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that 4870 would just go to waste during that time. heck your P4 is already holding back that 7950gt.If i were to buy the 4870 and hold out for 4-5 months before i buy a new cpu how much of a framerate increase am i looking at for a game like Need for speed undercover?
Note i only get between 10-20fps with my 7950gt
that p4 will struggle mightily to feed that card. even a core2 at 2.4ghz will require lower settings for smooth performance with that card at 19x12.
what he said is basically correct. just because somebody is using something doesnt mean its performing adequately. also how many enthusiast have a q6600 thats NOT overclocked?How exactly do you work that one out, many people i am sure are using C2 proc's at around that speed fine. How many stock clocked Q6600's are there out there?
its not really eye candy that you lose. its the lack of ability for a slow cpu to keep the card fed which results in poor playability. there will always be something thats a limiting factor but trying to have a well balanced system is the key.I agree with the others that you need a new system not just a new video card.
However unlike others I think you will be totally happy with a Core 2 at stock speeds. You might get slightly better performance in most new games with more CPU speed then stock but as for the CPU holding back the eye candy I have to say BS. Since when is eye candy CPU dependent?
If you really need an overclocked C2D just to feed a 4870 at 19x12 because the system is CPU limited with such a powerful card. You would see no gains from the 4870x2 but since the x2 does deliver more gaming performance then clearly a 4870 isn't CPU bound...
How exactly do you work that one out, many people i am sure are using C2 proc's at around that speed fine. How many stock clocked Q6600's are there out there?
many things come into play including the game, its settings and video card being used. Call of Juarez is not very cpu dependent and it was really about the only game that I didnt get a huge improvement in when upgrading to a e8500. I do find your Crysis results a little puzzling though but maybe that quad at 2.4 is almost enough to keep whatever video card you have happy.Fair enough, however, i downclocked my Q9550 to 2.4 and ran the call of juarez benchmark and it didn't change, crysis benchmark saw a dip of 2 fps for the minimum but overall when playing the game at max settings 19x12 with a X2 it was playable enough, didn't notice anything different.
Could test more games but i feel that whether clocked at 3.4 or 2.4 the gaming experience didn't really change all that much.
Just my opinion.
Did you do blind testing?
Did you get someone to overclock in one test, tell you they overclocked but didn't in another and also lied about what speed it was running?
If not, without accurately measured benchies i will say placebo effect.
Sorry, humans cannot be completely trusted with feel alone.
I bet money that he will see very little if any performance gain no matter what gpu he goes with. his single core P4 is MUCH slower than the 2.4 X2 that you had. hell even back before the 7900 series even came out the P4 was lackluster compared to the A64. sure with his 7950gt at 1900 changing the cpu might not help much except in the newest games but neither will sticking a 4870 in there with that outdated poky single core cpu.7950GT is too slow for 1920x1200. Even with your 3.0GHz P4, you will notice an increase in performance with a newer card. Anything from 8800GT and above won't show any difference on that CPU, but they will definitely show an improvent over the 7950GT.
@1920x1200, a faster CPU won't make any difference with a 7950GT. This is coming from someone who used a 7950GT on a 2.4GHz Athlon X2 with a 24" monitor, upgrading to a X1950 XTX did make a difference for me. Later on I upgraded to a C2D @3.2GHz but in games it doesn't make much of a difference with the X 1950XTX.
You can get your GPU and upgrade your system later but by the time you upgrade your system, the card would probably be cheaper. At least you can get a performance gain earlier with a new card. A slower CPU would only limit your max FPS so you can still increase the graphic settings to load the GPU.
It depends on the games actually, newer games which can benefit from a multi core CPU will be bottleneck by the CPU quite a lot but for a single threaded game, a 3.0 GHz P4 is not that bad when compared to a 2.4GHz A64. The P4 has a 600MHz clock speed advantage to neglect the architecture difference. I couldn't even max out GRAW with my 7950GT @1920x1200 but with the X1950XTX, I got a nice performance increase.I bet money that he will see very little if any performance gain no matter what gpu he goes with. his single core P4 is MUCH slower than the 2.4 X2 that you had. hell even back before the 7900 series even came out the P4 was lackluster compared to the A64. sure with his 7950gt at 1900 changing the cpu might not help much except in the newest games but neither will sticking a 4870 in there with that outdated poky single core cpu.
