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Bottlenecking

Bigjmaster18 said:
hmmm alright thanks guys! I know that i really need to upgrade my cpu now. Thanks

I want to get the Q6600 quad core
Click to expand...

I'd suggest overlooking the bickering going on and focus on the main points at hand. Your P4 is a bottleneck, no doubt about it. But you will still be able to get some decent fps with the 4870 regardless. The GPU is of course the single most important upgrade for video peformance, and since you've already bought it, go ahead and use it. For good physics oriented games at high res it will begin to show it's weakness for certain. If you look at the article I posted you see that even the E2160 core 2 at stock speed (1.8 GHz) was a bottleneck of 30% compared to the q6600, and this processor (the e2160) ranges from slightly to considerably better than your P4 3.0 Ghz for gaming, depending on the game etc. But an overclock on the E2160 to 2.4 GHz reduced this to 15%, and at 3.0 GHz there was little difference. There is little to no advantage for quad-cores vs dual cores at the moment, but that is changing.

So enjoy it, and plan to upgrade, but there's no sudden impending urgency here.
 
I would like the original poster to benchmark every game he plays --- provide numbers. Espeically since he is using 1920x1080 (1080P) resolution.

I want him to max out all his settings and benchmark using the new graphics card.

Then I want him to buy his core 2 duo and play at the same settings....As proven over and over again in benchmark after bencmark test he can then prove me right.

At high resolution gaming especially - - - It's all about the GPU baby!

I can't believe there is any arguing on the other side.

OF COURSE the P4 is slower than a core 2 duo --- but for high resolution gaming that DOESN'T matter that much! Did you notice that the difference in that article between the slowest CPU and the fastest was 30% when used on the fastest GPU!

But the difference between the slowest GPU and the fastest GPU in the same games was 300% when used on the fastest processor.

Once again --- the GPU is far more important for gaming purposes.........
 
I bought the xfx 7900gs XT for $70 8 months ago.
at the time, it was pretty much the best price/performance card I could get..
(8800GT at the time was still about $250)
but now that prices on vcard dropped so much lately
it doesn't hurt to upgrade to e8400 with 9800gtx+ for roughly $380 CAD...
ofc if u don't have 775 mobo, u'll have to get one.
imo pcie2.0 is the way to go.
 
Archaea said:
I would like the original poster to benchmark every game he plays --- provide numbers. Espeically since he is using 1920x1080 (1080P) resolution.

I want him to max out all his settings and benchmark using the new graphics card.

Then I want him to buy his core 2 duo and play at the same settings....As proven over and over again in benchmark after bencmark test he can then prove me right.

At high resolution gaming especially - - - It's all about the GPU baby!

I can't believe there is any arguing on the other side.

OF COURSE the P4 is slower than a core 2 duo --- but for high resolution gaming that DOESN'T matter that much! Did you notice that the difference in that article between the slowest CPU and the fastest was 30% when used on the fastest GPU!

But the difference between the slowest GPU and the fastest GPU in the same games was 300% when used on the fastest processor.

Once again --- the GPU is far more important for gaming purposes.........
Click to expand...
You are a very ignorant person. Even a very slow modern cpu can slow down most games even at high res. A fucking P4 single core cpu is a dog and will negate most of the benefit of having a 4870. A 3.0 P4 wont even come close to matching a 2.0 Core 2 in single thread apps/game and will get completely obliterated in games that utilize dual cores. Since most game do use dual cores he will be completely left in the dust no matter what resolution he is playing at.

I like how you didnt even read what I quoted in the last post showing how even a decent dual core cpu would need to be overclocked to get anywhere near the potential out of a high end card. Also you need to know that modern cpu will literally double his framerate over the P4 in many games. I could easily show you links of how bad even a slow modern cpu would murder an older single core but providing more links and quotes wont do any good because you are a lost cause. :rolleyes:
 
calm down guys sorry to get you guys arguing on this topic.

I just have another question

is there a significant increase using a 4870 on a normal pci express X16 slot(which i have) vs a Pci 2.0 I keep hearing people say that Pci 2.0 isnt fully utilized yet
 
Cannondale it's funny that you call me ignorant ---- all the while exposing yourself the more-so!!!

You won't show me links cause I'm a lost cause?

