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How badly am i bottlenecking my 9800 pro with this rig?

dug777

Lifer
Runs as a gaming rig 1st and foremost, with DVD/avi use second 🙂

Currently playing hl2 (takes f&*king ages 2load, and is rooted thanx 2 steam atm tho), d3, farcry, Prince of Persia and a bit of NFSHP2. I notice hl2 loading times the most, everthing else loads soooo quick in comparison (even farcry which i used 2 think took yonks 🙁 )

EDIT: comes of having 2 many windows open & being an idiot, this thread would have been better placed in 'video' i suspect...oh well 😱
 
1. Video card has ZERO impact on loading times.
2. If your framerates are good in HL2 because you don't have a monitor that supports of 1280X1024 then your fine.
3. What DOES affect you loading times is your HDD, you could either get a western digital raptor drive OR
get a SCSI based HDD that is either 10K or 15K RPM and that should solve your problems. If your too cheap to get a SCSI based HDD, you can put two WD raptors in a raid configuration either 0 or 5.
4.If your not cheap and can afford two highend SCSI drives (10 or 15K rpm) you could put those in a raid 0 config and if you've got even more money then you could get a minimum of 3 SCSI HDDs and put them in a raid 5 configuration.
5. How BAD are your loading times seriously? My laptop may have a 7200RPM drive but it's nothing compared to the 7200RPM drive in my desktop, so I can't imagine them being THAT BAD. (Plays HL2 on IBM lappy).
 
Sorry- didn't mean that to come out like i thought my kard had ne thing 2do with my loading times 😱 Again, 2 many windows open & i'm an idiot.

Started out as a general question bout limiting factors on my 9800 pr0, and ended up as a biatch about hl2 loading times- they r pretty shocking 😛
 
Um it doesn't matter long as you can play those games smoothly but I will try to answer your question. Whats the biggest monitor you got? Trying playing HL2 at the lowest res with lowest quality textures and then higher quality textures, then up the resolution (first do low quality textures all up to 1600X1200 then do the test again but with high quality textures) and see if your frame rates are about the same. If your frame rates only drop a few points then you know the CPU is bottlenecking, go up to how ever high resolution you can and when you notice a very deep drop in frames, then you will know where the GPU is bottlenecking. If the frame rates are consistant up to 1600X1200 then it's most definately the CPU is the bottleneck.

I heard lately that GPUs are so powerful (mostly the 6800Ultra and X800 series) cards are being bottlenecked by the CPU up through 1280X1024. In your case (I have your card) I think you might have a pretty even combination, I don't think either are bottlenecking the other one. So in other words I don't see a bottle neck. I haven't run my system at default speeds for such a long time I can barely remember HOW much BETTER my frame rates were when I overclocked the computer to where it is in my sig (before video overclock). I remember it was significant though but that could be attributed to the FSB. And since your system is overclocked as well, I think it's even MORE likely that they are paired up.

I've run a ATI Rage 128 Pro on a 1GHZ system from a 450MHZ system and the score doubled! (458 to 906 3D Mark 2001 score). But when I put that card in a dell 1.7GHZ system the score stayed perfectly the same, showing you what was clearly the bottleneck. Here is a clue, I benchmarked the R9800Pro in the Dell 1.7GHZ system and got a 3D Mark score of about 11K, put the card in my current system in sig with defaut speeds and got a score of 17311. Overclocked the CPU and got 20K on my 3D Mark score so you do the deciding from there to what would be a bottleneck.
 
I wouldn't think your bottle-necking much if any. Since your cpu is @ 2600mhz (13x200?) I would guess it to be about as fast a Barton 3200+. I've never heard those bottle-necked the 9800p. Seems petty balanced to me (shrug).

Fern
 
thats the plan 🙂 i tried it a while back & while i didn't see much of a fps gain it was noticeably smoother gaming, and much smoother moving between apps

(2600+ is 12.5*166 i think...), i've never cleared more than about 2300mhz with my setup cost i dont really want 2 push the vcore over 1.7v..., and i cant run fsb @higher than ~182 (no pci/agp lock) + i got a few hassles so its just easier 2 leave it @166.
 
yes, it would also reduce your loading times if you add more ram. i dont think by a ton, but it would.
 
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