New 5850 doesn't perform much faster than 3850, what gives?

[InlineFive]

Hey guys,

Currently my system is as follows:

Core 2 Duo 7300 (OC'ed to 3.2Ghz)
4GB of DDR2-800

I upgraded my 3850 to a 5850 but my performance in World of Warcraft is about the same. According to Anandtech benchmarks it should be about 2-3x the speed. The CPU FSB is 1333Mhz so that's 10.6GB/s. My question is do you think the PCIe 1.x slot on the board is limiting the card? I was hoping not to have to upgrade to a newer motherboard with a PCIe 2.0 slot on it.

Thanks!

I5

 

[RockinZ28]

Shouldn't be the pci-e slot, saw huge gains with my 5870 vs 4890 in my old board. What resolution are you playing at? Power supply?

 

[Tempered81]

Cpu is too slow. You need a 3.5ghz I7

 

[zerocool84]

Cpu is too slow. You need a 3.5ghz I7

lol please don't start this. His processor is fine.

Did you uninstall the drivers and install the latest ones???

 

[fffblackmage]

Maybe it's because you're playing WoW? Have you tried other games?

 

[Tempered81]

@Zerocool84: Relax

Op, if you want to double your framerate from 30 to 60, get a 3.5+ghz I7

wow cpu benchmarks:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...nchmarks-with-Phenom-II-and-Core-i5/Practice/

 

[dflynchimp]

yeah WoW isn't the best benchie game... what were your frames before and what are they now?

If you're already getting playable (ie 40fps) rates with your 3850 then there isn't a whole lot of reason for you to be upgrading to 5850. That sort of horsepower is for bench intensive games like crysis and BF: Bad Company

 

[SmCaudata]

WoW is almost entirely CPU dependent as long as your video card is "good enough." Your old card was likely sufficient in that regard.

 

[Absolution75]

CPU isn't fine in a lot of games.

I noticed a HUGE performance increase from my old E7200 to my i7 (same video card).

Though I was playing mainly TF2 (other games were faster too), WoW is the same way, its CPU limited.

 

[n7]

Question:

what gives?

Answer:

World of Warcraft

WoW doesn't scale well w/ GPUs...

 

[toyota]

surely his cpu is good enough to notice a difference going from a 3850 to 5850 though? I would have assumed that with the 3850 he would be gpu limited pretty bad in most games. now if this was going from a 4850 to 5850 maybe but surely the E7300 at 3.2 isnt that much of a bottleneck in WoW is it?

 

[Kuzi]

About a year ago my friend switched from his 8800 GTX to a 4890, all he saw in WoW was a few fps gain. I went to check his system and his CPU was a Q6600 running at stock 2.4GHz. Once we Oc'd his CPU to ~3.2GHz his fps got noticeably higher, especially in crowded places, raids etc. Wow is as much CPU bound as it is GPU bound, or even more.

 

[CurseTheSky]

As others have said, WoW is more CPU and memory dependent than GPU. However, WoW also scales horribly with hardware in general - I went from a 6800 GT to an 8800 GTX and roughly saw 1.5x the FPS I had previously, yet the 8800 GTX is far more than twice as powerful as a 6800 GT. Similarly, I saw maybe a 5-10 FPS increase going from an 8800 GTX to a GTX 285.

As far as the E7200, it should be more than sufficient; it's a game from 2004. Yes, WotLK has made many advances, but the graphics are still generally laughable compared to a plenty of games available today - and they should run fine on your system.

The fact that you've seen literally no improvement is a bit concerning, though. If you're only seeing 10-15 FPS better than your previous card, I'd say that's just how it is. If you're literally seeing NO improvement, you have a problem somewhere.

 

[nitromullet]

Easy way to see if it's your cpu: turn all the graphical settings to low and run the game. If the game runs the same as it does with the high settings, it's your cpu. If it runs better, it's your video card.

WoW is generally not very graphically intensive, but it doesn't do well with higher levels of anti-aliasing ("multi-sampling" in the WoW video menu) in my experience. If it does turn out to be your video card you can probably run all the settings at max, but you ought to be able to tinker with the AA levels to get a good mix of image quality and performance.

 

[Ben90]

lol please don't start this. His processor is fine.

