Not a relatively minor upgrade, if he chooses the wrong one or doesn't modify his current system, it will bottleneck completely. Ask this person from vista forums :
Vista Forums
and tell him the situation. first thing, he will say go nvidia, second he will state an upgrade like a 5870 will bottleneck the rig.
its will have some bottlenecking yes, you might want to go ahead and build a new rig anyway and think about getting a i5 or a i7
Oh please... we're talking about going from an 8600 GT to a 5870... this is a relatively minor upgrade... no different than if he installed a gtx 295. Yes, the card is stronger, but not to the degree that he's going to need ianything, and no, the card will not be bottlenecked: games just don't require insane amounts of cpu these days.
Not sure why I should go ask Archie from the Vista forums... been having coffee with this guy all morning, Vista Forums, and he assures me the extra expenses you've suggested, although nifty, cool and neat to have, are not a requirement.
now..... a phenom II 940 will bottleneck a 5870 some..... and its way faster than a q6700..... but ok if you say so....
IMHO, i would just go with a 4890, or a 5K series.
the 5K are faster, yes.
But in all honestly, there isn't a game on the market the 4890 can't handle with ease.
I think its still a safe bet for a good while yet.
just make sure your Power supply will handle it.
I thought the OP was looking to upgrade just the GPU,
As far as upgrading the system:
the Q6600 is older tech,sure but its no slouch either.
Worst case scenario, a mild overclock will help keep running his socket 775 MOBO for a good while to come.
I honestly do not think it'll have a issue with a 4890.
Another thing to consider, while the core i7 is new and faster than its socket 775 45nm counterparts,
When it comes to gaming it really isn't going to help anything at all.
If we are talking video encoding or something like this, then it will help, however, its speed is only marginally faster than the faster Core2 Quads available. Still, not worth the expense to upgrade to if you have perfectly good running Socket 775 hardware.
<<Unless cash is no issue at all>>
In the end, Core i7 only makes sense if you are building a complete new rig.
It would be cheaper to upgrade to a faster 45nm socket 775 CPU to upgrade your current HW, and get more life out of it. Or a mild OC on the current 660, if it appears to be needed.
Moving completely to I7 for gaming will be expensive for little -> no gain in gaming.
if you are looking to build a new rig, then yes go i7, no doubt.
upgrading what you have now for gaming? new GPU, (possibly a faster quad or OC current one)
C'mon guys... it's too early in the day for this.
Here you can see how the Q6600 stacks up against other cores: AnandTech: The Intel Core i7 860 Review
AnandTech: AMD Phenom II X4 940 & 920: A True Return to Competition
Yes, it's true that cards scale better with a stronger cpus, but nothing here indicates that gaming will suck, which is what is implied when you suggest that one's cpu will bottleneck one's video card. Sure, i7 would be great, but if that's not an option, there's no reason to not get the 5870.
I realize I've been away for a bit, but if it's still true that most of work for games is still done by the video card's hardware and DirectX, then the OP is not limited by his cpu... as is clearly demonstrated by the performance of my puny little Core2 Wolfdale here: AnandTech: AMD Phenom II X4 940 & 920: A True Return to Competition
I'd like an i7 too, but it's just not necessary yet.
It's not so much that I say so, it's that the results of the benchmarks say so; however, I could be way off base here, so if you've read something different, I'd like to read it too... as I'm sure would everyone else.
... can you throw up a link that demonstrates this bottleneck so I can educate myself?
ehhhh i thought i read it somewhere on tom's hardware but i can't seem to find it haha.... so i guess i'm wrong
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