By all means -- show me the links -- I'll recant when I see a link that SHOWS clearly that a CPU is worth more than a GPU in high res gaming...

You'll never be able to show me a link --- why? because you've got nothing... The vast majority of all games over the last few years respond much more readily to a video card upgrade.

Arguing that a CPU helps out more than a GPU at high res is an absolute untruth.

Here's a link for you

http://www.techspot.com/article/73-crysis-performance/page7.html


Crysis a 1920x1200 resolution doesn't care whther it's got a 2.66 GHz E6700 or a 1.6Ghz chip...It runs just about the same at that resolution.



You also are borderline creating a strawman argument here. I never said the P4 was fast compared to a Core 2 Duo...It's not ---- What I did say is graphics card is all that really matters in high resolution gaming. Both the original article that was linked in this thread, and the article I link above very clearly prove my point --- want more -- how about every single other article I've ever read that shows a HUGE descrepancy/bias towards video cards. Go look at the toms hardware charts. Compare the lowest and highest FPS on games in the VGA chart vs. the CPU chart. Yes that's right the VGA chart has a much wider range of possible performance --- because video cards matter more than CPU for gaming in general and all the more so for High resolution gaming.

...What basis are you arguing on? My single point "GPU is more important than CPU for High Resolution gaming" is not up for debate!

Anyway I'm probably done with this thread...My posts have easily made my points clear. I'm not some newb at hardware...I've been gaming and building enthusiasts PCs since 1993. I don't need to argue about a commonly known and understood point...Do some research man.
 
Archaea said:
Cannondale show me some links --- cause you've got nothing...

Arguing that a CPU helps out more than a GPU at high res is an absolute untruth.
Click to expand...
I didnt say more. I said a high end card would mostly go to waste on a single core P4. any one that does not get that is in the wrong forum. here is a few links to prove my point. remember that nobody is going to test with a freakin slow P4 in the first place.

before you say anything stupid like 1600 and 1280 resolutions arent high look at the charts because the single core cpu has already caused the game to be almost unplayable in some cases so turning up the res would not be an option. that concludes todays lesson.

in Bioshock at 1600x1200 and high quality even a slow dual core gets 50% better framerates then a fast single core Athlon. also that Athlon that is getting killed is MUCH weaker than a 3.0 P4 so you do the damn math.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6177688/p-7.html

even worse results for a single core in CoD4 an max settings. again the Athlon 64 that is getting killed is WAY slower than a 3.0 P4.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6183967/p-5.html

Crysis at 1600x1200 and high quality the single core Athlon is still losing pretty bad. dont forget that the 3.0 P4 is way slower than a Athlon 64 4000.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html

World in Conflict at 1600x1200 and Very High Quality gets 10fps on Athlon 64 4000 which is less than half of the slowest Core 2 performance. Again remember that the A64 4000+ thats getting killed is much slower than 3.0 P4.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6179006/p-7.html



EDIT: I see you edited your post and actually made yourself look even more ridiculous because those are ALL Core 2 cpus. its scary that you actually brag that you have been building comps for years. :eek:
 
Bigjmaster18 said:
How much will my Cpu and ram Bottleneck my new Ati 4870 that i will be ordering?

I have 1.5 gigs of pc3200 ram and a Intel Pentium 4 3 GHz

I also game at 1920X1080

What will be the expected fps difference with this setup vs having 4gb of ram and a quad core processor?

I just want some ideas so in the future i can upgrade the Cpu and ram

thanks
Click to expand...

As others have told you, that system will bottleneck ANY modern high-end gaming card. The CPU is waaay to old to push anything past an 8600GTS at maximum (it would still bottleneck a little), you don't have enough memory (2GB at a minimum for gaming, and gaming at that res requires you to get more than a new video card.

Sure, the 4870 would increase performance in older games, but all modern games would be running at 20-30fps at ANY resolution due to the CPU bottleneck. An AMD Athlon 64 4000+ single core would bottleneck an HD4870 all to hell, and your CPU is waaaaay slower than that one!

Honestly, I would recommend getting an C2D or Athlon/Phenom X2/X3/X4 at least (single cores don't cut it this day and age), DDR2 memory (with the new mobo), and then get the video card.

