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6870 possible performance bottle neck

T

trudeak

Gawd
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
646
I had a 4770 in my system and upgraded to the 6870 today. I was expecting a large performance increase In wow which is the main game i play. I am still seeing similar fps witha much more powerfull card. Only place i can think that might be a bottle neck would be my 500 watt power supply. But if my ps were the problem i would expect it to crash not just have low fps. im getting about 40 fps all setting on ultra except shadows which are just evil.

running windows 7 64 bit
4 gigs of ram
core i7 e 8400
ati 6870

any ideas. i can upgrade the power supply easily just cant see how it would affect performace. my feeling is that the card should just tank not underpeform if lacking power
 
the e8400 isnt a core i7 processor. its a core 2 duo and would probably be your bottleneck.
 
A PSU is not gonna affect your performance. It's just gonna affect stability.

What resolution are you playing at?

More than likely it's because WOW is CPU, HDD, and GPU heavy IIRC
 
it could be cpu thats for sure not sure what i was thinking in the i7 crud but still 40 fps seems low imo i play at 1920 by 1200
 
ps is an antec and sorry was thinking of my laptop with the i7 crap i am running a
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E8400
 
Hold on. First things first.

What CPU do you have? You haven't been clear.
 
CPU limited most likely, you'd probably get nearly the same performance running a 5770. 1920x1200 is no longer really a high resolution relatively speaking, and with now mainstream sub $200 cards debuting with 256bit memory buses, I think 1920x1080/1200 is more like the "standard" resolution now.

Try lowering resolutions 1680x1050 and/or looking at GPU utilization %, should shed some light on the issue.
 
going to look into this with some more depth for sure just wanted it out there as i know that all to often we assume we know the sollutions to everything. I wanted to make sure this was an issue of system performance related to my core hardware and not my psu causing something odd
 
just try out several games and report back. more cpu intensive games will keep the same framerate if you lower the res. for example BC 2 and GTA 4 get the same fps at 1280 as they do at 1920 with my cpu.
 
Overclock your processor to the max stable frequency. If that doesn't help upgrade your cpu, sell the 8400 here on the fs/ft forums I'm sure you'll get something decent for it
 
Yea with an e8400 I would guess that your CPU is bottlenecking you.
 
WoW benefits most from a fast CPU. Also, try taking the shadow detail down one notch if you have it at the highest setting. That brought my FPS in Dalaran from 15 to 40~.
 
I am considering to change my 4850 to the 6870 but I also have an E8400 (currently running at 3.6GHz). Would my oc'd E8400 be a bottleneck??
 
I would try out some other games (assuming you played other games beforehand) and compare again. That strikes me as fishy that you would see NO performance increase using the same settings from a card that is a generation ahead of your previous card. Maybe the CPU is a bottleneck because you don't have it overclocked, but aside from that, your performance should be fine in any game that is not optimized for quad-core.
 
MilkTea said:
I am considering to change my 4850 to the 6870 but I also have an E8400 (currently running at 3.6GHz). Would my oc'd E8400 be a bottleneck??
Click to expand...
what res? I would probably get the 6850 and just oc it. there will be many games where you will never see the difference between an overclocked 6870 and 6850 since they are within 10% of each other.
 
cannondale06 said:
what res? I would probably get the 6850 and just oc it. there will be many games where you will never see the difference between an overclocked 6870 and 6850 since they are within 10% of each other.
Click to expand...

Well I am only gaming with 1 monitor (1980X1080) and mostly SC2 at the moment. I really like 4850 but I can't really cramp up settings with many new release games, so I am kinda consider to upgrade it to 6870 (I was initially going to buy GTX460). Or would 6850 just be enough?
 
MilkTea said:
Well I am only gaming with 1 monitor (1980X1080) and mostly SC2 at the moment. I really like 4850 but I can't really cramp up settings with many new release games, so I am kinda consider to upgrade it to 6870 (I was initially going to buy GTX460). Or would 6850 just be enough?
Click to expand...

6850 is enough.IMO
you can overclock it also.
great price/perfromance.
 
Since when is the E8400 not enough for WoW? I played it from 2004-2007 with my current rig, only using a 8800GTX over my 4870. Has the game really changed that much? Also, I agree crank your CPU up to the best it will do.
 
Well when I first got my 6870 I ran a few benchmarks to make sure my numbers lined up with the numbers other reviewers were getting. However mine were lower, like a 15k vantage score. My CPU was only running at 3.2ghz at the time, so I clocked it up to 3.4 and tried a few more runs. My score jumped up to 16.2k for the gpu which is about what reviews were getting with i7 cpu's and even overclocked cpu up to 3.7ghz. So I figured well let's see how low I can go before losing a lot of performance. Long story short it seems like 3.33 was about the breaking point on my system, anything slower really held back the 6870.
I don't know if this will be the same for a dual core and a quad but it should be pretty similar.
 
WaTaGuMp said:
Since when is the E8400 not enough for WoW? I played it from 2004-2007 with my current rig, only using a 8800GTX over my 4870. Has the game really changed that much? Also, I agree crank your CPU up to the best it will do.
Click to expand...

Since they keep releasing expansions that upgrade the graphical details, gameplay mechanics, number of textures needing to be loaded and all kinds of calculations. Not to mention, the number and amount of addons you use makes a huge difference regaridng how much CPU storage you need.

The latest patch upgraded wow again to Cataclysm engine basically. So 2007 would have been 2 engines behind.
 
I was able to go from all Good settings to all High settings in WoW and maintain the same framerate going from an 8800GT to a HD 6870.

I'm thinking my old Phenom 9600 is really, really holding me back. C'mon Sandy Bridge, hurry up and come out! Probably going to get a SSD to go along with that as well.
 
Thank you guys for the reply, I will have a think about 6850 and 6870, don't know if anybody can post their benchmark with a oc'd E8400 >.<
 
MilkTea said:
Well I am only gaming with 1 monitor (1980X1080) and mostly SC2 at the moment. I really like 4850 but I can't really cramp up settings with many new release games, so I am kinda consider to upgrade it to 6870 (I was initially going to buy GTX460). Or would 6850 just be enough?
Click to expand...

I don't think you will see much if any difference doing that switch in sc2 as it is almost entirely CPU.

I switch from a 4650 to an overclocked 260 gtx, now I can do ultra instead of high...not exactly night and day.
 
QuiteSufficient said:
I don't think you will see much if any difference doing that switch in sc2 as it is almost entirely CPU.

I switch from a 4650 to an overclocked 260 gtx, now I can do ultra instead of high...not exactly night and day.
Click to expand...

completely wrong.. I just went from a 4850 to a 6850 & in sc2 I went from a stuttering medium to a smooth ultra in settings (both at 1920x1200)
 
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