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$350 BC2 upgrade challenge...

S

spaceman

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Jan 7, 2005
Messages
14,959
So if you have

Q9450 @ 3.6
Gigabyte P45 single slot mobo
2x2gb mushkin ram
X-Fi Titanium
Antec PSU that did fine with a 4870X2, 5870 and now nothing at all.

What would you do if you have $350 cash and willing to sell any and all of your parts just to get BC2 to play nice on medium at either 2058x1536 75hz or 1920X1200 85Hz?

This is my question. I will have the $$ by the end of the month. I wonder if the 6990, 590? release will impact the cost of the current gpus much?

Is the game more dependent on the cpu or gpu? Would a mobo switch to sli or xfire be a good idea? Etc...

Fun stuff.
 
BC2 is quite CPU dependent with all it's destructible environments, at least more so than other games. ESPECIALLY if you'll be happy playing at medium settings. I mean, I can play just fine on Medium with my 5770 @ 1080P.

What is your current Graphics card? Or do you not have one? I'm a little confused about that.

EDIT: Here's a nice review showing CPU scaling:
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html

Looks like a better CPU may be beneficial but I imagine you'll be fine with your current setup, so spend the $350 on a 6970 or something like that.

Here are some more recent GPU benches: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/12/15/ati-radeon-hd-6970-review/9

6970 manages 55 fps average at 1920x1200 4xAA 16x AF max detail, so I'm sure it would be comfortable at your resolutions. You may become CPU bound at 1920x1200 Med. details but I don't think it would be too bad. Also a 6950 overclocked is almost identical to the 6970 if you want to save a few bucks.

I'd stay away from the 560Ti and 6870 as they seem to drop off pretty heavily once you get higher than 1080p res. Honestly if you just want it to be nice and playable on Medium settings though, you could probably go with a 6850 or 6870, or 560Ti.

Also, flagship high end GPU launches almost never effect the price of mainstream cards
 
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No gpu at all atm. Rocking a dell desktop with integrated gfx atm.

I had the $$ for a 6950 after I sold my 5870, then had to use that money to pay the heating bill. So I will get the $$ back the end of this month with our tax return.

Since I never got the fps I wanted out of my sys with a 5870, I was wondering if going to an I5 and a lesser gpu than the 6950 would work better than what I have now + a 6950. Or going SLI or Xfire or hell ANYTHING to get the smoothest possible gameplay on that damn game.

I can go to almost any resolution btw. I am rocking an old Sony G500 Crt so there isn't a native res to stick to.

I could get a sli or crossfire mobo, a lesser gpu now and add another later, then simply run a lower resolution until I can add another gpu.
 
Yeah that's a tough one then. Are you playing competitively?

From this review it looks like a 5870 should be able to avg. 77 fps with 2x AA and medium settings at 1980x1080
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page5.html

So that tends to leave me to believe that you were either CPU bound (which I find kind of surprising though with your quad at 3.6 ghz) or there was some other issue going on. What kind of frame rates were you getting, and what settings were you running?

Typically if you are willing to sacrifice a lot of detail then yes going down to a faster CPU and lower end GPU is probably the way to go. Nothing interrupts your gameplay like a CPU bottleneck. Maybe you could do a cash+trade for an i5 or i7 quad setup with overclocking potential and spend what's left on your vid card. I find a lot of people too often get high end cards with an inadequate CPU, and their framerate is fine most of the time but the CPU kills the min. Perhaps someone who plays more BC2 than I do can chime in here :p
 
I did run 4800X900 with 60hz lcds but sold them b/c the tearing and lag was horrible for me at 60hz. My old crt at 75-85 hz was way more responsive and smooth. I tried every setting I could think of. Low was too blurry even with aa. Hence medium at least. It was the min fps that was killing me. Especially on maps like Oasis and those snow maps. I doubt my avrg was 77. Maybe 65 but when you hit 5-8 fps at times, well, you die then. I want a rig that doesnt slow down at those crucial times when the shit is really hitting the fan.

I am not playing this game comp but for BF3 I will return for sure. I did play 1942, DC (awesome), Nam, Bf2, POE, some 2142 comp in Cal and Twl.
 
To cut through the BS - you really need both a strong quad core CPU and a good GPU.
 
dnottis said:
To cut through the BS - you really need both a strong quad core CPU and a good GPU.
Click to expand...

