Video card too much for CPU?

[blubomber]

I am close to buying a new video card. I have set my sights on the x800GTO but might splurg for an x800XT.

Here is my question, would an x800XT AGP be a waste of money on my system? How much of a performance boost would i get on the XT over the GTO in games like HL2, BF2, CoD2 and MS Flightsim 2004? Less than 10FPS? Less than 5FPS? I dont want to spend alot on a video card if my current CPU will hold it back. what if i OCed my CPU?

Here is my system.

Shuttle AN35N Ultra
Athlon XP 2800+ Barton <----Maybe OC to 3200?
Corsair PC3200 1GB ( 2 x 512 )
80 GB Hard drive
DVD DL -R/W
ATI AIW 7500 <----soon to be replaced.

Thanks.

[JLK03F150]

IMO the x800gto or x800xt would not be bottlenecked by the rest of your system. I'm not sure, in fps, what kind of difference you will see between the gto & the xt, but the main hardware differences are 16pipes(xt) vs 12 pipes(gto) and faster video ram. You should be able to enable 4xAA & 8xAF at 1024x768 and still keep framerates high in the games/sims you listed. The detail difference will also be really great with either card compared to your 7500.

[zSilverFox]

It wouldn't be used to it's full potential, no. Never on that kind of system. Your CPU would definately bottleneck it... but how far is anyone's guess.

[NightRise420]

If i were u, i'd get GTO. It's better for the money/performance ratio. Plus XT cant benefit much due to ur CPUs bottleneck

[SpaceSquad]

omfg....get whatever gpu you can afford.

You WON'T lose tons of performance...the only REAL bottlenecking would be with like a 7800GTX and a duron.

Don't listen to the people who tell you you'll lose like 50% fps because of a slightly slower processor. This is not the case.

[RedFury]

I was wondering the same thing about the 6800gt AGP cards in my system ( eerily similar set up BB! )

The increase in performance will be worth whatever I may lose by the CPU, and if I'm really all that worried about it, I'd buy a new motherboard with PCI express anyway.

[zSilverFox]

omfg....get whatever gpu you can afford.

You WON'T lose tons of performance...the only REAL bottlenecking would be with like a 7800GTX and a duron.

Don't listen to the people who tell you you'll lose like 50% fps because of a slightly slower processor. This is not the case.

There are more variables. *le sigh*

For example, his RAM amount, and the amount of multi-tasking he's doing. Also, whether it's on an Intel or AMD CPU. Why?

Intel CPU = long pipelines = the Rain Man. They don't like to be interrupted. They will hammer away at one thing untill it's done. They're good for file encoding and such.

AMD CPU = short pipelines = ADD kid with sugar. They can jump around much more effeciently than can an AMD CPU.

Benchmark scores and performance will go up untill you hit a good 2.8 Ghz, though. Keep that in mind. Also, two gigs of RAM would be best. And a good power supply.

PS

A portion of a system or network that is slower than the rest of the data path, either because of its throughput speed or because of multiple data streams converging at that point.

So even 1ms of idle time showed by maybe NVPerfHUD would be a bottleneck by that definition.

[Prexaspes]

If you feel bottlenecked, enable video card side processing options, like AF and AA. If all that power is laying around extra and unused, use it.

[RamonGTP]

Well, you won't "lose" performance per se, since you never really had it to begin with. A more accurate statement would be that you won't get nearly the performance out of those cards as they're capable of.

[SpaceSquad]

A more accurate statement would be that you won't get nearly the performance out of those cards as they're capable of.

Well...with what? An FX-57? Dual-Xeons?

[RamonGTP]

Are you trying to say that he'll take full advantage if those cards with a Barton processor??? If you are saying that, then you're simply wrong. If you're not saying that, then you'd have to be agreeing with me in which case there is no need to go any further with this.

The closer you can get to saturating the cards fill rate, the better performance you'll get. There comes a point of diminishing returns in which getting a faster processor will yield very little performance gain. A barton will not come close to saturating the fill rate, so he is not getting the full benifit of the cards. Not saying it won't work, they'll work fine, just not as good as they CAN work. As suggested above he can enable stuff like AA/AF to make use of the untapped power.

[wera]

I am with space on this one you aren't going to losse a lot of preformence.

[zSilverFox]

2048x1536 @ 8x AA and 16x AF should keep it unbottlenecked to a good amount .

[SpaceSquad]

Are you trying to say that he'll take full advantage if those cards with a Barton processor??? If you are saying that, then you're simply wrong. If you're not saying that, then you'd have to be agreeing with me in which case there is no need to go any further with this.

naw

My whole point is that like 0.01% of people acftually have an athlon 64 FX or Opterons/Xeons. So only 0.01% of people will "take full advantage of that card".

I wasn't proving you wrong or anything. Just commenting that most people won't get anywhere near the framerate of some of the benchmarks sites perform.

[blubomber]

thank you for the replies.

I think that my choice is going to be the x800GTO. I know that upgrading to any DirectX 9 card is going to be a big leap over my 7500. but then i also could not decide if i should save the $50+ dollars and go with a 6600GT. Around $200 is what i wanted to spend and the x800GTO falls right on that mark. I know i wont be disapointed and this way i get to stay with ATI and dont have to switch over to nVidia.

Thanks again for the help and you all have a Merry Christmas!

[RedFury]

thank you for the replies.
... this way i get to stay with ATI and dont have to switch over to nVidia.

No, you must convert to teh dark side

[zSilverFox]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814142052

It's actually $180 .

[wera]

Whhhee more for ati.

[SoloCamo]

naw

My whole point is that like 0.01% of people acftually have an athlon 64 FX or Opterons/Xeons. So only 0.01% of people will "take full advantage of that card".

I wasn't proving you wrong or anything. Just commenting that most people won't get anywhere near the framerate of some of the benchmarks sites perform.

are you seriously implying that you need an FX or high end opterons to take advantage of it?

A barton is an older cpu, it's that simple. New tech needs new tech to be fully utilized...
Ramon summed it up in his previous posts...

As a wise man once said, your computer is only as good as it's weakest link.

[blubomber]

Thanks for the link zSilverFox. Last time i looked at the AGP GTOs on newegg they were out and i asked newegg to notify me when they get them in.

Oh well.

Not that i have anthing against nVidia i guess, just alwaysed used ATI and in my case seems like the AGP GTO will be the best bang for my buck.