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How bad is a CPU 'bottleneck'?

Yet again thanks a lot for the very swift replies and advice. I'll just have to wait it out until I can afford the rest. The whole reason I started with the gfx is because I had a 6600GT so even though there is a bottleneck, the 4890 is still a huge improvement starting point nonetheless :)

TheMorningStar said:
it's ram more than cpu i would say. with a 4890 with 1gb of gfx ram and 2gb in your system already you will need to upgrade your OS to a 64bit version to use more ram
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Going to try this today, got nothing to lose :)
 
Duran said:
bottlenecking is mostly an urban legend
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I find it to be real but it varies from game to game.

Going from 2.4Ghz cpu to 3.33 (38.75% faster) there is only around a 10% increase in FPS in games like Crysis at 1680 x 1050.

No change in some games and a couple were even slightly slower.
 
when i first had my 8800gtx i put it with an x2 4400. Was terrible minimum framerates were awful. i then coupled it with a C2D at 2.8ghz and the difference was immense :)
 
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Rezident said:
I find it to be real but it varies from game to game.

Going from 2.4Ghz cpu to 3.33 (38.75% faster) there is only around a 10% increase in FPS in games like Crysis at 1680 x 1050.

No change in some games and a couple were even slightly slower.
Click to expand...

Slightly different story in your case. You have a decent modern cpu which there is very little benefit once you clock it to 3ghz and not much of a bottleneck at 2.4ghz either.
 
RAM bottleneking ? Never heard that one before, my 32bit XP can only have 3.something GB. I've also heard that XP programs only use 2GB of ram anyway.
I'm sure 2GB is more than enough to run games decently, upgrading to vista isnt worth the extra couple of FPS
Would my system be bottlenecked much? specs below
 
Adokaum said:
RAM bottleneking ? Never heard that one before, my 32bit XP can only have 3.something GB. I've also heard that XP programs only use 2GB of ram anyway.
I'm sure 2GB is more than enough to run games decently, upgrading to vista isnt worth the extra couple of FPS
Would my system be bottlenecked much? specs below
Click to expand...

Both xp and vista 32 bit are limited to approx the same amount of ram, 3. something. You need 64 bit xp or vista to access more.

I find that there is a performance difference between using 2 gb and 4 gb on a 32 bit system even only having 3.25Gb of usuable memory afterwards.

How much memory do you have usuable after windows is running with only 2gb? My work machine has less than 1gb available for the programs I'm running and quite a few games benefit from more than that.

There's lots of comparative benchmarks if you google them but here's the first one I found for Crysis Warhead.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...d-general-info-about-the-game/Reviews/?page=2

You can see that going from 2 Gb to 4 Gb of ram has a massive bearing on the minimum fps. Although you wouldn't see the full gain since you will only be going to 3.25Gb you would see a good improvement.

You can always check by running some monitoring software checking your ram usuage in the games you play. If maxed out then it's a bottleneck.
 
I remember when BF2 was released, people were rubbishing 4GB back then. Then they saw how fast maps loaded.

Thought people would have got the message by now.
 
only things that can happen with RAM are:

(1) long load times for maps as it swaps to the HDD for virtual memory,

(2) stuttering issues on a level/map when it has to load, for example, textures from VM to the RAM.

That's it - no special miracle frame rate increase to had aside from the one i pointed out. Point two is clearly visible as frame stuttering, NOT slow down in heavy fights - the game will pause, its very noticeable for what it is.

So before you just upgrade your RAM like some are suggesting, make sure its a stuttering problem and not just slow down in complex scenes.
 
Wisdom ^
If the HD isn't thrashing it's backside off then you have enough RAM.
(actually on my last two machines, increasing from 2-4GB caused a small drop in performance, mainly due to the memory controller having twice as much work to do. It IS nice when you come to reload a game and find that windows hasn't chucked the whole previous load of it into swap....nothing as pleasing as seeing the whole game run with almost no sign on the HD access LED.
 
The Seventh One said:
XFX 4890
AMD 4200+ X2 overclocked at 2.75GHz
2 gig of RAM
Click to expand...
facepalma.jpg
 
I exaggerate a little but that CPU is too slow to let the HD4890 spread its wings!

Still . . . at least The Seventh One has a good GPU now all he needs to do is buy a new system-core and flog his valuable socket 939 kit off at auction! . . . that should cover the cost of an E5200 and a used Intel P45 mobo! :p
 
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