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GTX460 1024mb with a E6600

Pukk@pie

Pukk@pie

Pukk@pie

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Joined
6 Apr 2004
Posts
539
Hi

I am in the market for a new graphics card and was thinking of going for the GTX460 1024mb. My question is will my CPU E6600 @3ghz hold it back?

Thanks
 
I game on that size with the gigabyte 460 one gig and it's easy to play bf2bc etc...

is it a dual core cpu? If so then it might hold back in some cpu heavy games
 
It'll hold it back, but it's not the end of the world. Maybe see if you can pick up a cheap Q6600 if it bothers you?
 
I run a 470 with an e6600 @ 3.4 and I'm definatley held back a bit, in some games more than others but still get good fps generally, esp for a 3+ year old cpu.
 
To be honest, with your CPU only at 3.0GHz (and the motherboard most likely won't let you overclock further) and at 1680x1050, you should just save yourself around £40-£50 and grab the MSI Cyclone GTX460 768MB for £127 instead and overclock it.

Even at 1920x1200 4xAA, the a stock speed GTX460 768MB would still be overall faster than a 5830 1GB.
 
buy the 1gb and be happy. You can always turn on more aa af etc.

Especially given you might go higher res at some point.
 
Last edited:
WingZero30 said:
How is it possible to tell?:confused:
Click to expand...
Easy, just compare CPU usage to GPU usage.

Scougar as much as I would like agree with you, we are talking about he has to pay extra £40-£50 up front right now, for extra performance he won't really see until he up his res AND upgrade his CPU to a Quad (considering his current motherboard can't overclock the E6600 or Q6600 to stable beyond 3.0GHz)...whenever that is.

If you look at this:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/156?vs=180

While the GTX460 1GB is average around 1-5fps higher than the GTX460 768MB, that's under the condition of no CPU limitation...so I really doubt he will see GTX460 1GB's benefit over GTX460 768MB with the E6600 only at 3.0GHz, may it be 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 with 4xAA.
 
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WingZero30 said:
How is it possible to tell?:confused:
Click to expand...

As Marine said, CPU & GPU usage but also looking what other users get with same card and different cpu combos. Crysis and Dirt2 are quite a bit faster on a quad but others aren't affected as much, the Heaven benchmark is mostly gpu only and my fps are almost the same as some i5/i7 setups.
 
Thanks guys. Some great info there

I should have updated my sig as my motherboard is a Gigabyte P43-ES3G so I might try and increase my OC though my memory DDR2 (5400) might hold me back.

So my plan....
I'm going to buy a 1920x1080 monitor, add a 460gtx 1gb and see how it performs with current CPU. Then try to OC CPU higher if necessary...failing all that add a Q6600 (if i can find one at reasonable cost) and OC that to 3gz which means i can keep existing memory.

Just checking would a Q6600 @3ghz compliment a 460GTX 1Gb?
 
WingZero30 said:
So if a game utilised only 40% gpu usage but 100% cpu usage, would this mean that the game was being bottlenecked by cpu?

Likewise if a game utilised 100% gpu usage but only say 33% cpu usage, would the gpu be bottleneck in this case?
Click to expand...
Pretty much. But there's also the matter of how many cores are the game is designed to use.

For example, there's this Japanese mmo I play, which I believe is single-threaded (written to only use 1 core). Because of that, my Q6600 is running the game like a single-core 3.0GHz, and my frame rate drop like flies at busy areas with lots of people and my GPU usage is only around 15~20%. This example is that the CPU bottleneck the GPU/graphic card not because of CPU's limitation, but because of the game's limitation.

WOW is also a good example why people having poor frame rate in busy area despite having high end graphic card. The game is written to use no more than two cores (I believe the game was said to "support" more than two cores, but the fact it really only use the 2 main cores), and because of that, lower speed Quad-core CPU actually deliver lower frame rate than higher speed dual-core if both were using the same graphic card. The reason why i3 dual-core or i5/i7 Quad overclocked to 4.0GHz+ deliver the highest frame rate because they are the fastest CPU when being used as a dual-core.
 
Last edited:
Marine-RX179 said:
Pretty much. But there's also the matter of how many cores are the game is designed to use.

For example, there's this Japanese mmo I play, which I believe is single-threaded (written to only use 1 core). Because of that, my Q6600 is running the game like a single-core 3.0GHz, and my frame rate drop like flies at busy areas with lots of people and my GPU usage is only around 15~20%. This example is that the CPU bottleneck the GPU/graphic card not because of CPU's limitation, but because of the game's limitation.

WOW is also a good example why people having poor frame rate in busy area despite having high end graphic card. The game is written to use no more than two cores (I believe the game was said to "support" more than two cores, but the fact it really only use the 2 main cores), and because of that, lower speed Quad-core CPU actually deliver lower frame rate than higher speed dual-core if both were using the same graphic card. The reason why i3 dual-core or i5/i7 Quad overclocked to 4.0GHz+ deliver the highest frame rate because they are the fastest CPU when being used as a dual-core.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the insight. Lol I was playing super street fighter 2 genesis rom on my pc and it is a single core application but was using around around 50% of my [email protected]:eek:. I would have thought that such a game should have only utilised 10-12% of my cpu. :confused:
 
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