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4870 and CPU bottleneck

Grimham

Grimham

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 20, 2004
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Does anyone have any idea if I'm bottlenecking my 4870 with my Q6600 at 2.4Ghz? I assume I am to a certain extent, but I'd really like to know how much. I haven't seen a review with cpu scaling for the 4870 yet though. Overclocking is not an option for me (Dell 9200). The thing is, I just swapped from a 8800gts 512 and I notice pretty much no "seat of the pants" or major Fraps differences in AoC (the only game I'm playing currently). Any input would be appreciated.
 
AoC isn't terribly ATi friendly witht he current drivers, so I wouldn't let that worry me too much. Do you have any other games you can use for comparison?
 
What are you other system specs, ie: ram speed, ram quantity, etc.. Processor should not be your problem.
 
If you can I'd suggest hooking up a second monitor and taking a look at GPU usage (either with the CCC or GPU-Z). This should give you a pretty good Idea of what the card is doing.

Like right now in Mass effect, my Q9450+HD4870 , 1680x1050 highest in game settings (no forced AA). If I run with V-Sync@60fps my videocard is running at 50-60% usage.

So theoretically, if you see that you're video card usage is less than 99-100% then either bump up the visual quality a bit or the CPU is holding the card back.
 
No DELL is going to give you a "seat of the pants" feeling from any single upgrade.

Reasons:

1. They use the slowest/cheapest RAM possible
2. Generally, the BIOS timings... which you cannot adjust are set for possibly the loosest(slowest) timings possible.

As for overclocking the CPU on that board, you may want to look up the cpu connector pad modification... you should be able to bump up the CPU bus speed from 266 to 333, which should jump you up to almost 3Ghz, which just about any Q6600 can do on default voltage.

You may also want to make sure that your computer isn't running any of the crap dell stuff in the background.

One more thing... what power supply is in that computer.. I am kinda thinking it is either a 250w or 300w.
 
Druneau said:
If you can I'd suggest hooking up a second monitor and taking a look at GPU usage (either with the CCC or GPU-Z). This should give you a pretty good Idea of what the card is doing.

Like right now in Mass effect, my Q9450+HD4870 , 1680x1050 highest in game settings (no forced AA). If I run with V-Sync@60fps my videocard is running at 50-60% usage.

So theoretically, if you see that you're video card usage is less than 99-100% then either bump up the visual quality a bit or the CPU is holding the card back.
Click to expand...

Sry 4 noobish question.

How do you know percent of usage? In case of CPU is ok but VGA.
 
cyclone3d said:
No DELL is going to give you a "seat of the pants" feeling from any single upgrade.

Reasons:

1. They use the slowest/cheapest RAM possible
2. Generally, the BIOS timings... which you cannot adjust are set for possibly the loosest(slowest) timings possible.

As for overclocking the CPU on that board, you may want to look up the cpu connector pad modification... you should be able to bump up the CPU bus speed from 266 to 333, which should jump you up to almost 3Ghz, which just about any Q6600 can do on default voltage.

You may also want to make sure that your computer isn't running any of the crap dell stuff in the background.

One more thing... what power supply is in that computer.. I am kinda thinking it is either a 250w or 300w.
Click to expand...

I've had it overclocked through software (clockgen) to 3GHz was not stable in Multi-core Prime after about 10 mins so I set it back to 2.4


Basically at this point only the motherboard and case is original from Dell.

Visiontek 4870
4 gig ram - Patriot 2x2gig DDR2 800
PSU is a Seasonic 600w modular
Clean load of XP (came with Vista - I ditched it).
32 processes running in background.
Blah, blah, blah

There's nothing slowing the computer down or bogging down the system, it runs fine in everything I do. I was just expectiong a "night and day" difference I guess with the new card. Perhap another poster above is correct - AoC needs a little work with ATI's drivers. Or maybe I am bottlenecking my card, oh well, I'll figure it out.

Thanks for all the input guys.
 
Can you try to adjust ram timings in windows as well? Download orthos and see how far you can push your q6600 as long as the overclock is at least 30 min stable.
 
DeadSkull said:
Can you try to adjust ram timings in windows as well? Download orthos and see how far you can push your q6600 as long as the overclock is at least 30 min stable.
Click to expand...


I haven't looked but I highly doubt I can do anything with the ram.

The whole idea of this thread was just to see if anyone has any knowledge of a stock Q6600 bottlenecking a 4870 (or something equivelant). There is nothing wrong with my pc, it may not be the fastest on the block but there is no hardware or software issue going on here. What I really need is to put my cpu at 3GHz and check the difference I guess (if any). Or find a site that has cards and benches with cpu scaling to give me an idea. And as another poster above said, perhap I should try a few other games. I was just expecting the 4870 to "wow" me in AoC and it hasn't. Like I said, no big deal. I'll figure it out.
Again, thanks for the thoughts guys.
 
Clockgen will not change the bootstrap timings when upping the bus speed.

Doing the 266-333 mod will.

There is a program out there that can change the RAM timings in windows. It is called memset.
 
anujinka said:
Sry 4 noobish question.

How do you know percent of usage? In case of CPU is ok but VGA.
Click to expand...

I've had GPU usage in the CCC for a while now. It should be in there if you have newer ATI cards.

GPU-Z (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/) should also be able to give you GPU usage.

EDIT: Just noticed you might not have an ATI card. I don't know if GPU usage is available on nVidia.
 
At what resolution do you play? At 1680x1050 or higher you're more GPU limited than CPU, but then again it all depends on the game/engine.
 
For comparison, an 8800GT runs near its optimal with a C2D at around 2.7GHz so you will need a faster CPU to get the best from your card.

If yours wont work at 3GHz, why not use it at say 2.9GHz.
You're not compelled to clock to the max or not at all.
 
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