E4300@Stock bottleneck for 4870?

[pretttt]

Hi Guys,

I recently upgraded to a 1080p monitor and would like to game at that res.

I can afford upto an HD4870. But, I heard from a lot people that my cpu(E4300@Stock) will be a bottleneck for 4870 and that it is pointless buying it.

Now, my motherboard is DG965RY.. G965 chipset, and from what I have heard, they are pathetic for OCing. So OCing also isnt an option.

So should I just go ahead and get a 4850? Will it be enuff for gaming at 1080p res?

Thanks,
pretttt

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you're going to spend the money, you might as well get the 4870, even if you are slightly bottlenecked.

I wouldn't dismiss OCing either, unless your board lacks OCing features in total.

 

[yh125d]

Luckily for you, you can OC without going past the specs of the motherboard. It supports 1066mHz FSB (which is 266 x 4) and your e4300 has a FSB of 800mHz (4x200). Just bump the FSB to 266 and with the 9x multi of your e4300 you have 2.4gHz, which should be easily obtainable with a vcore bump. I remember I had my old e4300 at 3.4 as my first OCing project. Even if you only take it to 2.4 (you could probably go to 3.0) you'd be better off. It might not fully realize the power of the 4870, but it will be fast enough to make the purchase worthwhile imo.




Edit: I'm bad at math

 

[brblx]

i bet you can bump the fsb to 300mhz without even raising the vcore.

i highly doubt your bios has zero contol over the front bus speed. you can probably select in 33mhz increments.

edit- board is 266 max. you can still get 2.4ghz are pretty much stock temps, though.

 

[pretttt]

No guys, I'm not kidding. I cant seem to find any option to OC in the bios. But this could also be because I havent updated my Bios since I bought it. I'll do it today.


But what I really want to know is, will I be able to make out *any* difference between a 4850 and a 4870 on my current setup(i.e. without any OC)? What I'm being told is that, since my CPU is such a huge bottleneck, there will not any difference between a 4870 and a 4850 and because of this I'm better off buying a 4850 and saving some money.


I dont really want to upgrade my cpu or my motherboard now. Ideally I want to upgrade to Core i7(when they get cheaper) or I want to wait atleast until Core i3 and i5 are released.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: pretttt
No guys, I'm not kidding. I cant seem to find any option to OC in the bios. But this could also be because I havent updated my Bios since I bought it. I'll do it today.


But what I really want to know is, will I be able to make out *any* difference between a 4850 and a 4870 on my current setup(i.e. without any OC)? What I'm being told is that, since my CPU is such a huge bottleneck, there will not any difference between a 4870 and a 4850 and because of this I'm better off buying a 4850 and saving some money.


I dont really want to upgrade my cpu or my motherboard now. Ideally I want to upgrade to Core i7(when they get cheaper) or I want to wait atleast until Core i3 and i5 are released.

NO

A stock e4300 is a horrible bottleneck for 4890; get the 4890 only if you are going to upgrade soon or overclock; even overclocked to over 3 GHz, it is noticeably slower clock for clock than the e8x00 series.

You have an Intel mobo; it may not have any OC'ing options in the BIOS
- that means you are probably stuck overclocking in SW within Windows
(do a google search for your options)

 

[pretttt]

Originally posted by: apoppin
A stock e4300 is a horrible bottleneck for 4890; get the 4890 only if you are going to upgrade soon or overclock; even overclocked to over 3 GHz, it is noticeably slower clock for clock than the e8x00 series.

u mean 4870 right? 4890 is way out of my budget. The max I'm looking at is 4870. So is my cpu such a huge bottleneck for 4870 also?

Will I be able to see any advantage by buying a 4870 over a 4850?

 

[happy medium]

Appopin he said 4870 not 4890. Get some rest bro :beer:

I think you should just go for a 4850 1gb since you game @ 1080p and can't overclock and call it a day.

Mabe buy used? I see a guy in the forsale/trade forums that has a 4870 for 100$

http://forums.anandtech.com/me..._key=y&keyword1=hd4870

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: pretttt

Originally posted by: apoppin
A stock e4300 is a horrible bottleneck for 4890; get the 4890 only if you are going to upgrade soon or overclock; even overclocked to over 3 GHz, it is noticeably slower clock for clock than the e8x00 series.

u mean 4870 right? 4890 is way out of my budget. The max I'm looking at is 4870. So is my cpu such a huge bottleneck for 4870 also?

Will I be able to see any advantage by buying a 4870 over a 4850?

With certain gpu intensive games yes you will see a difference but not much.

