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Clearly you don't play much online games, Starcraft II or Total War series etc. It's nothing to do with 5 years old games, but more about game developers still write their damn games or lazy port to use less than 4 cores even when we are in 2012 already.
Not really, his CPU is his weakest link. My old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz isn't much slower than the Phenom II X4 at 3.7GHz, and it bottenecked the hell out of my SINGLE 5850 in lots of games.
Did you actually looked at the GPU usage? Or were all the games you play were some FPS single player campaigns etc? Also, you might want to have a look at this:I had a Q6600 at 3.6ghz too, plenty of benches I can find on the phenom place it as quite a bit ahead of a Q even clock for clock in games
my Q at 3.6 didn't bottleneck a GTX580 unless it was heavily OC'd
I also have a friend with a phenomII X4 at 3.2ghz with an unlocked 6950 and he sees no bottlenecking, so I'm extrapolating that at 3.7 it should be fine to run a 7850
this is what I think based on my experience
you don't have a phenomII or a 7850 so you can't say anything based on direct experience either so you are only saying what you think based on almost completely unrelated other parts... it's ok to have an opinion without having a pop at other peoples
I don't think you you actually interpret the meaning/purpose of those benches right. Those bench at low res are meant to show strictly what the frame rate the CPUs are capable of delivering without being GPU bounded, and using whatever card the frame rate would be the same at that low res, as long as it is not GPU limited. If the CPU can only do 35fps, upgrading from CF4890 to a 7850 won't make any difference, and certainlly won't miraculous make the frame rate go above 35fps. Also, you didn't answer what games you played. Take BF3 for example, for the single player campaign the Athlon II X4 would do just as well as SB/IV i5 because it is GPU bounded, but for multiplayer on 32/64 serves, it would then struggle to hold 99% GPU usage with mid-high to high-end card. Just because YOU don't play any game that are CPU demanding, doesn't mean you can tell the OP it WON'T bottleneck...cause there are certainly PLENTY of games out there that does.
You might want to have a look at this thread before you keep insisting overclocked Core2Quad or Phenom II X4 wouldn't bottleneck:
No, it's Far Cry 2, which use 4 cores. Don't know why someone thought it was Crysis in that topic. You acknowledge that lack of use in cores could make the CPU bottleneck, yet you refused to look at the reality that game developers are still happily pumping out lazy console ports or games that use less than 4 cores far more than games that do for new releases.
You exaggerate greatly saying the games in the bench I linked being 4-5 years old; both the Civilization 5 and F1 2010...which Phenom II X4 fall far behind were games from 2010. In fact, F1 2010 is probably one of the best example for presenting lots of game out there- the game is CPU bounded, yet, it only uses 3 cores...which is why the Phenom II X4 980 (3.7GHz) lag behind i3 2100, despite its performance should stand shoulder to shoulder to it when all 4 cores are used as BFBC2 has proved.