Well yeah but is there a way to get both now on this budget or is it buy a gpu now and upgrade the 775 sys later? I am pretty sure that the cpu is just barely getting it done at best. Maybe I just needed to do a fresh OS install after messing with it so much. The last time I did a fresh install was two months ago and I think the game ran smooth then. Just kept getting choppy at bad times. Especially in 32 man servers.
 
i play bc2 with hbao off and 0xaa @ 3900x1920 with only the minor hickups. Though to be honest i haven't installed fraps to find out what my fps really is.
 
I guess what I want is a min fps of 30+. I just get too crossed up when it goes below that.
 
1- OP says he needs a GPU. He already has a midrange quad. Pushing 3.6ghz.
2- OP wants to play a VERY high resolutions.
3- Everybody says he needs a new cpu.
4- Review gets posted clearly showing that at the VERY high resolution that the OP wants to play at, the cpu is the bottlneck across the board from 3.*- 4ghz.
5- Everbody still insists on a new cpu.
6- I'm dumbfounded at the bullshit being thrown around this thread. Its like a monkey convention.

lol.
 
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I can play at any resolution. those are simply the highest I can play at. So the game is cpu bottlenecked until I can go 4 + then? Is that with an I7 or does an older quad have a chance?
 
At high resolutions, the load it taken off of your CPU and your GPU becomes the bottleneck. Your 3.6ghz quad will do just fine. Get a nice video card.
 
I would try selling your MoBo, CPU, and RAM and then upgrade to an i5 or i7 system. you could use the X-FI as a wild card if you need a bit more cash but I would try to hold onto it.

Your PSU is dying, can you RMA it? if not then you'll probably be dropping $100-$150 on a new PSU. If you can get the PSU RMAd then you could upgrade to socket 1156 for around $350+ or socket 1336 for $550+ your options depend on how much $ you can get selling your parts.

EDIT***Wait I'm confused. The way I read it the OP has a 5870 but the PSU is dying. Or did the OP give up his 5870 and has no videocard?***EDIT
 
no gpu. sold it to get a 6950 and then had to spend the $$ to pay a bill.

Question is, for this game, what is more important to maintain steady fps with no serious dips? Lower resolutions ok.
 
At lower resolutions some of the load will fall on your cpu. If you play at lower resolutions get a new cpu.
If you play at higher resolutions, very little load will fall on your cpu. If you play at higher resolutions, get a top end gpu.

Read this..
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html

At lower resolutions, theres a HUGE gap in fps between processor speeds.
At higher resolutions the difference between a 2.22ghz i7 and a 3.7ghz i7 is .4 (point four) frame per second. Not even 1/2 a frame.
 
lloose said:
At lower resolutions some of the load will fall on your cpu. If you play at lower resolutions get a new cpu.
If you play at higher resolutions, very little load will fall on your cpu. If you play at higher resolutions, get a top end gpu.

Read this..
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html

At lower resolutions, theres a HUGE gap in fps between processor speeds.
At higher resolutions the difference between a 2.22ghz i7 and a 3.7ghz i7 is .4 (point four) frame per second. Not even 1/2 a frame.
Click to expand...

Thanks man. I will try for the fastest gpu then. So the 6990 will be around $600 at least? Might need to see if I can sell some fluids for that.
 
I play BC2 @ 1920x1200 with everything on High and HBAO on with my Phenom x6 1055t and 6870.
 
I'll chime in. I played bc2 with a q9550 at 3.8ghz with a 6850 at 5292x1050. I'm pushing about 5.5MP. With everything set on low and 1x aa, 1x af, vsync & hbao off; I was able to keep a constant 75fps in a 32 man server. During major explosion e.g. tank fights and rpg blowing shiet up, it'll dip maybe to 50fps.

You're only pushing 3.1MP at 2058x1536 with a q8200 at 3.6 with a 5870. 5870 is faster than my 6850. If you're seeing dips as low as what you're saying, then you might want to look at the cpu.
 
Hmmm. What tests can you do to detect cpu issues like that? It could have just been my OS was gunked up too.
 
Possibly but you no longer have the 5870 to test out. I usually have MSI Afterburner running with OSD enabled for gpu utilization and resource monitor for cpu utilization. My work machine chokes on BC2 even though it's a c2d at 4.ghz. GPU utilization never gets above 50% cause the cpu is already at 100%. Everything is set on low and I can barely maintain 75fps on 1440x900. Min fps is bearable at 30fps.
 
