cpu scaling on the 5800 series

A

Allankyoto

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Anyone have any impressions or links to reviews where they examine CPU scaling with the 5870 or the 5850?

I have a e7400 Core2Duo OC'd to 3ghz. I know its not the best CPU out there but hey I was on a budget. How much performance would I be leaving on the table if I just took out my 4850 and replaced it with a 5870? I am a light gamer with a 1920x1200 monitor.
 
Core2 @ 3ghz is hardly a bottleneck, unless you are playing GTA4. RTS games can be bottlenecked by the CPU but 35fps on a fixed camera isn't a real problem. If you are really worried just get an aftermarket HSF and OC the E7400 another 200mhz or so.
 
No reason to get a 5870 if you're just a light gamer.

Just get the 5850 when it comes out.
 
I'm thinking that a 5770 will probably be a better option. Just don't know when they will be released.
 
Sry to highjack, but how much of a bottleneck does a Phenom II 810 @ 3GHz have with the 5870. I want this card so bad but I am not going to get it if my CPU bottles it. I want to play GTA4 on max settings.
 
CptFalcon said:
Sry to highjack, but how much of a bottleneck does a Phenom II 810 @ 3GHz have with the 5870. I want this card so bad but I am not going to get it if my CPU bottles it. I want to play GTA4 on max settings.
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GTA 4 is so CPU dependent that even with upgrading your graphic card, you won't see an improvement from what you're getting now. As for other games that aren't so CPU dependent, your current processor shouldn't hold it back too much, at higher resolutions of course.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
GTA 4 is so CPU dependent that even with upgrading your graphic card, you won't see an improvement from what you're getting now. As for other games that aren't so CPU dependent, your current processor shouldn't hold it back too much, at higher resolutions of course.
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I think that my 9800GT is holding back my Phenom II. Especially at 1920x1080.
 
GTA 4 is totally CPU dependent. Before my 4890. I had a 8800GT, which is the same as you have. Didn't notice any performance increase after I swapped it out. Only OC'ing my X4 did I get some gains. This is at 1680X1050 with the memory restriction tweaks that allowed me to set all options to the highest, regardless of available memory. Both cards gave me a solid 30fps while actually playing. But the benchmark did show a slight difference, maybe 6fps, but it didn't affect gameplay.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
GTA 4 is totally CPU dependent. Before my 4890. I had a 8800GT, which is the same as you have. Didn't notice any performance increase after I swapped it out. Only OC'ing my X4 did I get some gains. This is at 1680X1050 with the memory restriction tweaks that allowed me to set all options to the highest, regardless of available memory. Both cards gave me a solid 30fps while actually playing. But the benchmark did show a slight difference, maybe 6fps, but it didn't affect gameplay.
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Thanks for clarifying that for me. I guess I have to save now to get a Core i7 setup.
 
CptFalcon said:
Thanks for clarifying that for me. I guess I have to save now to get a Core i7 setup.
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A Core I5 setup will give you just about as good performance as an I7, but will be cheaper. The I5 has been shown to OC up to comparable speeds to the I7 920.
 
aZn_plyR said:
Or you can buy a used xbox360 on craigslist for about $130 bucks to play the crappy game:D
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Seems like I'm one of the few on this board who absolutely loved this game. I know people love to rant about how it's un-optimized, but I think they're forgetting just how much processing power is needed to simulate a living city. Couple that with the updated graphics, and you can see why a powerful computer is needed. People forget that the X360 and PS3 actually have a lot of processing power, especially whith games that respond well to being multi-threaded. It's only in graphics power do they fall on their face.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Seems like I'm one of the few on this board who absolutely loved this game. I know people love to rant about how it's un-optimized, but I think they're forgetting just how much processing power is needed to simulate a living city. Couple that with the updated graphics, and you can see why a powerful computer is needed. People forget that the X360 and PS3 actually have a lot of processing power, especially whith games that respond well to being multi-threaded. It's only in graphics power do they fall on their face.
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yeah, when they were first released, it was a triple core (woah!) and a 7 core (holy mother of god supreme... even to this day!).
 
jeremyshaw said:
yeah, when they were first released, it was a triple core (woah!) and a 7 core (holy mother of god supreme... even to this day!).
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While the X360 is a triple core, it can run two threads simultaneously on each core. So it was 6 threads and 7 threads. People with Core2 Duos couldn't comprehend that even though the Core2 architecture was more efficient and had higher speeds, the game loved having more threads than pure core speed.

Also, if you think the Cell and its 7 threads are alot, look up the SPARC processors. They have one with 8 cores, and 8 threads per core.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_T2
 
So this is all just nice speculation right? No one has an article actually showing CPU scaling for the 5800 series yet right?

For example what would be the difference of running let's say Empire Total War, Dawn of War II or Fallout 3 at 1920x1200 with an I7/PhenomII/Core2Duo or the 5800 series? Would I likely have to turn down settings?

By 'light gamer' I mean I do enjoy the eye candy and I do enjoy to play but time wise I probably can't play more than 5-10 hours a week tops.

