ive been thinking of upgrading my gpu to an ATI 4870 or 4850 because i get the feeling that my crabby 8600 may be causing bottlenecks against my cpu.
Can anyone tell me if this is true?
and thoughts and recommendations on what to upgrade to?
Thanks

 

The 8600 only has a memory bandwith of about 128kb, so it could be. It's a decent midrange card but with your specs, it'd definately be slowing you down. That said, I don't know much about ATI cards. I'm mostly a nVidia fanboy. I have heard awesome things about the 4870 though.

 

Nvidia yes, ATI has something similar but they change so fucking much I cant tell you. Also, nvidia has one brand that isn't done like that, the new x280 card, which is strong as hell.

What resolution do you run it at? Is the card set to high quality or high performance? It's not a horrible card no, but next year, you'll be playing the new stuff on low, or with stuff turned off, or on medium with 15-20 fps, which isn't good enough to anyone who seriously games. You wind up with screen lag, etc. When for another 100 bucks, is what I'm saying, you're playing the same games on high, and staying there for 2-3 years.

 

Firstly, almost everything is CPU-bottlenecked (which means that the limiting factor is your processor, not your video card--the computer only spits out frames that both the processor and video card have done their jobs on). A 4870 or 4850 would make this "problem" worse (though you would get a lot more eye candy per screen).

The 8600 is by no means a terrible card, btw, it's just not ideal for playing Oblivion at 2560*1600 with everything turned on.

Could you give me some FRAPS rates at various resolutions and eye-candy levels in whatever games you play?

 

Oh really? well i figured that since my cpu is fairly powerful that it would be my gpu that was bottlenecking, or were you just referring to games?

on Battlefield 2 with all settings on max and 8x AA at 1280x960 avg fps is 42 and im not sure what you mean by eye-candy levels.

@shezza
yea i used to be an nvidia fan until recently when ATI released their 4800 series and started dominating all market sectors in terms of bang for buck. And shit what the fucks with the gay ass priceing in Aus =_=

 

I'm not disagreeing with you on that fact, a better investment should be made for an actual gamer. I just mostly use the card setup in a spare box now for my roommate when he games with me, or other people who come over but don't want to lug their machines with 'em.

The card is currently set to default besides for game specific tweaks so that it works for older games (Urban Terror, CoP2, ect ect).

 

Which CPU do you have? Bottlenecking almost only occurs in games, as that is the main time where anything is under full load.

Eye-candy refers to such things as view distance, AA, AF, HDR/Bloom, etc.

Anything above 30fps is playable for a FPS game, and anything above 20fps for RTS, RPG, etc.

Could I get framerates for 1280*960 at 0, 1x, 2x, and 4x AA, and the same AA settings at 640*480, 800*600, and 1024*768?

 

My system specs:

DESKTOP

Chassis: Antec Sonata III 500
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts 500W
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Motherboard: ASUS P5K >Green<
RAM: 4GB of Kingston ValueRAM
Video Card: nVIDIA GeForce 9600GT
Hard Drive(s):
1. Seagate ST3320620AS (320GB SATA)
2. Seagate ST3500320AS (500 GB SATA)
3. Seagate ST3500320AS (500GB SATA)
4. Seagate ST3500630AS (500GB SATA)
5. Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80GB PATA)

LAPTOP

Model: Toshiba Satellite M300

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 @ 2.00GHz
RAM: 4GB of Kingston ValueRAM
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470
Hard Drive: Hitachi TravelStar (250GB SATA)

Yeah, a bit old, but fuck you.

 

Well, I think is time for me to showcase my CPU...

Chassis: 3D Mercury
Power Supply: Thundering H80 ST-750EAD 750W
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-Extreme
RAM: 3GB OCZ DDR3 Ram
Graphic Card:
1. nVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 1GB DDR3
2. nVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 1GB DDR3
Hard Drive(s):
1. Seagate ST3200820AS (200GB SATA)
2. Seagate ST3200820AS (200GB SATA)
3. Seagate ST3500320AS (500GB SATA)

Below are some pics:

 

Dat nigga gotz a fan on his CPU waterblock, dat's hardcore fo sur.

Seriously though, nice, and I hope to god you're not one of those who builds shit like that and then plays Warcraft 3 on 1024, heh.

If you're not, you'll understand the want to beat to death those sort of people I have.

What sort of pump? The splitters you have in there would kill flowrate for damned near anything, suprised you're using a 750w for that much hardware as well.

 

Warcraft 3!? Midknight, you insulted me. Right now, I'm going crazy with Empire: Total War and Dawn of War: 2(still isn't very good, I got my ass raped hard by AI)(Oh and I'm having around 60 FPS even when I put graphic setting on max!^^). I know about the 750W but at the time of purchase, budget was tight so that was the best I could get to power my comp. Planning to upgrade to 1200W sometime in July along with the ram. And I will be getting the nVIDIA 3D Vision if I can figure out how do I order it and get it sent to Singapore. And well, I'm a lazy fuck so all I did was to get the Chassis which comes with all the liquid cooling parts pre-installed. Only need to do up the waterblock for the processor and GPU.

