This study was undertaken to evaluate the allowable welding heat input range for high strength steels manufactured by various processes and to compare the weldability of TMCP steel for high heat input welding with that of conventional Ti-added normalized steel. The allowable welding heat input ranges for conventional 50kg/$mm^2$ steel to guarantee D or E grade of ship structural steel were below 150 and 80kJ/cm respectively. Such a limit in welding heat input was closely related with the formation of undesirable microstructures, such as grain boundary ferrite and ferrite side plate in the coarse grain HAZ. In case of 60 and 80kg/$mm^2$ quenched and tempered steels, for securing toughness in weldments over toughness requirements for base metal, each welding heat input had to be restricted below 60 and 40kJ/cm, that was mainly due to coarsened polygonal ferrite in weld metal and lower temperature transformation products in coarse grain HAZ. The TMCP steel could be appropriate as a grade E ship hull steel up to 200kJ/cm, but the Ti-added normalized steel could be applied only below 130kJ/cm under the same rule. This difference was partly owing to whether uniform and fine intragranular ferrite microstructure was well developed in HAZ or not.