board so that i can use the intel HD graphics thats built into the processor. By all accounts the black magic that theyve achieved with the silicon on the current processors makes the onboard graphics almost on par with a decent graphics card. id use an i5/7 processor with 1155 socket board so that i can use the intel HD graphics thats built into the processor. That's exactly what i do in my htpc. Works wonderfully, but i have also deliberately left a 16x pci-e slot free just incase future codecs require a bit more oomph! Thanks guys, If I was just building a HTPC I would either use an onboard card or cheapo DVI card with HDMI adaptor using CoreCodec as the main codec. I've built someone a HTPC similar to that using a MiniATX board, 1.66 Ghz Core2Duo (laptop) cpu and onboard graphics and it played everything even in Windows Media Centre. Using CoreCodec even 1080p WMV and MKV was easy, it even played Blu-Ray fine But my plans for this PC are for it to be a HTPC and a console replacement in one... So I want a basic gaming PC in a large HTPC case The Q8300 overclocks wonderfully and so far keeps up with the i5 750s at work without the HSF making any noise at all, the memory is perfectly fine for the job. It's just the graphics card and mechanical HDDs letting this PC down. I can't afford to throw silly money at a SSD just yet so the graphics card seemed the next logical step. Even if it plays the latest games on low-medium I'll be a happy bunny but currently the graphics card struggles with TDU 2 and barely plays DIRT 1 never mind 2 and 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidrick Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 A SSD was by far the bets thing I've ever bought for a computer. The difference from a 7,200rpm SATA-II drive is immense. 128gb Agility 3 drives are less than £120 now, and they've released a 90gb version for about £80 something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted March 23, 2012 Author Share Posted March 23, 2012 Oh I know Sid, I've added one to works Alienware flight sim laptop which now flies (pardon the pun)... But that has a SATA 6Gb/s interface whereas this PC has a 3Gb/s interface meaning I wouldn't see the full benefit of a SSD (unless I added a PCI-E 6Gb/s SATA card, but then you have messy drivers for Winblows installs). I think I'm holding off on the SSD until I am in the position to buy a new mobo as I have an excuse to reinstall Winblows at this point. Based on that logic, I guess buying a 560 Ti wouldn't be the worst move eh? as although it would be bottlenecked in my current system it wouldn't be in a future upgrade. If I can fit the bugger in the current case (takes upto 9.5" long cards) I think I may have solved the problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottybo Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 i use 2 asus gtx 560 ti's in sli, singularly they are really decent cards and you should see good performance on most modern games, in sli however they are beasts! i would like to note that they do require 2 seperate pci-e power rails from the cpu so a psu upgrade would be necesary but they are real decent performers trust me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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