you wont find anybody even wasting there time benchmarking with an old P4 but some newer games are barely even playable on some low end dual cores. those same low end dual core cpus would rape his single core cpu so do the math. hell here is a single core 4000 A64 which is much faster than his P4 and it cant even manage playable framerates with an 8800gtx at any res or setting in Crysis. http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html
the op is basically at a point where he needs a completely new system.
yes the cpu plays less of a role at high res but that doesnt matter if your cpu cant even deliver playable framerates at any res or setting in the first place.It depends on the games actually, newer games which can benefit from a multi core CPU will be bottleneck by the CPU quite a lot but for a single threaded game, a 3.0 GHz P4 is not that bad when compared to a 2.4GHz A64. The P4 has a 600MHz clock speed advantage to neglect the architecture difference. I couldn't even max out GRAW with my 7950GT @1920x1200 but with the X1950XTX, I got a nice performance increase.
Like I said before, anything faster than 8800GT won't make any difference with his CPU but since he will be getting a new system down the road, he could buy a fast GPU now so that he won't need to buy it again later if he goes with a slower GPU now.
Btw thanks for the linky, look at the numbers @ 1600x1200, even with a 8800GTX, there is not much difference between a A64 @2.0GHz and a C2D @3.0GHz, 1920x1200 is heavier on the GPU than 1600x1200. At a high resolution, the CPU plays a smaller role than the GPU.
It depends on the games actually, newer games which can benefit from a multi core CPU will be bottleneck by the CPU quite a lot but for a single threaded game, a 3.0 GHz P4 is not that bad when compared to a 2.4GHz A64. The P4 has a 600MHz clock speed advantage to neglect the architecture difference.
yes the cpu plays less of a role at high res but that doesnt matter if your cpu cant even deliver playable framerates at any res or setting in the first place.
if you dont believe that the cpu is important then you have your head in the sand...well, i really dont believe the cpu does much in games, but a p4@3ghz doesnt meet the minimum requirements for alot of games...hence problems.
if you dont believe that the cpu is important then you have your head in the sand...
no the cpu and memory are just as important if you dont have enough. sticking a 4870x2 with a P4 and 1 gig of memory will be much worse than a 4670, core 2 and 2 gigs.yea, it isnt of particular importance for gaming. its pretty important for having a fast computer though.
gaming is incredibly reliant on video card, and to a much lesser extent, cpu and mem speed.
not really if he doesnt upgrade the cpu for several months because he will see little if any gain in the meantime and then the 4870 will have lost value and newer cards will be out.. anyway my comment to grimreeferx09 actually had nothing to do with this thread.Sticking a 4870 now and get the core 2 later would be better than a 4670 and core 2 now.
no the cpu and memory are just as important if you dont have enough. sticking a 4870x2 with a P4 and 1 gig of memory will be much worse than a 4670, core 2 and 2 gigs.
youre failing to comprehend that there has to be a baseline for performance.
your experience is not with a single core P4 cpu.Like I said before, based on my experience and I have also linked a review, at 1920x1200, he will definitely see a gain from a faster GPU than the 7950GT. The HD 4870 won't show its full potential with his CPU but it will still help him in games that don't benefit from a multi core CPU.
it tells me what I just told you and that is that there has to a baseline. if you have a decent cpu to begin with then of course the gpu matters more. if you dont have a decent cpu then no gpu will ever make up for that. of course with cpus the difference in price cant really be justified like the gpus usually can but that has nothing to do with my point.well, yea, im just saying in general, the difference between a $150 and $350 video card in games is much bigger than that of a $1000 cpu and a $200 cpu. what does that tell you?
perhaps you should read more carefully because that is a dual core at 2.0 each and easily much faster than his cpu. his performance would be much lower than that single core A64 that gets 18fps. you still fail to comprehend how weak a single core P4 is.Just read the review, 8800GTX is comparable to the HD 4850 but at 1920x1200, it still can do well on an AMD 64 2.0GHz, much better than the X 1950 XTX which is faster than the 7950GT. His P4 is at 3.0GHz, in single threaded games, the performance would be better than the 2.0GHz AMD 64.
Instead of just saying it, why don't you back up your claims with facts. Even in your own link, it shows that at a higher resolution, the performance difference between CPUs are not that big.