Upgrade? Worth it? Or Bottlenecked?

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DMystikaLD

Gawd
Joined
Apr 14, 2003
Messages
603
Hello,

I've currently got:
-- 2 x 8800 GT 512 MB cards in SLI.
-- 4 GB of RAM
-- Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4 Ghz
-- Windows XP

I'm running the following games pretty frequently.
-- COD4
-- World of Warcraft

I play on a 30" Dell... so I need the frame rate at high resolutions (2560).

Would it be worth the upgrade to get an HD 4870 X2 card (or two of them) -- or am I seeing a bottle neck at my CPU? I want to wait until the next-gen intel cards to get a new CPU
 
Two 8800GT's in SLI should be perfectly fine. If you have a third party cooler slapped on your CPU, I'd suggest OCing it to at least 3.2GHz.

What kind of average frame rates are you currently getting?
 
There. Is. No. CPU. Bottleneck. Here.

If you were running a Pentium 4 maybe there would be one. Otherwise, just grab a 4870 x2 if you have the money.
 
Are there any tests you can run that would show a CPU bottle neck?

With that in mind -- average frame rates in WoW are around 40-45 FPS @ 1680 resolution. 2560 it goes down to like 35... this is 1x AA and high everything.

I am not sure OC'ing would do much of anything besides maybe an extra 3-4 FPS.
 
There isn't a test because it's not really something that can be tested. At least, accurately.

A CPU bottleneck occurs where your CPU is not fast enough to feed the instructions to the GPU. Your CPU is clearly going to be able to do that for pretty much every video card out there. As you already said, OC will probably net you at most 5 FPS.

WoW's performance is messed up with SLI enabled if you do have it enabled for that game, though. There isn't a test because it's not really something that can be tested. At least, accurately.

A CPU bottleneck occurs where your CPU is not fast enough to feed the instructions to the GPU. Your CPU is clearly going to be able to do that for pretty much every video card out there. As you already said, OC will probably net you at most 5 FPS.

WoW's performance is messed up with SLI enabled if you do have it enabled for that game, though. There's a huge peformance increase if you disable SLI. You should be able to get above 60FPS no problem at that resolution.
 
Get the 4870X2 and overclock your CPU - 3ghz should be very easy to hit and would likely eliminate any CPU bottleneck

Just a heads up, though, but if that is 32-bit XP you'll be down to less than 2gb of RAM if you get the 4870X2, so also consider a 64-bit OS (Vista x64 is better than XP x64 from what I've heard, but thats your call).
 
What's the verdict.. CPU bottle neck or no? I'm siding more towards no.... but I think there would be one if I went with the 2 4870X2's in CrossFire (or even 1).

WoW is messed up in SLI configuration? Thought it could take advantage of it just fine.

I didn't know XP could only address < 2 GB of RAM for Video cards...thought that was only a physical memory issue.

I'm just deciding if I should wait until February when we see the new Intel chips, and by then -- hopefully, a new series of cards from NVIDIA -- as on average I completely replace my system every year.
 
With a 30" a 4870x2 will improve your frame rate over 8800GT sli quite a bit. Also that CPU is easy to overclock 3ghz+ so do it for extra hhmpfff!
 
Do you guys think I should just wait until the new Intel chips and do graphics+cpu at the same time?
 
DMystikaLD said:
Do you guys think I should just wait until the new Intel chips and do graphics+cpu at the same time?
Click to expand...

I think you should go out and buy a 4870x2

After that come back and make a thread on why you love it so much.

End of story
 
If you're not feeling you need it right now, of course wait for the Nehalem.
 
DMystikaLD said:
WoW is messed up in SLI configuration? Thought it could take advantage of it just fine.

I didn't know XP could only address < 2 GB of RAM for Video cards...thought that was only a physical memory issue.
Click to expand...

A. Yes, WoW is messed up by having SLI running. Performance is horrible. This is basically a recurring theme on the WoW technical support forums. Guy with SLI comes in, says his performance is horrible. Disables SLI, and everything goes back to normal. Of course, it can only use one card then, but... this is WoW we're talking about.

B. Yes, it is only a physical memory issue. You don't need a 64-bit OS to use it. However, if you have more than 3GB, it might make the "memory hole" (amount of space deducted from the full 4GB) larger when installed.
 
Cyant said:
With a 30" a 4870x2 will improve your frame rate over 8800GT sli quite a bit. Also that CPU is easy to overclock 3ghz+ so do it for extra hhmpfff!
Click to expand...

i think its legally pronounced Umph lol
 
DMystikaLD said:
Do you guys think I should just wait until the new Intel chips and do graphics+cpu at the same time?
Click to expand...

no, as you have already figured out at 4.1mp your not CPU bound, rather GPU bound for most things. this would be a great upgrade for you. have a hard time recommending a 4870X2 for someone @ 2.3mp but no such issue with you
 
Never realized SLI caused issues in WoW -- I'll try disabling it and see if my performance goes up. If it does -- screw it, I'll just wait until the new Intel chips -- as really, besides WoW performance, everything runs pretty damn smoothly right now -- and I cannot justify the extra cash when it doesn't really improve anything. I'm locked at 60 FPS for vsync anyway. Furthermore, Nvidia is starting to throw PhysX onto their cards, so we'll probably see a card from them that's as fast or faster than this WITH PhysX by the time Intel releases new chips.
 
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