Q6600 w/ a 6850 CF bottlenecks?

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distortion69

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 1, 2007
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How much performance am I giving up by using 6850 CF on a q6600 @ 3.0ghz on a p5e x38 board w/ 4gb of ram? This is at 1920x1080. Primary usage will be BC2 and BF3. I do intend on playing Metro 2033, and a few others.

Keep in mind this is a budget minded setup. I am not looking for absolute 100% benchmarking crushing numbers. However, in BC2 I wouldn't mind a few more more frames on the min side. Of course, I suspect the 6850 will leave some to be desired in BF3. So obviously in the case of CF I hope to pickup a bit on BF3 when it comes out and Metro 2033..

I wonder though... does anyone have any direct experience with running a decent resolution like 1080p, with before/after cpu/mb upgrades? I'd love to see some actual real world experience. Frequently I find myself searching and reading everything from it's a huge deal, to it's only a few fps @ 1080p. I'd like to hear some real scientific numbers if you have done similar... so that I know if I'm missing out on 3 fps... 10fps... etc :)

Thanks,
Josh
 
You're limited in BC2 by your processor almost certainly.

I went from a Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz to a Q9650 at 4.4Ghz and noticed a difference in BC2.
 
You will see little to no difference between crossfire and a single card. Q6600 @3.0Ghz does bottleneck a card significantly. I cannot achieve over 80% load on my GTX 570 due to my Q6600 bottlenecking it. At 1920x1080, multi-GPU solutions don't make much difference. Now if you were going for 2560x1600 you may seem some. I would pocket the money you would be spending on another 6850 and instead put it towards a new CPU/MOBO/RAM. Wait for Battlefield 3 if you're building/upgrading for it. Also, Metro 2033 is a brief game and you're not going to miss much by only getting to run it on high.
 
Thanks for the replies. I would mention that the 2nd 6850 is already on the way, bought a used one at a fair price :) So can't pocket it and spend on new stuffs. However, my intention is if it is necessary to buy both before BF3 to go ahead and do so. So I guess the order of purchases is simply reversed in that case.. no harm no foul in the long term.

I will be interested to see when I plug the 2nd one in what kind of gains I see. I do know that there are points in BC2 where my minimum frames can drop into the 40's when there are tanks/grenades and such going off at once. That doesn't make a huge diff to me, however, as 40's is completely playable.

I did go ahead and list my items I'm upgrading in the for sale section.. If I get any bites, I'll just ship them out and use the laptop a few days while the new parts come in :)

Thanks again
 
I doubt there would be NO gains, a bit of hyperbole, but certainly limited in comparison to an i7 or SB build.
 
In BC2, you are extremely CPU limited. BF3 will probably be worse due to the larger environments, more vehicles, and double the players. As far as graphics are concerned for BF3, it has been confirmed by the developers that the demo performed at the Game Developers Conference in March (same as preview vids) was performed by a single GTX 580. If the developers knew what they were doing, they most likely had that game maxed out and made sure the GPU they used was overkill so they didn't have any frame rate dips. Since that video only goes to 1080p and it was shown on projectors (whose likely max res was 1080p) to the audience, it is safe to assume the final product will show similar performance.
 
Very good observation numbnutz...

Do you guys think a x4 955 @ close to 4.0ghz would put me where I need to be.. or would this still present me with a bottleneck?

Thanks,
Josh
 
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distortion69 said:
Very good observation numbnutz...

Do you guys think a x4 955 @ close to 4.0ghz would put me where I need to be.. or would this still present me with a bottleneck?

Thanks,
Josh
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I wouldn't go with the AMD processor personally. You'd almost be better off searching for a used older motherboard and getting your Q6600 to ~3.5Ghz+ (assuming it's a G0).

If you are going to do a full motherboard and processor upgrade, go to something like an i7 at least.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
In BC2, you are extremely CPU limited. BF3 will probably be worse due to the larger environments, more vehicles, and double the players. As far as graphics are concerned for BF3, it has been confirmed by the developers that the demo performed at the Game Developers Conference in March (same as preview vids) was performed by a single GTX 580. If the developers knew what they were doing, they most likely had that game maxed out and made sure the GPU they used was overkill so they didn't have any frame rate dips. Since that video only goes to 1080p and it was shown on projectors (whose likely max res was 1080p) to the audience, it is safe to assume the final product will show similar performance.
Click to expand...

Of course, the Qxxx is 2 generations behind, but the problem with that post is performance is still really good. I don't think people would complain about 90fps on an older CPU and GPU that isn't high-end anymore.

He isn't EXTREMELY CPU limited, he just has older hardware that is not as powerful as SB. He is probably GPU limited right now as well, as the 460 and 6850 can only do so much in this game. Hell on my system, I'm GPU limited @ 1600x1200, 2xAA, 16xAF, High with CPU usage at 60-70 and GPU usage at 95+. At 4.4Ghz, my CPU usage barely goes past 60. The game was made with the previous CPUs in mind, so of course newer stuff is going to result in better performance.

I would imagine he would get a decent boost with Crossfire, but he would want to upgrade in the near future just in case. If he plans on upgrading at some point, I say go for crossfire for now and see what happens OP. Atleast when you upgrade your board and CPU you won't be GPU limited.
 
the x38 chipset will be able to get your q6600 to 3.6ghz but it will take a bit of work. your nb and fsb termination voltage might need as much as 1.5-1.6v, and you'll want to enable load line calibration to quiet the noise between your cores. might also need better than 1.35v to the cpu.
 
The q6600 I have is a b3 stepping, and if it did do 3.6, it would probably need water cooling. This thing runs hot as fire! 3.2 is the limit of where I would feel comfortable after tinkering. I suppose I could lap the CPU and put AS5 on it, but at this point I don't want to harm the resale if I eventually have to sell it anyways.

Great suggestions though!

Josh
 
My brother runs an e6750 with an hd 6950 but he runs bc2 maxed(dx9 cuz he's using windows 7 for his new build) and there are rarely any hiccups.(1920x1080). So no I don't believe you will be cpu limited if you push your q6600 to 3.0 or higher.
 
At equal settings I am seeing roughly 20fps with the new card.. Just to be safe I went ahead and got an i5 2500k, an Asrock extreme4, and 8gb of gskill sniper.

I will have benchmarks here in the next few days across a few tests to see exactly how much the q6600 was holding me back in case someone was interested :) I'm sure there are several already out there, but I'm still curious on exacts in my particular case.
 
i have a q6600 oc ot 3.6gig and when i upgraded my sli 8800gtx to 6950 i noticed my fps pretty much shot up to 30 to 60 fps. sometimes the load on the gpu wasnt high because my fps cap is at 60fps due to vsync enabled. i have to enable vsync because i dont like screen tearing very much. but if i had 120 hz monitor then it prolly would go higher. so just to let you guys know.
 
distortion69 said:
At equal settings I am seeing roughly 20fps with the new card.. Just to be safe I went ahead and got an i5 2500k, an Asrock extreme4, and 8gb of gskill sniper.

I will have benchmarks here in the next few days across a few tests to see exactly how much the q6600 was holding me back in case someone was interested :) I'm sure there are several already out there, but I'm still curious on exacts in my particular case.
Click to expand...

i'm interested in seeing this :).
 
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