EVGA GTX 280 / Compatibility

M

M a d c o w

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
350
Need some Info / Help...

Im about to purchase a GTX 280 for a really good price. (Sig) Base on my CPU type / P4 940 D 3.2ghz @ 2gig of ram will this handle running on my rig or is it gonna suffer lagg / slowness and not get the full potential of the card.

Thanks in advance
 
well most games will be playable but at 1680 you are going to get less than 50% of what that card is capable of even in games that aren't cpu intensive. in very cpu intensive games like GTA 4 you will likely only get about 25-30% of what that card can do. for some perspective my E8500 lowered to 1.6 will be quite a bit faster than your 3.2 Pentium D.

2gb of system ram will be okay though since you are still using XP.
 
I'm not the most experienced in this realm, but here's my experience with a similar setup.

I was messing with the GF's computer. at the time it was a p4 3.0 on a lower end intel board (can't remember the chipset), 2GB DDR2800, a nothing-special 80GB HDD - just a plain old Dell box. I played musical Vid Cards with it to try and help her frame rates in the MMO she plays. At the time she was gaming at 1280 X 1024, and generally ran about 30fps on average. I threw a 7900GS, 8800GTS 320, and a GTX 260 216sp in her system. There was a minor increase in FPS going to the 8800, but there was nothing going up to the 260.

Updated her box to a C2D 2.8, p45 chipset, and kept the rest of the components. Her framerates with the 8800 were almost double that of the 260 on the p4 board (holding a steady 60fps). After updating her to a 1920X1080 LCD and installing the 260 again, she still holds a solid 60fps in most areas of the game.

This is just my experience with one system, but to me that showed that the p4 has some serious bottle necks, at least in this particular situation.
 
Jeremy C said:
I'm not the most experienced in this realm, but here's my experience with a similar setup.

I was messing with the GF's computer. at the time it was a p4 3.0 on a lower end intel board (can't remember the chipset), 2GB DDR2800, a nothing-special 80GB HDD - just a plain old Dell box. I played musical Vid Cards with it to try and help her frame rates in the MMO she plays. At the time she was gaming at 1280 X 1024, and generally ran about 30fps on average. I threw a 7900GS, 8800GTS 320, and a GTX 260 216sp in her system. There was a minor increase in FPS going to the 8800, but there was nothing going up to the 260.

Updated her box to a C2D 2.8, p45 chipset, and kept the rest of the components. Her framerates with the 8800 were almost double that of the 260 on the p4 board (holding a steady 60fps). After updating her to a 1920X1080 LCD and installing the 260 again, she still holds a solid 60fps in most areas of the game.

This is just my experience with one system, but to me that showed that the p4 has some serious bottle necks, at least in this particular situation.
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um the single core P4 was a huge bottleneck 6 years ago. sticking a gtx260 in a system with a single core P4 was way beyond silly. the fact that you were at 1280 only makes me wonder what the heck were you thinking???

anyway his cpu, although slow as hell for modern games, is still over twice as fast as that single core 3.0 P4 you had.
 
cannondale06 said:
um the single core P4 was a huge bottleneck 6 years ago. sticking a gtx260 in a system with a single core P4 was way beyond silly. the fact that you were at 1280 only makes me wonder what the heck were you thinking???

anyway his cpu, although slow as hell for modern games, is still over twice as fast as that single core 3.0 P4 you had.
Click to expand...

Seeing what exactly would happen in the real world with my own eyes? I had the 260 out of my box and wanted to see if it would make any appreciable difference, and well, I was bored. :D

Considering that a lot of mainstream games are still single threaded, would the dual core p4 be any better? I never played with one, so I don't know.
 
Jeremy C said:
Seeing what exactly would happen in the real world with my own eyes? I had the 260 out of my box and wanted to see if it would make any appreciable difference, and well, I was bored. :D

Considering that a lot of mainstream games are still single threaded, would the dual core p4 be any better? I never played with one, so I don't know.
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a lot of games are still single threaded? I would certainly disagree. even in the few games that don't really push a dual core having a single core will still be slower. remember if you are gaming and completely maxing out the only core you have then what do you think happens when your system needs to do something else. not to mention the P4 will crap itself under full load because it is VERY slow clock for clock. bottom line is that a Pentium D will deliver twice the framertae of a single core P4 of the same speed in pretty much any game made in the last 6-7 years. of course even with a Pentium D, any modern game will be nearly completely cpu limited with a 9600gt or better.
 
May I ask what your "really good price" is on the GTX 280? It will factor into my recommendation.
 
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