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Am I severely bottlenecked?

L

[L]imey

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2009
Messages
2,046
So I picked up a 5850 for Eyefinity mostly, but I figured I'd see a pretty large jump over my 4850 in terms of framerate. I'm just not sure it's there, and since I've only ever built this one system, I figured I'd ask for help. Here's my setup.

Phenom I @ 2.8 (this is maxed on the board I have w/o watercooling)
Kingston Hyper 4gb PC6400
Corsair 750 watt PS
MSI K9A2 Platinum mobo
WD 640 black

From what I've been reading, my quad at 2.8 just won't push enough data to the card to up my frame rates substantially.

Anyone else's thoughts? Thanks in advance.
 
You are bottlenecked, but severely? I wouldn't go that far. Might be better off grabbing a Phenom II and O/C'ing to like 3.6ish. What games and resolution?
 
I play all sorts of stuff, NFS Shift, Wolfenstein, L4D, TF2, Crysis, Aion.

Running at 1680x1050 for some stuff, 3360x1050 for others. Will be 5040x1050 come xmas time.

Can I find an AM2 Phenom 2 that will go to 3.6 on my board? It has the older SB so it has less luck OCing than the newer SB750.
 
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Have you benchmarked on the new GPU vs. the old one? If you're seeing little to no improvment and you've updated/installed your drivers properly, then yes you're probably CPU limited.

Also, it helps to push your GPU to the highest resolution that your monitor supports. Evidence of CPU limits/GPU limits tend to show more at the higher resolutions for the 5850 most review point to the card being comfortable at 1680 x 1050 to 1920 x 1200, but still playable at 2560 x 1600 on most titles.
 
I sold the old GPU nearly as fast as I got the new one. So i'm unsure of one vs the other. I am running at my monitors highest res, and sometimes beyond using 2 monitors..

I guess it's possible I just can't tell the difference once you get past 60 frames.
 
Get a Phenom II 940 which is a Black Edition, which means to OC all you have to do is raise the multiplier, so your SB won't hurt. But, as long as you're getting good enough frame rates now, I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to change CPUs.
 
I second the Phenom II BE upgrade. That should keep you steady for a while.
 
you're probably getting a good boost in performance over your 4850, but you're probably not getting everything out of that card that you paid for.
 
I would get by with what you gto for as long as you can.. and then make the upgrade to another board, cpu, ram etc. You an probably land a nice used intel or AMD setup in the For Sale section of the forums.
 
Yes you are CPU bottlenecked, but not severely. If you were playing with an old Athlon64 X2 from 2004-2005 or a Pentium 4 or Pentium D, then you might be severely bottlenecked.

I always say that being CPU bottlenecked is equivalent to driving a car that tops out at 120mph when it could go 150mph if there was another gear in the transmission.
Keep in mind, being CPU bottlenecked is not going to slow down the rest of the system. If your CPU can handle the rest of the game just fine, it just means that it can't push the video card to its full potential.

If your playing on LCD's your probably limited by the 60hz native refresh rate more than anything. It means you can't possibly see more than 60fps.

That being said, just keep resolution, AA, AF, as high as they can go to keep fps at or above 60fps. I would test it with any game but Crysis (which looks fine with motion blur at 30fps).
 
[L]imey;1034785389 said:
Can I find an AM2 Phenom 2 that will go to 3.6 on my board? It has the older SB so it has less luck OCing than the newer SB750.
Click to expand...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471

SicKlown42012 said:
Get a Phenom II 940 which is a Black Edition, which means to OC all you have to do is raise the multiplier, so your SB won't hurt. But, as long as you're getting good enough frame rates now, I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to change CPUs.
Click to expand...

this
 
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