 

[kmmatney]

WHile the HD4870 will perform better, even with your cpu, the HD4850 wil probably give you more bang-for-the-buck, and will be a better match.

Going along with what other posters said, you should be able to overclock your E4300. If your motherboard does not allow setting the FSB to 266 Mhz, then you should still be able to use "ClockGen" software to overclock in Windows (another software program is SetFSB). You probably need to go stright from 200 to 266 for the FSB in the clockgen software, to ensure that all motherboard multipliers get changed, so everythign is running ast stock speed, except the CPU. The E4300 can easily handle this. The PLL you need for that mptherboard with the ClockGen software is CV174CPAG. Worth a try - the nice thing about software overclocking is that you just restart and everything is back the way it was. You can overlock before you start a game, and set it back when your done.

 

[o1die]

I bought a pin modded e4300 with a piece of copper tape already installed. Booted up at 1066 every time with my hp motherboard, which has no overclocking options in the bios. Copper tape is available at some fry's locations.

 

[pretttt]

Originally posted by: kmmatney
WHile the HD4870 will perform better, even with your cpu, the HD4850 wil probably give you more bang-for-the-buck, and will be a better match.

Is a 4850 good enough to play games at 1920x1080 res?
if so, then I'm ordering it right away!!

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: pretttt

Originally posted by: kmmatney
WHile the HD4870 will perform better, even with your cpu, the HD4850 wil probably give you more bang-for-the-buck, and will be a better match.

Is a 4850 good enough to play games at 1920x1080 res?
if so, then I'm ordering it right away!!

no

but then your stock e4300 is not fast enough for anything better than a 4850
- either overclock with SW or settle for a slower card

4890 is not much more expensive than 4870; both will be bottlenecked by a 1.8 GHz CPU

 

[Gikaseixas]

Apoppin you still saying 4890 lol, OP wants info about 4870 LMAO

@OP, your cpu will bottleneck both gpu's, specially the 4870 so a solution will be overclocking your cpu, you can use software like someone suggested already.

You can also get a 4870 now and then save some $$ towards a E7800.

 

[joutlaw]

I have a e4300 @ 3.0Ghz and a 4890 running a Acer 23" 1920x1080 monitor.

I get around 13K on 3dMark06 which leads me to believe I am bottlenecked by my CPU/Mobo or chipset. I'm running a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mobo.

It's still plenty fast for me for the games I play. I'd maybe look at getting another mobo b/c these chips OC pretty well.

 

[pretttt]

Thanks for all the replies guys!

I think I'll try the software overclocking suggested by kmmatney using Clockgen. Hopefully, I'll get some good results with this or else I'll just settle for a 4850 now and save money for when Core i3 and i5 release. I guess by that time even next gen GPUs from ATI and Nvidia would started to trickle in.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: joutlaw
I have a e4300 @ 3.0Ghz and a 4890 running a Acer 23" 1920x1080 monitor.

I get around 13K on 3dMark06 which leads me to believe I am bottlenecked by my CPU/Mobo or chipset. I'm running a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mobo.

It's still plenty fast for me for the games I play. I'd maybe look at getting another mobo b/c these chips OC pretty well.

Not mobo or chipset; definitely CPU. I get 14000 on my rig and the 4890 is 2x as fast as my 9800GT.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gikaseixas
Apoppin you still saying 4890 lol, OP wants info about 4870 LMAO

@OP, your cpu will bottleneck both gpu's, specially the 4870 so a solution will be overclocking your cpu, you can use software like someone suggested already.

You can also get a 4870 now and then save some $$ towards a E7800.

what the heck is the difference - i mentioned BOTH because they are about the same price
- really the only real differences between 4870 and 4890 are clockspeeds; the architectural tweaks are minor

let me hazard a guess that a 4850 will *also* be (somewhat) bottlenecked by a 1.8 GHz e4300
--Good luck with the SW overclock, OP

 

[pretttt]

Hey Guys,

I tried that S/W OCing with SetFSB.

I got my proc to 2.2GHz. Did not dare to try more than that.

Here's a pic

So, what does this mean? My CPU is running at 2.2GHz now? Is it safe to use heavy applications like games now? Do I need to run any other program or something to validate if it is actually working?

Pardon my nooby questions, but this is the first time I'm doing this and cant believe it can be so easy!


And finally is it worthwhile to splurge on a 4870 now? or should I just restrict myself to 4850 only? (I have a 8600GT now!!)
BTW, how does GTS250 fit into this? coz it has also become very cheap here now.

The reason I'm so insisting on 4870 is that if I do upgrade my cpu+mobo in future, I'd atleast have a decent card to go with it then.

Thanks for all the advice until now,
pretttt