Should I upgrade to ATI 5850 or 5870?

[BFG10K]

A 5800 will be bottlenecked by your E8400. Of course, it won't happen in every game but more often than not.

This is simply untrue.

 

[1h4x4s3x]

It is?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469-14.html

 

[Apocalypse23]

Your E8400 will get pretty much get clobbered in BC2, the rest of the games will play wonderfully. I'm looking to upgrade to a i7 930 platform or wait for Thuban...I get an average of 40 fps on my overclocked E8400 and overclocked 5850 in BC2 multiplayer medium and high settings...go figure

 

[crisium]

It is?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469-14.html

Yes it is untrue. You claimed in the majority of games. Most are still optimized for only 2 cores. So most of the time he will experience no bottleneck.

 

[1h4x4s3x]

In that particular review, a 5850 would get bottlenecked in all games apart from STALKER.
But yea, if you play Doom and Quake it probably won't. Excellent advise I must say.

You claimed in the majority of games. Most are still optimized for only 2 cores.

I didn't say that.
What I said is ' it won't happen in every game but more often than not'. Of course, assuming he actually plays the latest games, which the article I linked covered pretty well.

 

[BFG10K]

It is?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469-14.html

Yep, it sure is. At 1920x1200 with 4xAA there's a flat line with almost all of the single GPUs, across all the CPUs.

At 2560x1600, even the 4870X2 flat-lines, so there's no performance difference on it between an E6300 and an i7 920.

Did you even read your own links?

If he runs at the same settings, a 5850/5870 will bottleneck him in 99% of titles out there when using his processor. A processor upgrade is the last place he should be putting money into.

In that particular review, a 5850 would get bottlenecked in all games apart from STALKER.

Is this some kind of a joke? Did you even read the article? Or perhaps you expect someone with a quad-core processor to be playing games at 1280x1024 with no AA?

 

[BFG10K]

Your E8400 will get pretty much get clobbered in BC2.

Really? Since when?

http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html

At 2560x1600 with just 2xAA there’s absolutely no difference between the processor clocked at 2.22 GHz and 3.7 GHz. If they'd used 4xAA at 1920x1200, we’d likely see something similar.

Also the CPU scaling was done with a pair of 5870s, which means single GPUs would flat-line earlier than 2560x1600.

And here’s their comment about 2 cores:

Here is the same Core i7 920 processor with two cores disabled as well as HyperThreading. As you can see neither core is maxed out, but the CPU utilization is much higher.

So again, a decent dual core processor such as a Core 2 Duo E8xxx or Phenom II X2 should be enough to get the most out of your graphics card in this game. While it is quad-core optimized, the game is not demanding enough on the CPU to warrant it based on what I have seen so far.

You can click the link to see that a dual-core processor has neither core maxed out in that game.

 

[crisium]

Yeah, I'm not seeing a bottleneck at 1920x1200 plus AA. Lower performance compared to an i7? Sure. But where's the bottleneck? Your own link shows WIC on a GTX 285 at 38fps vs 46fps. That's not a bottleneck, that's just less performance. Wow.

See how the 4770 512MB drops significant performance more than the others at 4xAA and 2560?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5770,2446-8.html

That's an example of a VRAM bottleneck. 38 vs 46 is no bottleneck.

 

[1h4x4s3x]

Oh I see, so we bend the definition of 'bottleneck' and call it 'less performance' instead.
The other question would be, since when does an LCD TV run at 1920x1200?

 

[Apocalypse23]

Really? Since when?

http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html

At 2560x1600 with just 2xAA there’s absolutely no difference between the processor clocked at 2.22 GHz and 3.7 GHz. If they'd used 4xAA at 1920x1200, we’d likely see something similar.

Also the CPU scaling was done with a pair of 5870s, which means single GPUs would flat-line earlier than 2560x1600.

And here’s their comment about 2 cores:



You can click the link to see that a dual-core processor has neither core maxed out in that game.