Its his CPU

 

[jvroig]

surely his cpu is good enough to notice a difference going from a 3850 to 5850 though? I would have assumed that with the 3850 he would be gpu limited pretty bad in most games. now if this was going from a 4850 to 5850 maybe but surely the E7300 at 3.2 isnt that much of a bottleneck in WoW is it?

He most likely would notice significant gains in most other games, but WoW is not one of those games, evidently.

In fact, 15 posts down and we still don't know his resolution and relevant graphics settings. For all we know, he's playing at 1024x768:

Hey guys,

Currently my system is as follows:

Core 2 Duo 7300 (OC'ed to 3.2Ghz)
4GB of DDR2-800

I upgraded my 3850 to a 5850 but my performance in World of Warcraft is about the same. According to Anandtech benchmarks it should be about 2-3x the speed. The CPU FSB is 1333Mhz so that's 10.6GB/s. My question is do you think the PCIe 1.x slot on the board is limiting the card? I was hoping not to have to upgrade to a newer motherboard with a PCIe 2.0 slot on it.

Thanks!

I5

 

[betasub]

In fact, 15 posts down and we still don't know his resolution and relevant graphics settings. For all we know, he's playing at 1024x768:

QFT. Although we do get told "CPU FSB is 1333Mhz so that's 10.6GB/s", so you'd hope to get relevant information like res/detail along with random stuff like that.

 

[AzN]

WoW is almost entirely CPU dependent as long as your video card is "good enough." Your old card was likely sufficient in that regard.

bingo. The game is ancient.

If you want better performance with WOW Nvidia cards get faster performance.

 

[InlineFive]

Sorry guys, I'm playing the game at 1280x1024 at High detail settings. Do you think a Core 2 Quad would make any difference or is the solution to upgrade to a completely new architecture?

 

[SmCaudata]

Sorry guys, I'm playing the game at 1280x1024 at High detail settings. Do you think a Core 2 Quad would make any difference or is the solution to upgrade to a completely new architecture?

Back when I played WoW I could run at 1680x1050 with a 9800 gtx and an e6300 that wasn't overclocked. Even with a beast of a system you will likely still get lag in certain areas and it will run perfectly in others. Most people say turn down shadows for performance. Your system is plenty fast to run at that resolution. Any slowdowns you see are due to it being an MMORPG that is not very well optimized. I'd play with the individual graphics settings. My guess is that you can max everything out then turn down shadows and run just fine.

 

[blanketyblank]

5850 is overkill for your resolution. In fact 5770 is probably overkill for your resolution.
In WoW CPU does make more of a difference, but is there really a point to upgrade just for that game? Heck you might be limited by your internet connection.

Also just to make sure run GPU-Z and post what the results are of its analysis. A screenshot or something would be good. Your card might not be running at the right PCI-Express speed or something.

 

[nyker96]

I can think of a few exponations:
1. game is too old to use much of the new card's abilities
2. drives too old don't support 58xx, need new drivers
3. cpu too slow (although e7xxx is fine I think), 1,2 more likely.

4. another thing may be the PSU not strong enough to support the card and it throttles down a notch.

 

[Daedalus685]

I can think of a few exponations:
1. game is too old to use much of the new card's abilities
2. drives too old don't support 58xx, need new drivers
3. cpu too slow (although e7xxx is fine I think), 1,2 more likely.

4. another thing may be the PSU not strong enough to support the card and it throttles down a notch.

The PSU cannot affect performance, just stability.

The issue here is certainly with the CPU though.. not so much that it is too weak for the 5850 (it likely would drive it fine at high resolution).. but that nothing even remotely near a 5850 is required at the resolution the OP uses.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

His system seems plenty fast. Maybe he was getting a consistent 70 fps, but is complaining since he's not gettting 100 fps with the new card?

 

[0roo0roo]

5850 is overkill for your resolution. In fact 5770 is probably overkill for your resolution.
In WoW CPU does make more of a difference, but is there really a point to upgrade just for that game? Heck you might be limited by your internet connection.

Also just to make sure run GPU-Z and post what the results are of its analysis. A screenshot or something would be good. Your card might not be running at the right PCI-Express speed or something.

depends how much fsaa and stuff you use