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Will Athlon II X2 245 (3.5GHz) bottleneck GPU gaming performance?

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I recently tried my HD4870 1GB in my HTPC and was impressed by the gaming performance, although now... I want more!

If I bought a GTX460 or HD6850, would I get much of an FPS improvement over the HD4870, or would my CPU bottleneck any theoretical improvement? I have an AMD Athlon II X2 245 overclocked to 3.5GHz.

I would like to play games such as Dirt2 at 1080p with high settings, and am currently getting ~40 FPS with the HD4870. I would really like closer to 60FPS :D
 
With a 1GB GTX460 myself, I'm pretty sure my Athlon II x3 435 is now a bottleneck in my system.

Thankfully, Bulldozer will be here next year to remedy that little problem :) For the remainder of this year and the first half of the next, I think the x3 will just about hang in there enough to play most games on nice settings.
 
I would like to play games such as Dirt2 at 1080p with high settings, and am currently getting ~40 FPS with the HD4870. I would really like closer to 60FPS :D


Dirt 2 is very dependant on the number of cores....3 or more will give you 60fps..

So in some games, yes your 245 will be a bottleneck to a 460 (and your 4870)....just depends on how the individual game has been coded.
 
Depends on res/settings/game

800x600, min detail, yep

1920x1200, crysis etc, max details...no

Try playing Dirt with textures/detail etc lowered and AA off - if you get more FPS you're not bottlenecked
 
With more games these days taking advantage of more than 2 cores, it would probably bottleneck you on some games, although others will be fine.

Obviously a quad core will unleash your graphics cards full potential. :)
 
it really wont make much difference tbh, i just got a 460 with an e6400 @ 3ghz and its flying and maxing every game ive tried, sure a quad core might get you more fps in gta iv or supreme commander but most games it wont be that noticeable.

Dirt 2 runs great on dual cores, i get over 60fps constantly whilst maxed out.
 
it really wont make much difference tbh, i just got a 460 with an e6400 @ 3ghz and its flying and maxing every game ive tried, sure a quad core might get you more fps in gta iv or supreme commander but most games it wont be that noticeable.

Dirt 2 runs great on dual cores, i get over 60fps constantly whilst maxed out.

Really? i always thought it would barely work!!!
 
honestly even before with my 9800gtx it was running great at mostly high settings (1920x1080), now with a 460 1gb @ 830mhz its flying at the highest settings.
 
it really wont make much difference tbh, i just got a 460 with an e6400 @ 3ghz and its flying and maxing every game ive tried, sure a quad core might get you more fps in gta iv or supreme commander but most games it wont be that noticeable.

Dirt 2 runs great on dual cores, i get over 60fps constantly whilst maxed out.

Whilst it's true that not every game can use more than 2 cores, there are (and have been for quite a while) several that cry out for more. Dragon Age ran like a dog on my dual core AMD system, using low graphics settings. It needed a manlier CPU.
 
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