No I meant cpu. I was using Afterburner and I could get the 5970 to hit 99-100% quite often. Still had the damn lag freezes though. Sometimes the game would damn near stop. Hmmm.

Is Everest still the cpu testing program? I am old and forgetful.
 
I think it must have been bloat in your OS or something. The type of lag you're talking about would normally point toward the CPU but if you really had it clocked at 3.6 Ghz I don't think that's the issue. My i5 750 at stock runs BC2 well enough. Either that or it was a video driver issue. I would think you should probably opt for a decent video card and just pay attention to what you have running in the background. Especially anti-virus software and things like that, disable any kind of live-guard and automatic updates and automatic drive indexing. With the hardware you described it shouldn't have been dropping down to 5-8 FPS at those settings

Just had a thought, did you ever torture test your overclock to ensure it was stable? It's possible your CPU was overheating and thermally throttling. That would fit the scenario quite well
 
No one can tell you what setup will give you smoothest gameplay.
There are too many uncertainties involved. And a bit of luck to pull it off.
Besides you sound confused and ready to mess up your system, no matter what hardware is in it.

Personally I'd try to get GTX 570/580 if I was you.
I've heard of ppl that switched from 5870 to gtx 570 and whose BF:BC2 gameplay experience changed completely.
 
lloose said:
At lower resolutions some of the load will fall on your cpu. If you play at lower resolutions get a new cpu.
If you play at higher resolutions, very little load will fall on your cpu. If you play at higher resolutions, get a top end gpu.

Read this..
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html

At lower resolutions, theres a HUGE gap in fps between processor speeds.
At higher resolutions the difference between a 2.22ghz i7 and a 3.7ghz i7 is .4 (point four) frame per second. Not even 1/2 a frame.
Click to expand...

Posting sweeping statements like that without context is bad.

CPU bottlenecks WILL still occur at high resolutions, depending on the graphics power you have. If you run an HD2600 pro, you're never going to see a CPU bottleneck in a modern game, no matter how small a resolution you use.
If you run a trio of GTX580s, you'll be CPU limited even at 2560x1600, all the way into moderate eyefinity setups, with not just some games, but most games.

You can never state a bottleneck does/doesn't exist in any situation without taking it on a per-case basis.
In Bad company 2 specifically, the 'I always want 60fps' boundary is set around a moderately overclocked i7. If you have a Q9550, if it's not at stupidGhz then you aren't always going to keep 60fps. To most people this isn't an issue, but to some of course it will be. So yes, an i7 will be some sort of an upgrade to a Q9550. However, the next issue is resolution. Even at only 1920x1200, if you enable MSAA, not even a GTX580 will keep a minimum of 60fps, it'll do that average, but not minimum. So in this case, the CPU bottleneck isn't really there.
Turn off MSAA however and you do get a minimum of 60fps on a 580, and also on just a pair of 5850s. Here, the GTX570, GTX580, HD5970 and HD6970 are all bottlenecked by an i7 clocked at only 3Ghz. Not by much, but they are.
People playing games at 1920x1200 with noAA with those sort of cards are very rare, however.
 
I agree with lloose and HohnyF's posts so far...

Granted I am only on 1920x1080, but even my X2 250 did highest settings with a GTX 460... I don't really understand how you get such low frame rates... because I'm sure my X3/570 would handle that resolution on high judging by the way it plays now... and you have a quad core :confused: So I say go for the GPU with lots of vram.

Then again I have heard of those 775 having issues with nvidia or games or something... but I would research this a little before you decide... if there seem to be no issues, lloose has the best advice, and the 570 is in your budget. It was amazing last night I was getting like 60-80fps on Criyis MP all very high settings, but it might have just been the map.
 
1280_cpu.png


A 3Ghz dual core Athlon II is probably about equal to a 2.8Ghz Core 2 of the original generation, so on the basis of that graph you should still only be limited to an average of around 45fps which is fine for most people, but obviously not the continuous 60 that many (myself included) crave.
 
IS the 570 going to get a Vram boost like the 580, kind of, got with the 3GB? A 2gb 570 would be nice. Otherwise, it is probably 6950 2gb for me.

