A64 X2 4200+ and 8800GT

I have recently bought a XFX 8800GT 512MB. 'Thing is my processor is and Athlon64 X2 4200+, and I fear
this CPU may not fully correspond to the VGA's power. Am I right? Or is my CPU good enough to fully enjoy an 8800GT?
Thnx
:boozer:

 

It's fine.

 

Your CPU will be the bottleneck. Sorry. Even a E2180 like mine OCed to 3.2 is borderline.

 

Why do you think that his CPU will bottleneck the gfx card? I have to disagree there...



@the OP - What resolution do you game at?

 

I used to play at 1280x800, for I had an 8600GT and high resolutions would give me a very poor performance in most games.
With the 8800GT I'm playing at 1440x900, which is my monitor's highest resolution.

 

I just figured he wont be able to utilize all the power of the Alpha Dog 8800GT with his CPU. .......It will be OK. ...............But he asked " Or is my CPU good enough to fully enjoy an 8800GT? " . Thats all. - He says with hands up.

 

I think you'll be fine. Using an 8800GT, I remember going from an X2 4200 to a X2 5200, and the difference was only a few fps.

EDIT: At 1440x900, your setup is perfectly good.

 

OK sorry my bad.

 

If the CPU can't process game code fast enough, it won't be able to feed the data fast enough for the GPU, causing a bottleneck affect.

For me, the thing that is dragging my system is my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. With it overclocked at 2.53 GHz, gaming is a bliss, but on stock? lagtastic

... it could be b/c I game at 1680x1050, oh well, that's my monitor's native resolution...

deltatux

 

Well when you overclock to 2.53ghz, do you also overclock fsb? including ram and pci express? I have a feeling you are overclocking more than just the cpu itself and getting such a difference.


CPU bottleneck is so over rated, the truth is, either can bottleneck.

In RTS games, obviously you can monitor temps like any decent overclocker should, and see your graphics card doesnt even get warm, yet CPU is near max or at max usage, and temps are pretty warm.

In FPS such as Crysis, I can bottleneck your gpu or cpu anytime I want. The trick is to adjust settings for an even balance.

Resolution is more dependent on graphics card memory. Since you are at only 512mb, max res could cause some lag.


If you worry about cpu bottleneck, just turn up resolution and AA.. Im sure your graphics card will slow itself down for the cpu then.

 

nope, only the FSB, which in turn overclock the RAM. However, the PCIe is at stock.

I have to overclock via FSB because the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ has its multipliers locked.

I would rather get a new processor if I had to slow down my GPU to match my CPU.

deltatux

 

The 8600 was without a doubt one of the poorest performing cards Nvidia has produced. It only had 128 bit memory at a time when 256 bit was the norm.
A real step backwards from the 6600 series.

The 8800GT was 256 bit which would definitely help at higher res. The 8800GTX/Ultra have 386 bit memory...

 

That's true... The 8800GT made a huge difference. I'm running things much better than I expected.
But I do think a faster processor would give me some help, for in some games, like Assassin's Creed or Crysis, I still have some slowdowns. I haven't played Crysis a lot because it doesn't run very well on my system, but Assassin's Creed does. It only slows down in more intense screens, like when I'm looking a big crowded street. I believe this is more CPU related, am I right?
Thnx for the quick response.

 

I remember I had a similar setup as you. An AMD 5200+ at 2.6ghz and a 8800GT 512mb. I game at the same resolution you do, 1440x900 and I need to say that when I upgraded the 5200+ to a 6000+ I saw some pretty amazing results. Went from playing most new games at medium to all high settings. It ran very well until I got my GTX 260 and realized how much of a bottleneck it was to it. If you want a cheap upgrade, get a AMD 6000+ Brisbane 3.1ghz. You could probably overclock that bad boy to around 3.4ghz and say good bye to the bottleneck you might be having now.

 

Yeah I wish I could do that... but the problem is that my system is aging. I'm still using a 939 socket and a dual-core processor for it is both expensive and hard to find... And even then, the best one available is the A64 X2 5200... Anyway, I'm probably buying a new PC next month so things will be all right.
c1:

 

I'm not being bottlenecked. I'm getting great performance in basically every game I play.

 

I guess it really is depending on your set up. Compared to me, you have a stronger GPU. Probably, you're still running Windows XP.

Even heavily tweaking Windows Server 2008, it seems it won't be any faster to be exactly on par with Windows XP. However, I need a strong 64-bit support, which only Vista and Server 2008 provides. Windows XP Professional x64 is a joke.

deltatux

 

that CPU will definately bottleneck an 8800, hell my old 4200+ OC @ 2.5Ghz was bottlenecking my 7800 as i tried it later with an E7200. Games like bioshock would run 10-20% faster with the E7200.

you are, the performance might be grand but youre not running that card at its full potential.

3Dmark06 with an ATI 3850 and 4200+ X2 @ 2.5Ghz = 7200
3DMark06 with an ATI 3850 and E7200@3.3Ghz = 9100

Its not just the bottlenecking though, i ran Dirt with the 4200+ and was getting 30FPS @ 1280x1024 on med-high settings, used the same gfx card on the E7200 and it was up to 40FPS with high settings. The 4200+ doesnt really cut it now, its a great cpu, its just the core2 overclock better

 

That's because you weren't running it at a high enough resolution.
At 1280x1024 you're still CPU dependant.

If you increased the res the cpu wouldn't even come in to it....

 

I play at 1680x1050, so I`m more GPU dep4endent in most games I play. I don`t do real-time strategies, so it`s not too bad. If you have some frame rate issues, you can always dumb down the game details a little, to give a bit of slack to either the CPU or GPU, whichever is struggling to keep up. But yeah the CPU will be most likely I`d think. Bioshock ran pretty well for me.