AMD E-350 + HD6970: good enough for gaming?

[bliq00]

I looked around the web, and I couldn't find anything on using an E-350 mini-itx with a honking fast video card. How bad will the 6970 be bottlenecked? can I still play the Witcher 2 at 1900x1200? Does anyone have first hand knowledge?

 

[killercheese]

I feel you might find your performance in gaming some what slowed by a CPU like that. I just upgraded my dad's gaming rig from an AMD Athlon X2 4200+ to an i7 920 and his frame rate on Rift on Ultra preset went from 10-14 FPS to 26-30 FPS on 1680x1050.

 

[AnandThenMan]

E-350 is too damn slow for a 6970, I would say 50% too slow, or worse.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I looked around the web, and I couldn't find anything on using an E-350 mini-itx with a honking fast video card. How bad will the 6970 be bottlenecked? can I still play the Witcher 2 at 1900x1200? Does anyone have first hand knowledge?

An AMD Fusion E-350 bottlenecks a Radeon HD 6570, so there's your answer. It'd be horrible. A huge waste of money.

 

[Fox5]

E-350 boards only have PCI-express 4x, which is enough to bottleneck a 6970. Also, the cpu is WAAAYYYY too slow. You'd be better off with a core i3, Athlon II, A8, or Phenom II if you want to be cheap on the cpu, you're only saving like $50 going with e-350.

 

[happy medium]

Just overclock the e-350 to 4.8, and it will be fine.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

I think the CPU is the single main bottleneck in that combination. The 4x PCI-e lane bottleneck is nothing compared to the massive slowdown an E-350 will bring to the experience.

 

[toyota]

the E-350 is horrifically slow and is the bottleneck half the time for the 80 sp 6310. you would not even get 20% of what a 6970 could do. the E-350 is basically about equal to having two 2.1 ghz Pentium 4 cpus. in other words even an E8500 lowered to 1.0 would beat an E-350. maybe that will help put things in perspective.

 

[toyota]

Just overclock the e-350 to 4.8, and it will be fine.

at 4.8 it would barely match, at best, a stock 3.0 E8400. the only way the E-350 looks good is in a room full of the lower end Atoms...

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

at 4.8 it would barely match, at best, a stock 3.0 E8400.

By then it's enough to not bottleneck a Radeon HD 6770. Amazing!!!

 

[notty22]

 

[happy medium]

at 4.8 it would barely match, at best, a stock 3.0 E8400. the only way the E-350 looks good is in a room full of the lower end Atoms...

You know I was kidding right? Mabe he could overclock the pci-e 4x slot also. hmmm

 

[toyota]

You know I was kidding right? Mabe he could overclock the pci-e 4x slot also. hmmm

oh yeah but I was just being silly and referring to how slow it would be even at that insane speed.

 

[Arkadrel]

I looked around the web, and I couldn't find anything on using an E-350 mini-itx with a honking fast video card. How bad will the 6970 be bottlenecked? can I still play the Witcher 2 at 1900x1200? Does anyone have first hand knowledge?

What you want is a cheap combo deal like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.699761
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz
Motherboard: BIOSTAR A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G

Total (for CPU+MB) = 115$

For 115$ thats alot of value right there.


Then Overclock that 2.9 quad core, upto ~3.7ghz and throw in the 6970 and you ll be pretty well set for gameing.

 

[toyota]

What you want is a cheap combo deal like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.699761
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz
Motherboard: BIOSTAR A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G

Total (for CPU+MB) = 115$

still not good to pair a 6970 up with that cpu. lack of L3 cache alone will already take a toll in some games. sure that may be a darn good deal but its not the platform you want for using high end gpus with.

http://www.techspot.com/review/405-the-witcher-2-performance/page8.html

 

[Arkadrel]

still not good to pair a 6970 up with that cpu. lack of L3 cache alone will already take a toll in some games. sure that may be a darn good deal but its not the platform you want for using high end gpus with.

http://www.techspot.com/review/405-the-witcher-2-performance/page8.html

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/50

Crysis Warhead:

Intel Core i5 2500k ~91.6 frames pr sec (220$ cpu)
Athlon II x4 645 ~69.4 frames pr sec (79$ cpu)


70 fps vs 91 fps.
79$ vs 220$


your paying more than twice as much (+100% costs) for the cpu, but only getting ~30% performance.



A athlon II x 4 + 6970 is great value, and more than enough to power the gpu. Just give the Athlon II a bit of a overclock and its good price/perf.

 

[badb0y]

E-350 is like a netbook class CPU. Don't even think about pairing it with a 6970.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Who in his right mind would pair that piece of garbage CPU with a high end GPU?

 

[toyota]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/50

Crysis Warhead:

Intel Core i5 2500k ~91.6 frames pr sec (220$ cpu)
Athlon II x4 645 ~69.4 frames pr sec (79$ cpu)


70 fps vs 91 fps.
79$ vs 220$


your paying more than twice as much (+100% costs) for the cpu, but only getting ~30% performance.



A athlon II x 4 + 6970 is great value, and more than enough to power the gpu. Just give the Athlon II a bit of a overclock and its good price/perf.

so you ignore a more modern game like the one I linked too. sorry but an Athlon X2 and dead end platform is not what someone that wants to use high end gpus should be buying. he is already going to miss out on a large chunk of performance and would be at a complete dead end for the next gpu upgrade unless he really wants a massive bottleneck. heck he could buy a 6950 instead of the 6970 and never see the difference anyway with that cpu. and really why start out gimped on day 1?

 

[Arg Clin]

Who in his right mind would pair that piece of garbage CPU with a high end GPU?

Tht combo would be useless for gaming, but that doesn't make E-350 a bad product. You really just got to understand what it's meant for. For a HTPC where noise and power consumption is key it's a great CPU.

 

[Crap Daddy]

I'm sure you are right. Every product has its place on the market. But we are talking real CPUs and GPUs for real gaming purposes and in that perspective E-350 isn't qualified.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Horrible idea. Do not do it!

What's wrong with, say, the Athlon II combo mentioned above with a nice 6870? I've built that kind of combo bazillions of times for friends and it rocks.

 

[nonameo]

so you ignore a more modern game like the one I linked too. sorry but an Athlon X2 and dead end platform is not what someone that wants to use high end gpus should be buying. he is already going to miss out on a large chunk of performance and would be at a complete dead end for the next gpu upgrade unless he really wants a massive bottleneck. heck he could buy a 6950 instead of the 6970 and never see the difference anyway with that cpu. and really why start out gimped on day 1?

The athlon X4 is good in some situations but I think that in the case of gaming it would be worth plunking down some extra cash to get an i3 2100. Games really do favor single threaded performance.

However, athlon X4 should provide more than acceptable framerates... you'll just be capping the maximum framerates. Min frames will probably stay the same or not drop much.

 

[veri745]

I didn't see anyone link the GPU scaling portion of the Anandtech review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/5

Summary: Even mid-range discrete GPUs are bottlenecked by the E-350 CPU.

The E-350 is very well balanced from a cpu <--> gpu performance perspective already, adding too much more GPU power isn't worth it.