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8800 GTX

kelan23

Junior Member
Hello! I've been out of the loop of computer hardware for a year and a half or so, and need some more educated help before I upgrade. If I wanted to upgrade the 8800 GTX but I only have a X2 4400+, would I be terribly bottlenecked? I don't have a problem upgrading both, I just wanted to know if there a decent or good gains in upgrading my CPU too. Thanks in advance.

P.S- I have a 30" monitor, and would like to use the full resolution in games, if that helps. I'd settle for 19x12 or so if I have to though.
 

My 2900xt begins to suffer bottleneck with my e4300 ~ 2.8Ghz ... i'd imagine i'd need at least 3.0Ghz for a GTX

but you can buy the GTX and check the gains for yourself by overclocking your current CPU ... then decide if you need a CPU upgrade also
-use 3DMark06 to give you an idea how much difference the OC makes

... and welcome to ATF video!
 
You should be fine - it might be bottlenecked, but not "terribly".

I ran 7800GS on a 2.6GHz P4 with great improvement over 6800NU with the same CPU.

And welcome to the AT forums!
 
At 19x12 or higher the CPU shouldn't be the bottleneck. Have you OC'd the CPU or do you keep it stock? If it is stock it might be a small bottleneck, but OC'd it should be fine. I had a Opteron and it would OC to 2.7 and I had a bad stepping, which is almost 20% faster than your stock 2.2 Ghz. At 2560 res there should be no problem with the CPU though with one GTX.
 
Bottlenecks are more about the game you are running, and not the card. If you ran Quake 3, you would still be bottlenecked by the CPU even at 4 GHz.

However, you really should get at least a Core 2 Duo. It significantly outperforms the X2 in games.
 
I had an A64 3500+ @ 2.53Ghz and a 8800GTS 640 OC2 and was only slightly bottnecked compared to my Q6600 @ 3.33Ghz. Running 3DMark06 @ 1280x768 (resolution I ran on my old monitor) went from 9,000 to 11,500. Now before you go thinking that my game framerates improved 15%, think again. 3DMark derives a *lot* of the score based on the CPU. My Q6600 is 6X more powerful than my A64 @ 2.53Ghz when taken into account all four cores versus single core and the 25% IPC increase from A64 to Core2.

Anyway, I seen LESS than a 10% increase in averager framerates and minimum framerates went up only so slightly (51 versus 46 in F.E.A.R.)

CPU *IS* overrated... Also, with LP (Lost Planet) it utilizes 4 cores and I did not see ANY performance increase from my A64 to Q6600 @ 1280 X 768 4X-AA/16X-AF.

People cry bottleneck all over these forums. It makes far more sense for the CPU to be the bottleneck than the Video Card anyway, since a CPU subsystem is generally more expensive and a pain in the ass to setup than a simple video card change.

It is all about performance per dollar... Otherwise, you wouldn't be asking the question 😀
 
At higher resolutions and settings the bottleneck will be more on the GPU. Besides I think the major thing that comes with an 8800GTX is the minimum fps will be boosted significantly.

I'm also in the same boat with a 4400+. I don't really care if the average or max fps is 10-15 less than a top end system, but if the minimum fps is ~25+ then it's all the same to me. Even on the top end CPUs you will still end up sharing a similar GPU bottleneck in terms of minimum fps.
 
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