I am going to borrow a cheap gpu from my local shop, I know the owner, and do some cpu testing asap. I want to make sure the sys is ok before I spend the $$ on the gpu.
 
It's possible, it's happened in the past. I'm not sure people really agree with the concept though. Adding lots of extra memory pushes up the price significantly, once because there's more memory being used and again because it becomes a premium product they can charge more for.
The GTX570 in itself isn't powerful enough to make use of all that extra memory really, so it may be left to the domain of the 580 because a 2.5GB GTX570 wouldn't be competitively priced (If the 580 went from $500 to $600 the 570 will probably go from $350 to $450, well in excess of the 2GB HD6970 it would rival).
When you need that much memory it's usually because you're using two GPUs, and if you're using two GPUs it may as well be two 580s for that matter, or indeed two 6950s, as two 6950s would be faster than two 2.5GB GTX570s in SLI at pretty much everything yet cost, potentially $300 less.
 
My 2 cents: Don't bother with Crossfire or SLI due to your old socket and the fact that socket 775 mobos with those features will be extremely cost-prohibitive if buying brand new.

So pretty much aim for the fastest bang for the buck single card setup you can afford. In this case, for just $10 over your budget, you can get the XFX HD 6970 2GB card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150517

However, the HD 6950 2GB is also a good choice.
 
A fast enough Q9550 is ample to run a crossfire setup in most games, even at only 3.4Ghz my Q9550 didn't bottleneck an HD4870X2 x2 QuadCF setup that much. It's only the few specific games that are CPU-whores like Starcraft 2 where you see CPU demand through the roof, and when that's the case, it'll happen with a single card or with crossfire. Crossfire just allows you to raise the graphical details without the frame rate lowering any further.
 
My buddy is a vac a tion. Looking on the fs for a cheap 4850 or equivalent to rock until tax return. I will figure out the holdup. I am going to find the sweet spot if it kills me.
 
spaceman said:
My buddy is a vac a tion. Looking on the fs for a cheap 4850 or equivalent to rock until tax return. I will figure out the holdup. I am going to find the sweet spot if it kills me.
Click to expand...

I am so confused, you went from 4870X2 to 5870, still not happy with performance, but a 4850 is your solution?
 
Dude trust me your gonna be CPU limited if you stick with that Q9450 @ 3.6

I'm running a Q9650 @ 4.27 and I bought (6) different video cards to benchmark BC2 with... When I purchesed the $600 2gb ati 5970 I was expecting awesome performance, but was let down big time, it ran like crap in my machine it's was only slightly better then my 5870, 5fps more. It did allow me to run much higher levels of AA then my 5870, but overall it was a huge let down and not worth it because these Core 2 Quads really bottleneck performance of cards greater then a 5870. I even thought something could be wrong with the card and went back to Fry's and swapped it out with another and it yielded the same results. I also even installed it into my roommates PC which is a Q9450 @ 3.7ghz and it also yielded the same crappy results.

To be honest after spending 2 months benchmarking all 6 of these cards @ 1600x1200... ati5870, gtx460 768mb in SLI, gtx470, gtx570, ati 5970 and ati 6950 I ended up going back to the 5870.

These result below will be totally different then what you will see, unless you upgrade you CPU, I'd look at getting a i7-9xx or i5-2500k...
bfbc202.png
 
§·H·ï·Z·N·ï·L·T·ï;1036845248 said:
Dude trust me your gonna be CPU limited if you stick with that Q9450 @ 3.6
Click to expand...

This. I am in the same boat. A 5870 is more than enough GPU for this game, especially at 1920x1200, but no Core2 series chips can keep up. BC2 is really heavy on the CPU. My q660@3.4 sits at 99% when I'm playing multiplayer :(
 
Hmm, strange Sniper.. my QX6850 @ 3.44 doesn't really stress that much from what I remember. There isn't a really a major difference between our chips either, at least I don't think. Do you know which maps are the worst? Maybe I'll keep a closer eye on it when I'm playing.
 
Cmustang87 said:
Hmm, strange Sniper.. my QX6850 @ 3.44 doesn't really stress that much from what I remember. There isn't a really a major difference between our chips either, at least I don't think. Do you know which maps are the worst? Maybe I'll keep a closer eye on it when I'm playing.
Click to expand...

Now that is odd... those cpu's are identical as far as I can tell as well. Vietnam seems to run better for me.
 
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