Right now I'm playing D&D Online (free!) but I can't run it smoothly at its highest settings at 1920x1200. I can run it on high but not 'ultra'. I also had the same problem with Warhammer Online when I was playing it.
 
GTA4 is a crappy game and the PC port they did enjoys some garbage port coding.
 
Allankyoto said:
So this is all just nice speculation right? No one has an article actually showing CPU scaling for the 5800 series yet right?

For example what would be the difference of running let's say Empire Total War, Dawn of War II or Fallout 3 at 1920x1200 with an I7/PhenomII/Core2Duo or the 5800 series? Would I likely have to turn down settings?

By 'light gamer' I mean I do enjoy the eye candy and I do enjoy to play but time wise I probably can't play more than 5-10 hours a week tops.

Right now I'm playing D&D Online (free!) but I can't run it smoothly at its highest settings at 1920x1200. I can run it on high but not 'ultra'. I also had the same problem with Warhammer Online when I was playing it.
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Yeah, it's all an educated guess at this time. I'll get my card in later today, and I'll compare my results to some I7 benchmarks to see what the exact result it. My personal belief is that the Phenom II and Core 2 are only bottlenecks when you start using multiple high-end cards. Even then, every game that is playable on I7 is also playable on them, just at a lower framerate. I'm basing my assumptions on articles that use two 4870X2 and two GTX295s and use multiple processors to show scaling.
 
the first time I noticed it mentioned is in the Guru3D crossfire article where in some instances they bottlenecked an i7
 
FragMagnet said:
the first time I noticed it mentioned is in the Guru3D crossfire article where in some instances they bottlenecked an i7
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It was only in Fallout 3 and COD:WaW. And both had more than enough fps to spare, so in that case, the bottleneck doesn't hurt anything.
 
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aZn_plyR said:
Or you can buy a used xbox360 on craigslist for about $130 bucks to play the crappy game:D
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Already had a chance to play this game on a red Xbox360 elite. Needless to say console version of this game is inferior to pc version in every possible way.

SicKlown42012 said:
Seems like I'm one of the few on this board who absolutely loved this game. I know people love to rant about how it's un-optimized, but I think they're forgetting just how much processing power is needed to simulate a living city. Couple that with the updated graphics, and you can see why a powerful computer is needed. People forget that the X360 and PS3 actually have a lot of processing power, especially whith games that respond well to being multi-threaded. It's only in graphics power do they fall on their face.
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Same here. Great replay value.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
It was only in Fallout 3 and COD:WaW. And both had more than enough fps to spare, so in that case, the bottleneck doesn't hurt anything.
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yes but it was bottlenecked with a highly overclocked i7. the Core 2 architecture doesnt scale nearly as good as the i7 with high end gpus. if someone is at 1920 or below they would be foolish to get a 5870x2 with anything other than an overclocked i5 or i7. now a single 5870 wont be too much of an issue with a high end Core 2 unless you are at 1680. the people that are going to be bad off are are the ones with older Athlon 64 X2 cpus and very low end Core 2 or Pentium Dual Core cpus. those people would already bottleneck the crap out of a 4850 or 4870. its going to be a pretty big mess out there because most people dont have a clue how important a cpu is especially with high end cards.
 
That's just what I'm asking....How important is the CPU for these high end cards? At what point should I consider replacing the CPU instead of the GPU?

I guess its time to go dig for CPU scaling articles.

**Actually did some digging and found this older article. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gpu-upgrade,1928-20.html
I wonder if the conclusion still holds true for this generation of cards.

"If you convert the frame rate to percentages in order to filter out the weighting caused by high fps figures, it is possible to obtain an increase of over 1100% by changing from a Geforce 6800 GT to a current Geforce 8800 or 9800."
 
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cannondale06 said:
yes but it was bottlenecked with a highly overclocked i7. the Core 2 architecture doesnt scale nearly as good as the i7 with high end gpus. if someone is at 1920 or below they would be foolish to get a 5870x2 with anything other than an overclocked i5 or i7. now a single 5870 wont be too much of an issue with a high end Core 2 unless you are at 1680. the people that are going to be bad off are are the ones with older Athlon 64 X2 cpus and very low end Core 2 or Pentium Dual Core cpus. those people would already bottleneck the crap out of a 4850 or 4870. its going to be a pretty big mess out there because most people dont have a clue how important a cpu is especially with high end cards.
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Anyone who is going to be buying 2 5870X2 already know how important CPUs are. The article showed that if you're only going to be using a single card, any recent dual or quad core at a reasonable 3GHz + will be fine. Those CPUs will not keep them from getting the highest graphical settings in any current games.

Edit: By recent, I mean Core 2, Phenom II, and I5/I7
 
Smiththers2 said:
i noticed a huge increase when going from E6850 to core i7 with GTA4
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I agree. I went from a 3.2ghz Q9400 and thought it was bearable. Just recently got it setup on my new i7 and wow, this game isn't too bad now. If only something could be done about the AA problem it would be even better.

When I logging with Rivatuner in W7, for me it showed a consistent low 40% load on my i7 at 4ghz for the entire system. :eek:
 
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