e2160 bottlenecking 4870?

[Snohatin]

Hello,

I just got an ati 4870 512mb for use on my rig which is as follows:

vista
e2160 dual core (not core 2 duo) oc'ed to 2.7 ghz
4 gb ram
500 Watt power


Im curious as to whether my cpu is bottlenecking my graphics card and if i should upgrade.

Thanks

 

[exar333]

This processor could potentially limit your performance; with that said, a 5xxx or 7xxx class CPU would probably help a lot. I had the e2160 previously as well, and the very small amount of cache does limit you in the gaming rhealm.

 

[Snohatin]

Ah okay, guess I'll try to look for a 5xxx or 7xxx. Thanks

 

[Denithor]

Plus the e5x00 chips will run cooler & overclock better.

 

[videogames101]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115206

^^OCs so well^^

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: Snohatin
Im curious as to whether my cpu is bottlenecking my graphics card and if i should upgrade.

Bottleneck while doing what? Please try and be specific when you ask a question like this. You haven't even mentioned an app or game, let alone resolution/detail used, so any answers are guesswork. Some part of your system will always be performance-limiting, but it depends on usage, so you can always say "o noes I hav teh bottleneck".

 

[Snohatin]

For games mostly like the new total war empire.

I can run medieval 2 on high resolution with about 40 fps (but i've seen it go from 19 to 55) at 1680 x 1050.

I don't expect to run total war empire that well but that's kind of what I'm asking about. For games at 1680 x 1050. Sorry if I didn't mention it earlier.

 

[betasub]

With a modern graphics card, Medieval2 tends to be CPU-limited (particularly as it doesn't take advantage of more than one core). Some graphics settings such as shadows and grass can hit your frame-rate through CPU calculations.

Empire:Total War hasn't yet been released. If the available demo is anything to go by, it still has a single main thread, but other lesser threads allow additional cores to do some support work. The demo doesn't seem limited by my C2D @3.2GHz (full game is sure to ask for more though!), and there are plenty of graphics options and eye candy to put your 4870 to good use (auto-detect puts the video detail to Ultra with my 9800GX2, and the small demo battles run fairly smoothly, as with Medieval2).