Will my CPU be a bottleneck?

skidude

skidude

Active Member
Well, my X1900XT broke, so I RMA'd it for a refund and bought myself an Asus X1900XTX. However, im not sure if my CPU (AMD X2 3800+) will be holding me back from getting all performance out of this card. If so, what would be a good CPU to buy so that I will be able to take advantage of the power of the X1900XTX?
 
skidude said:
Well, my X1900XT broke, so I RMA'd it for a refund and bought myself an Asus X1900XTX. However, im not sure if my CPU (AMD X2 3800+) will be holding me back from getting all performance out of this card. If so, what would be a good CPU to buy so that I will be able to take advantage of the power of the X1900XTX?
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It depends. Not neccisarily always. Many of todays games are written so that they demand more out of the GPU than the CPU. A good GPU often triumphs a CPU in todays gaming world.
 
Well thats good, and I just found out the Oblivion supports muilt-thread CPU's, which will help.
 
skidude said:
Well thats good, and I just found out the Oblivion supports muilt-thread CPU's, which will help.
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Definitely, Oblivion has some damn tight resource requirements, a dual core optimization will always help. Because my rig isn't gaming friendly, I just got it for Xbox 360. Well, enjoy it.
 
I know post count doesn't matter, but please tell me with 3500 posts you knew not to jump 400MHz...
 
TheChef said:
I know post count doesn't matter, but please tell me with 3500 posts you knew not to jump 400MHz...
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I think he meant that he went from 2.0-2.4 maximum....not just in one step. If he did.....I have no response. :eek:
 
My 3800 can hit 2.45 GHz without any voltage increase, and fiddled with the memory timings a bit. So, you should be able to hit 2.35 GHz, making the CPU less of a possible bottleneck.

EDIT: Stable, of course.
 
Rofl im not that stupid to jump 400 mhz in one swipe :P :D I did about 50 mhz at a time until i got to 2.4, and it seemed stable at first but then just crashed. I might have put in the wrong voltages but im not sure.

My 3800 can hit 2.45 GHz without any voltage increase, and fiddled with the memory timings a bit. So, you should be able to hit 2.35 GHz, making the CPU less of a possible bottleneck.

EDIT: Stable, of course.
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Ya I'll try that now.

EDIT- Ok I got it to 2.2 before it wouldnt start. I went back into the BIOS and increased the voltages a notch and now have it at 2.4.... we'll see how stable it is. (I increased at 50 Mhz intervals)

EDIT #2- Crashed at 2.4 as soon as i got into WoW, set it back to 2.35 and we'll see how it goes.
 
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Are you lowering your memory frequency as well? As it is value-select, it's only going to run stable at 200MHz. So, you need to set the memory divider to a fraction/ratio where the end result is that the memory is running at or under 200MHz.

Why do this?

Default divider settings are 1 to 1, so the memory speed is equal to the FSB, which is 235MHz at your current set-up. You dont want the memory to run at 235MHz.
 
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