Am I reaching CPU bottleneck?

[SOSTrooper]

I have a P3 1GHz and a GF2 GTS running on Win2K. Now when I play Soldier of Fortune 2, I would get the same or similar number of frames per second at 640x480 and 1024x768. For example, when I stand at a spot looking into the field, i get around 30fps at 1024x768. When I lower the resolution to 640x480, I still get 30fps at the same spot. I'm really starting to wonder if I should upgrade my CPU/motherboard/memory combo or just the video card to Ti4200. I'm afraid when I upgrade to Ti4200 I would still get 30fps if my CPU is limiting it (I hope not). TIA.

 

[rimshaker]

well, my other system is a P3-850 (100fsb) and i just put in a GF3 Ti200 card. The only reliable way to test for bottlenecks is to run the 3dmark2000 and 2001 benchmarks. On the 1st run, run the vid card at default speeds. On the 2nd run, overclock the vid card. It's easer to work with actual benchmark numbers than just game fps. My cpu is definitely the bottleneck with the ti200 card. My scores hardly changed at all between vid card settings of 175/400 and 200/460 when it obviosuly should. If the cpu is NOT the bottleneck, then you should see rising scores as you overclock the vid card.

 

[BFG10K]

Yes, a 1 GHz P3 is approaching obsolesence in modern 3D games. You'll either have to upgrade now or in the near future if you want to get good framerates.

Of course your GTS is probably an even bigger bottleneck so you might like to upgrade your video card now and enjoy higher detail levels without a performance hit and then upgrade later to a faster CPU.