toyota
Lifer
- Apr 15, 2001
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His CPU won’t bottleneck his 5850 if he runs at high enough detail levels (say 1920x1200 with 4xAA) because his GPU will bottleneck him the most, by far. His CPU is roughly equal to mine @ 2 GHz, and I can say that pairing mine @ 2 GHz with a Fermi/5870 would create a massive performance gain over my current GTX285.
Heck, I might even benchmark Fermi with my CPU @ 2 GHz just to prove my point, yet again.
Where are the benchmark numbers? At what settings?
In the meantime, here’s another article where they compared an i7 920 at 2 GHz and 4 GHz with a 5970, and in all cases they got little to no performance change relative to the CPU being underclocked by 50%.
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=869&p=2
Incidentally they started off with Batman, and they didn’t even use any AA when they could’ve easily used 2xAA or 4xAA. Also Far Cry 2, Wolfenstein and Crysis are in there too, and their results back my claims.
first off I do see your point that going with a very high end gpu will almost always provide better average framerate and/or allow you to use higher settings. the line has to be drawn somewhere though and a cpu like the 5600 X2 is well below that line in many games with a gpu like the 5850. see if you can comprehend these numbers because if you can then you will see my point which is that a 5600 X2 would hold a 5850 back by quite a bit.
you dont seem to acknowledge that if the cpu is only capable of providing a certain minimum framerate that having an even higher card wont make much difference in playability in most cases. in other words if all you are getting is 15-20 fps for a minimum framerate then why buy a really high end gpu that wont help in that respect? if a 5600 X2 can hold my gtx260 to these levels then a 5850 would be an even bigger waste for many games.
RE 5 1920x1080 4x AA fixed bench
cpu 3.48 gpu 620/1296/2160
51.8 fps
cpu 3.48 gpu 465/971/1620
51.0 fps
cpu 3.16 gpu 620/1296/2160
49.6 fps
cpu 3.16 gpu 465/971/1620
49.4 fps
cpu 1.80 gpu 620/1296/2160
31.5 fps
cpu 1.8 gpu 465/971/1620
31.8 fps
I am sure you will come up with some excuse to dispute those results. oh and just for the heck of it I went back and ran RE5 with my cpu at 3.48. I would get an even bigger boost with a nice quad core in this game. for RE5 my much slower gtx260 and any decent Core 2 duo or better would rape a 5600 X2 and 5850 setup.
EDIT: reran the RE5 numbers since I had vsync on by accident. I also ran 4x AA just to make it more gpu intensive so maybe I will get less excuses. I doubt it though.
Red Faction Guerrilla 1920x1080 highest settings no AA just running a fraps loop with no enemies and little destruction
cpu 3.16 gpu 666/1392/2200
Min, Max, Avg
21, 40, 30.310
cpu 1.80 gpu 666/1392/2200
Min, Max, Avg
12, 35, 24.862
that was not even doing any real destruction and with zero enemies on the screen to keep runs more consistent. with heavy action the framerates even dipped into the single digits with cpu at 1.8. yes I didnt use any AA because I left the game on the settings I normally use. the point is to see how much of a loss using the 5600 X2 would cause. again turning on AA doesnt mean squat when the game is borderline playable during action because of the cpu anyway.
Batman highest settings, physx high and 2x AA fraps run
cpu 3.16 gpu 666/1392/2200
Min, Max, Avg
23, 70, 43.122
cpu 1.80 gpu 666/1392/2200
Min, Max, Avg
16, 59, 35.975
having physx on high along with 2x AA and the other setting should make this very gpu limited. as you can see though having the cpu a equivalent to his 5600 X2 really brought the minimum framerate down to very sluggish levels.
anybody that thinks a 5600 X2 is decent enough to match it with a 5850 obviously doesnt care about getting the most out of their systems. a cpu like that will keep minimums fairly low and 5850 doesnt help you when its the cpu limiting how much playability and usefulness the card can deliver.
the OP asked if a 5600 X2 would be bottleneck a 5850 and the honest answer is yes and IMO quite badly in cpu intensive games. he was smart enough to realize that upgrading to a modern i5 would be the best overall move when running a card like that.
if you want to spend over 300 bucks to turn on more AA while still getting shitty low minimum framerates compared to what you could be getting with a more appropriate cpu then knock yourself out.
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