I just recently purchased a ATI 6950 video card, knowing my CPU is rather old (Its in my specs <--) i was wondering how big a bottleneck it is? I just purchased BBC2 as well and im having difficulty running it on max settings @ 1920x1024. Since i really don't want to spend huge bucks upgrading my cpu and motherboard when new tech is so close to release, would spending a 100$ on this CPU (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7026019&Sku=A79-1920) give me substantial increase in performance, as well able to feed the 6950? Thanks!
Using a 6950 I went from a C2D @ 3.0GHz to my current CPU and the gains were quite significant. In your case you'll have even more of a bottleneck as the old Athlon architecture is, well, old. If you don't want to upgrade to Sandy Bridge and/or Bulldozer, and I'd recommend doing just that, then yes - the PII 920 would certainly improve your situation a lot. Especially overclocked.
2 8800 GT's will bottleneck that CPU. I used to have one and my cousins kid currently uses one. You will see a very nice jump with a X4 920. That 6950 right now is severely limited in its performance.
6950 is an awesome card. Theres no question its been limited by your CPU. At the very least a Phenom II x3 to give that card some headroom. Why buy a 6950? You could have kept your money and spread the cost on a balanced upgraded system. CPU + GPU n maybe some ram+motherboard.
Why buy a 6950? because i'm slowing upgrading my computer, and i wanted something future proof. I wasn't going to do an entire system over-haul when new tech is on the horizon. Thanks for the suggestions guy! i think i'll get the 920 and overclock it to hold me off so your sure it'll give me the performance im missing? cause right now, during BBC2 my cpu is 100% max and my gpu usage is around 20-22%.. its sad lol, it's temp while gaming is 48C lol
iirc, bfbc2 uses the cpu for physics. given all the destructible physics implemented in the game, a beefy cpu definitely helps. personally, i would say if youre planning on upgrading, just save up your money for now, and maybe jump onto bulldozer when it launches in april. even if you dont plan on buying bulldozer, it will cause the phenom range (and their socket am3 motherboards) to drop in price notably.
Oh, the bottleneck there is pretty huge. Im in somewhat of the same boat as you, but with a much less powerful video card. Even my 5750 is bottlenecked by my Athlon X2! Our cpu's are close to identical. The Athlon X2's aren't bad processors (atleast they weren't in their day), but they just cannot keep up with recent video cards.
CPU bottlenecking is really, really overrated MOST of the time. However, your bottleneck is almost as bad as back when VultureX was running an 8800GTX on a Pentium 4. The Phenom 920 will most definitely make a huge increase in your performance. It will still hold the 6950 back at stock but if you can get it around 3.6-3.8Ghz you'll be seeing near maximum performance of the GPU in most modern games. And for what its worth BFBC2 is likely the heaviest game on the CPU minus maybe GTA. It likes 4+ fast cores.
Keep in mind that games such as RPGs, MMOs and strategy games very much CPU-bound as well. BFBC2 may well the FPS that demands the most out of your CPU but I'd be surprised if it did so above and beyond those genres of games. Which brings up a good point overall, the OP should consider what kind of games he plays when upgrading. No doubt he'll be bottlenecked in all of them with his current CPU but some genres of games require far more CPU than GPU, and vice versa.
Yes, i have the same card and i can run BFBC2 on max settings with no problems. You really need a new cpu. For the price, that cpu seems a good choice but would better to get something faster or overclock that cpu
This is true, I forgot about Civ 5 and others that do require a lot from the CPU. BFBC2 just stands out as MOST FPS games are very GPU bound.
BFBC2 scales to at least 4 cores; my old QX9650 was at 85%+ for all four cores in game, so its REALLY CPU intensive.
With 4200 , that gpu is a huge bottleneck !! Waste of money !! Even with my 6400 + 5770 is a small bottleneck .. I game at 1600x900 , in bfbc2 got avg 40 fps with max settings and 4aa ..
lol, and here starts the flame. That guy is also using Hilbert Hagedoorn's avatar... hmm I see no problem with your purchase and that is a great card. When you upgrade the rest of your PC, you will be in gaming bliss. I plan on keeping my 5750 for a while. Hopefully I can upgrade my PC in time for it to still be an ok card lol
This is nt his pic, and Hilbert never told me nt to use this avater .. LOL .. @op, sorry dude it's my bad, it's ur money, u can waste/use it anyway .. Edit: add another 6950 for better performence .. LOL ..
Whatever your motherboard is go to the site and look up on what cpu's it can support and buy the fastest one and install it