Best of luck! ;)



EDIT:
cannondale06 said:
I didnt say more. I said a high end card would mostly go to waste on a single core P4. any one that does not get that is in the wrong forum. here is a few links to prove my point. remember that nobody is going to test with a freakin slow P4 in the first place.

before you say anything stupid like 1600 and 1280 resolutions arent high look at the charts because the single core cpu has already caused the game to be almost unplayable in some cases so turning up the res would not be an option. that concludes todays lesson.

in Bioshock at 1600x1200 and high quality even a slow dual core gets 50% better framerates then a fast single core Athlon. also that Athlon that is getting killed is MUCH weaker than a 3.0 P4 so you do the damn math.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6177688/p-7.html

even worse results for a single core in CoD4 an max settings. again the Athlon 64 that is getting killed is WAY slower than a 3.0 P4.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6183967/p-5.html

Crysis at 1600x1200 and high quality the single core Athlon is still losing pretty bad. dont forget that the 3.0 P4 is way slower than a Athlon 64 4000.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html
Click to expand...

LOL, you beat me to it!
 
Bigjmaster18 said:
calm down guys sorry to get you guys arguing on this topic.

I just have another question

is there a significant increase using a 4870 on a normal pci express X16 slot(which i have) vs a Pci 2.0 I keep hearing people say that Pci 2.0 isnt fully utilized yet
Click to expand...

Doubtful, the bandwidth limitation for the PCI-e 16x has not been exceeded by a single card AFAIK. However this is absolutely not a concern considering that your processor will be bottlenecking anyway. But when you upgrade it would be a good idea to buy a board that uses PCI-e 2.0
 
Agreed, from what I have read, PCI-E 2.0 boards can get substantially higher performance with Crossfire.
However the difference for single GPU is not very significant.

The next gen of single GPU cards might be able saturate older PCI-E buses, thus losing performance.
 
I have a 5600+ x2 black edition at 3.0GHz, can go upto 3.2/3.3. As of right now I have an 8800gt and it seems to be the limiting factor at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 if i have settings up high.

At what videocard woudl the cpu become the main limiting factor versus where I am now with my 8800gt?
 
Christobevii3 said:
I have a 5600+ x2 black edition at 3.0GHz, can go upto 3.2/3.3. As of right now I have an 8800gt and it seems to be the limiting factor at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 if i have settings up high.

At what videocard woudl the cpu become the main limiting factor versus where I am now with my 8800gt?
Click to expand...

As as a guide, my old A64 x2 at 2.7GHz could get about 80% of the stock performance from my 8800GT.
Clocking the card made no difference.
At 3.3GHz you should be able to get most of the performance from a stock clocked 8800GT.
If you want to clock your card or want a faster card, a faster CPU would be wise and some games will completely saturate an AMD x2 so there will be restrictions.
 
I think the bottomline is that if you want cheap, just get
a e2160/2180/2200
ASUS P5N-MX 610I
2gb 6400 ddr2 ram
and wutever vcard is cheap that month.

in canada i am able to acquire all of those for less than $240 CAD + vcard.
 
Wow lots of long winded posts here.

Yes, your P4 is a big bottleneck. Get a new Core2 around 3 GHz and you'll get the most out of that 4870.

Memory upgrade would be a good consideration, since you're definitely hitting the page file when playing games. At this point it's just affecting load times and alt tabbing, likely not hurting in game performance too badly.
 
Im really torn at what to do. My parts come in a few days and i dont know if i should go to Xp service pack 3 or upgrade to Vista ultimate 64 bit

what do you guys think is better?
 
Bigjmaster18 said:
Im really torn at what to do. My parts come in a few days and i dont know if i should go to Xp service pack 3 or upgrade to Vista ultimate 64 bit

what do you guys think is better?
Click to expand...
if you dont already have an os then go with Vista 64 especially if you have 4gigs of memory that you want to use.
 
Bigjmaster18 said:
Im really torn at what to do. My parts come in a few days and i dont know if i should go to Xp service pack 3 or upgrade to Vista ultimate 64 bit

what do you guys think is better?
Click to expand...

Vista 64-bit is a superior OS in most regards. Unless you have a specific attachment to XP, I recommend upgrading to Vista.
 
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