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Will a Q9450 at around 3.2Ghz-3.5Ghz bottle neck a 6970?

Soldato
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Im asking on behalf of someone else on this thread.

They want a new gpu but their cpu seems to be maxing out at around 3.5ghz at the extreme end. I thinkthey will have to lower overclock to around 3.2-3.3 due to heat.

They want a lower power consuming card, and the budget is £300.

So far, Iv told them to wait for the 6970 ratherthan get the 6870, but Im not sure if his cpu is powerful enough for the 6970 any way.

Any ideas?
 
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At a resolution of 1680x1050 or higher, there's pretty much no worry that there's going to be any noticeable bottleneck by that CPU
 
At the worst I'd say minimal if at all, even then only in a few games. Iirc it will also depend on the ram speed but I'd check that one out first.
 
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In most game it most likely won't be bottlenecking the card...well, may be except for games that use no more than two cores or Arma II at 10km view distance, which eat CPU power like snack even with it supporting Quad-core.
 
I got an i7 2.6 running at 3.1 atm, run games in 2560*1600 - think this will be good for me with no bottlenecking issues too?

Thx in advance.
 
Don't want to jack thread but i'm wondering this too. Phenom X4 @ 3.6 and a 1080p resolution. I should be OK right?
 
Absolutely fine. ^^ :)


In fact I was going to start a thread asking if my q6600 was bottlenecking my 4870x2 and, more importantly, if using it in a next gen set up would be worth while. The jump from 3.0 - 3.2 was a noticeable improvement.

I was / am considering whether to keep the graphics card and see how the next cpu / mobo clocks. Has anyone upgraded from something like a q6600 and used a 4870x2 with an i5 / i7 / PII - did their frame rates benefit?

Would love some feedback on that please. :)
 
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Dude I was telling you about has gone for a 6870... at £195 wants to buy now basically.

Think he made the right choice?

I did tell him that the 470 is better... just hope he read my posts!
 
Well, you just said he wanted a card with low power consumption. This obviously rules out the Nvidia range bar the GTX460 and below, and the 6970 was meant to have a TDP close to that of the GTX580 so I thought I've read, so yeah, he's done the right thing I reckon.
 
Absolutely fine. ^^ :)


In fact I was going to start a thread asking if my q6600 was bottlenecking my 4870x2 and, more importantly, if using it in a next gen set up would be worth while. The jump from 3.0 - 3.2 was a noticeable improvement.

I was / am considering whether to keep the graphics card and see how the next cpu / mobo clocks. Has anyone upgraded from something like a q6600 and used a 4870x2 with an i5 / i7 / PII - did their frame rates benefit?

Would love some feedback on that please. :)
the answer for that is @ 3.7GHz the bottleneck isnt there on a Q6600 with a 4870x2. 3.6Ghz its there but so not noticeable
 
^^Cheers m8. :)

Blimey, more of a difference that I thought there would be. 'Probably' some decent mileage left in the x2 then.




So, a Q9450 would gain some more worth while performance if clocked higher (obvious I know - but more than likely a greater amount than I realised). If the overclock only managed to hit a little above 3.0 - say 3.2 ish then I would think he'll still get an adequate satisfactory upgrade experience out of it. At least if he bought the card and upgraded sometime in the not too distant future his new card would still easily pack enough punch to be used along side the newer rig.
 
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Positive that's due to there being two physical cards, therefore 2 PCI-E lanes being addressed, causing the Q6600 to slow everything down.

I had a 5870 on release paired with my Q6600 @ 3.6 and it was bang on performance matching the i7 setups give or take a few FPS.

Probably still have the 3D vantage score lying around somewhere...

EDIT:
There we go, October 2009 3DMV score with Q6600 + 5870 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1507576 vs i7 920 @ 3.6GHz http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1986156
 
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Basically this dude has gone and bought the 6870. Now by the sounds of it, he with his q9450 wants to MAX games out....

I told him to wait for the 6970 if thats what he wanted, but his bought the 6870.

I told him, nice choice as it is a better match for your cpu. However he can sense in my words that im saying that he wont be MAXING out games....
 
OMG, there's no such issue like "BOTTLENECKing", some people perverted special point of view, which should have been: "some games just work quicker, when extra CPU power is present" - but it depends on PARTICULAR game, it's all about checking games requirements (dual cores, quads, how quick it is etc).
Some games get benefits from additional cores, and some of them get from additional Mhz. And some of them work just fine, no matter how much do you o/c your CPU. Just read particular game's requirements, that's it.
 
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