Decisions decisions, help someone completely out of touch

[Marine-RX179]

I can't imagine it's a noticeable bottleneck though. Black Ops is a poor game to test it on though, as I believe it still suffers from gpu usage issues even on heavily clocked high end cpus? Best thing to do would be to run a few benchmarks and compare it against equivalent gpus with better cpus

6870 can deliver min 57fps, avg 80fps on a i7 920 at 3.6GHz on 1920x1200 4xAA 16XAF
4850 deliver min 27fps, avg 38fps on a i7 920 at 3.6GHz on 1920x1200 4xAA 16XAF
http://www.techspot.com/review/336-cod-black-ops-performance/page5.html

Whereas a 5970 only deliver min 23fps, avg 42fps on the i3 540 at 3.07GHz on 1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF:
http://www.techspot.com/review/336-cod-black-ops-performance/page8.html

Huge CPU bottleneck right there, as the 5970 with i3 540 only getting half the frame rate as the 6870 with i7 920 at 3.6GHz, and is no faster than a 4850 with a i7 920 at 3.6GHz. So basically a 6870 with a i3 would barely be faster than a 4850 on a decent speed Quad-core on Black OPs.

For most game, an overclocked i3 530/540 to around 4.0GHz would be fast enough to keep up with a 6870, but definitely not in Black OPs.

 

[Nocky24]

snip

Fair point mate! Although I'd argue the 5970 is an entirely different beast, but I see what you mean from those links. I'm surprised how 'badly' the phenom II cpus are performing in comparison to the 920 in black ops

 

[Marine-RX179]

I'm surprised how 'badly' the phenom II cpus are performing in comparison to the 920 in black ops

Comparing the frame rates there, the Phenom II X4 970BE at 3.5GHz would not bottleneck graphic card up to around a stock speed 5850's level, but for anyone with a faster graphic card than 5850, they simple won't be any faster than a 5850...it's that simple. Sure it would still be perfectly playable frame rate, but I don't think anyone would like their 5870/GTX480 only running as fast as a 5850 due to CPU limitation

 

[Skyrocket]

Hi guys

I've been chugging along with my Nvidia 8800GTX for quite some time now but I've realised that for games such as Fallout 3 I'm starting to have to turn down the graphics options...I haven't even gone near the latest Call of Duty games so I don't know how well it would hold up in those.

I am completely out of date with graphics cards and have no clue how they compare anymore, from the comparison graphs I found the 8800GTX wasn't on there anymore.

If you were buying a new card and had around £200 to spend (ex vat) what would you be looking for and how does it compare?

I will be using it on a 24" screen running at 1900x1200 and would like all the options turned up to 11 if possible.

If it's any help it would great if it could help in day to day computing such as using Photoshop (though I believe they have to use Quadro cards), and video encoding such as Badaboom.

Thanks for any advice, I'm completely lost with this one!

wait a couple of more days.
One wed new AMD cards are coming out which will shake up the market.
You will have a much better overview of gfx when they come out.

 

[enablerbro1]

The perfect thread for me, though the rest of my spec isn't so up to date. Given my current gaming setup, would people still advise the 5870? I have been looking into getting the new Benq "gaming" monitor and had hoped to keep my current setup till the spring or summer of next year before upgrading.

Asus P5K Premium, 4GB Ballistix DDR2, BFG 8800GTX OC, Q6600, 720W ENERMAX Infinity