any way to determine where bottleneck would be on system

[angrysquirrel]

Hello folks,

I'm currently deciding whether to upgrade either my CPU or video card to get faster framerates. I have an athalon xp 1800+ with a gf 4 ti 4200 w/64 mb ram (asus). Are there any software programs that would tell me where the bottleneck lies and which upgrade woudl give me the faster framerate?

Thanks!

Squirrel

 

[ProviaFan]

Check out different video card reviews, such as this one, that have CPU scaling charts. That should tell you if a particular video card would give you an improvement over what you have now. BTW, welcome to AnandTech!

 

[Budmantom]

Those two components seem to be evenly matched. Are you having a problem?

 

[titanmiller]

They seem fairly well balanced but if I had to choose I would say to upgrade you cpu to a 2200+ or so.

 

[videobruce]

Why do you want to upgrade? That sounds like a pretty fast combination to me! Maybe not the fastest, but are you one that has to keep up with the Jones'es?

 

[eklass]

look to sanda sisoft to see if you have a memory bandwith or something.... just run the pc performance wizard... it should analyze everything and come back with results...

 

[SDOG34]

Swing by tomshardware for some info about how much difference mobo chipset makes. I always figured my a7v133 was lagging, but holy hell not by that much!

 

[angrysquirrel]

Thanks everyone for your help and for welcoming me to the boards! I get choppiness when I play battlefield 1942 at 1024*768. I tried o/cing the asus card to 300/600 and the choppiness got worse. Single player is very smooth. Outside views in multiplayer is where its choppy. I play w/ cable modem. My mobo is an ecs k7s5a.

 

[Budmantom]

Perhaps a new motherboard would do the trick. Are you using pc133 or DDR2100?

 

[angrysquirrel]

I think I'm using DDR 2100 ram. Not exactly sure if it's 2100 or 2400. I know it's not sdram. Can anyone tell me how to use sisoft sandra pro 2003 to determine where the bottleneck is in my system?

 

[VadRad]

there is no bottleneck in your system. If anything that graphics card is limiting your scores more than cpu, but I wouldnt say it is bottlenecking anything. Like someone said you have about an evenly matched system. If you want to upgrade do yourself a favor and get a good graphics card, you wont believe the difference. Cpu is only a major concern when its really old, like if you had a 1ghz. If I was you I would opt for a 9500 pro from ati or the new fx cards from nvidia. Trust me the difference you will see from a new good video card will outweigh the difference you would have if you stuck with the card and stuck in a p4 2.8 (maybe the same scores). I personally saw a friend put in a geforce 3 into a p3 350 system and you wouldnt believe the difference it made from his older card. It really depends on how much you want to spend, if you want to upgrade from a 4200 to a 4400, then its not worth it. If you wouldnt mind going to a fx 5600 or a 9500 pro or even 9700 pro than trust me you will be very very happy. I personally saw a huge difference when I switched from a 4400 to a 9700 pro. Anyways do what you think is best, hope I helped out. Feel free to email for more suggestions.

 

[angrysquirrel]

Thanks dude. I will definitely ask more questions. How do you guys determine whether the video card and CPU is evenly matched? Is there a site you go to? Is there a software tool you use?

Also, alot of people on this board use ATI. Why do people go for the ATI cards over the Nvidia Geforce series?

Best wishes,

Squirrel

 

[DZip]

Reduce your resolution to increase your framerates. You have a balanced system and any major update will require more than one component. The reason it seems that everyone is using ATI is that they have the newest technology right now. When Nvidia moves ahead, it will seem that everyone uses Nvidia. Most people on these forums are geeks that have the newest toys.