Those retards? I would tell them to give me the money, and I build one for them FOC and pocket the rest of the dough. It's like using a Ferrari to deliver letters which can be done using a old van or truck...

 

Oh thank fucking jesus, you had me worried.

I dunno my fps on DoW2, need to check, playing it maxed though, with probably half the system speed wide. I just don't have money to upgrade. See that's the good thing about buying top end shit when it comes out. Yes you get raped on the price... but I built mine ass end of 06, and I'm still playing stuff on max settings now with no problem.

You do lose respect points thought for the H2O being predone, but tbh I wouldn't fuck with my system again if I didn't have to. I'm sitting in Windows 32c on a e6600 chip OC'd 1ghz, though, so *shrug*. I did wind up spending hundreds and hundreds of bucks trying to move from an all in one Thermaltake kit, to the cobbled together Swiftech system I have now.

What rad size you using? And do you know your pump size/flowrate? it's got to be strong, since adding even 1 90 degree elbow is like adding 1 foot of tubing restriction wise, I can't imagine what all those bends do to the flow rate, lol.

Which reminds me, I gotta reorder the coolant I use, spilled a lot of the shit last flush out I had. At least it's not 30$ a bottle anymore =/

 

Well ya, I know about the pre-install stuff losing some respect. But have this picture in your mind, you have brat of brother whose the 'crown prince' of the family and yourself are the scapegoat. I did one liquid-cooling previously around 3-4 years ago, then that brat by 'accident' kicked and broke the pump and the tank. And he cried when I scolded him. Guess what? My whole family descended on my back like vultures after a bloody battle. Yours truly got grounded, no allowance, no access to computer while my computer was spoiled due to damaged pump and it was leaking all over my motherboard. And I can't go and remove the tank and prevent any damage from happening. Wow! Look at that! There goes 2k out the window... After which, I kinda of don't do liquid cooling unless everything is within the casing with only wirings for my power, mouse, keyboard and speakers outside. Which I managed to find in 3D Mercury.

The flow rate depends on how fast I cranking the liquid cooling system. At the moment, I just can't recall. The bends are the best I could do to make it without any kinks and stuff.

 

Chassis: Antec P182
Power Supply: Antec BP550 Plus 550W
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz w/ ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan
Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Pro
RAM: GeIL 4GB PC2 8500
Graphic Card: ASUS GeForce 9800 GT 1GB
Hard Drives:
1. Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS 500GB (SATA)
2. Seagate Barracuda ST31000333AS 1TB (SATA)
3. Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JB 160GB (IDE)
4. Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB (IDE)
5. Seagate FreeAgent Desktop ST310005FDA1E1-RK 1TB (External USB)
6. Seagate FreeAgent Desktop ST302504FDA1E1-RK 250GB (External USB)

Drives 3 and 4 are from the computer that inhabited the case before this one. Why waste?

And what do I do with this rig? Run Linux of course.

 

I'm just picking on ya for having such an easy time to get a nice system. Trust me, you didn't miss out on shit learning how you should do stuff.

Which is why I use non conductive coolant. I sprung a leak once due to putting the wrong clamps on, stuff sprayed everywhere, about 16 ozs all over my brand new system. Powered down, used a wet/dry shop vac to suck up most of the liquid, wiped it up with a paper towel, refilled, powered right back up.

 

Lucky bastard...

 

System Specs

Hi

Got a new PC a few months back
Specs as follows:

Chassis: Thermaltake Armour VH6000BWS
Power Supply: Epsilon 1010 - 985 watts
Processor: i7 920 @ 3.2 - 3.5 GHz
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe with OC Palm Edition
Ram: 6 GB of Transcend DDR3
Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 295
Hard Drives: SATA 1TB and SAta 250 GB

Love her almost as much as my car

 

I also have a 8600, but its holding up pretty good for the games i play atm, (L4D,TF2,COH). I might be upgrading soon though, and ive been looking into a g275, which is pretty dam nice for its value ( $210-$240) and can play anything maxed 1900x1200 res(maybe not crysis with max AA).

However, if you have a low budget, the g260 is a very good deal. The supercocked version atm run for about $150+. ATI is always cheaper though, and the 4870 matches the 260 well.

 

I got an Intel E8400 about a couple months ago, my Mother Board didn't like it, didn't have enough for a new Mother Board so im getting one now.

Since I don't know much about much about motherboards can someone with more knowledge tell me which one would be better down below.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128359

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131232

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138118

Or any other thats around $150.00 or less?