I have already read that part when they say "So again, a decent dual core processor such as a Core 2 Duo E8xxx or Phenom II X2 should be enough to get the most out of your graphics card in this game. While it is quad-core optimized, the game is not demanding enough on the CPU to warrant it based on what I have seen so far. "

However, I beg to differ. Techspot has assumed in that review that based upon a Corei7's dual core performance a E8400 should fare well....well the answer is no I asay. There is a huge bottleneck I have personally experienced, from running two systems on E8400s...the game gets choppy at certain times, a lot during explosions, smoke, etc, sometimes it gets choppy for a brief mili second, the fps dips to 10-12, I played the game thoroughly in multi-player and experienced this..the i7s are superior chips and should face no issues even with two cores running. My e8400 screams when the gpu needs more power to run, my 5850 is running at 925/1175 and the proc barely handles it...

 

[crazylegs]

Oh I see, so we bend the definition of 'bottleneck' and call it 'less performance' instead.
The other question would be, since when does an LCD TV run at 1920x1200?

huh wut?

 

[BFG10K]

Oh I see, so we bend the definition of 'bottleneck' and call it 'less performance' instead.
The other question would be, since when does an LCD TV run at 1920x1200?

On the first page he says his TV is 1080p, so he'll be running 1920x1080. At that resolution his E8400 will easily saturate a 5870 in 99% of modern titles (say from 2007 onwards) if he uses 4xAA, or even 2xAA in many cases.

In Stalker Clear Sky for example, there’s absolutely no performance difference between my E6850 underclocked to 2 GHz and my i5 750 with turbo boost enabled, because my GTX285 is the bottleneck by 100%. And that’s only at 1680x1050 with 2xAA running under DX9.

I can do the same with Left 4 Dead at 2560x1600 with 4xAA and TrSS; run into a heavily vegetated area and my GTX285 cries like a little girl.

And for the record, I’m not attempting to play semantic games with definitions of “bottleneck’ or “performance”.

 

[BFG10K]

However, I beg to differ. Techspot has assumed in that review that based upon a Corei7's dual core performance a E8400 should fare well....well the answer is no I asay. There is a huge bottleneck I have personally experienced, from running two systems on E8400s...the game gets choppy at certain times, a lot during explosions, smoke, etc, sometimes it gets choppy for a brief mili second, the fps dips to 10-12, I played the game thoroughly in multi-player and experienced this..the i7s are superior chips and should face no issues even with two cores running. My e8400 screams when the gpu needs more power to run, my 5850 is running at 925/1175 and the proc barely handles it...

Understood; I’m not trying to claim there’s no difference from the CPU in BC2, I’m just arguing that even in that title, the GPU matters more. As an example, I’d take an E8400 + 5870 over an i7 @ 4 GHz + GTX260 any day.

Here are some more benchmarks:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/battlefield-bad-company-2_5.html#sect1

Clearly the game slurps GPU power as even at 1280x1024 with 4xAA the GPUs stack according to their rank, and a 5970 still provides a large performance gain over a 5870.

 

[1h4x4s3x]

On the first page he says his TV is 1080p, so he'll be running 1920x1080. At that resolution his E8400 will easily saturate a 5870 in 99% of modern titles (say from 2007 onwards) if he uses 4xAA, or even 2xAA in many cases.

In Stalker Clear Sky for example, there’s absolutely no performance difference between my E6850 underclocked to 2 GHz and my i5 750 with turbo boost enabled, because my GTX285 is the bottleneck by 100%. And that’s only at 1680x1050 with 2xAA running under DX9.

I can do the same with Left 4 Dead at 2560x1600 with 4xAA and TrSS; run into a heavily vegetated area and my GTX285 cries like a little girl.

Yes, the review is 1920x1200 thus I mentioned 1920x1080. It's minor but still. :sneaky:
As I said above, apart form Stalker all games see a bottleneck. Though, I was wrong with Crysis, checked the wrong graph.
Anyway, in that article the 5850 would be bottlenecked in 5 out of 7 games. And frankly, I don't think this trend will stop with newer games.

 

[crisium]

For bottleneck, I prefer to mean if you upgrade to the next level you see no performance boost or no appreciable performance boost. If we saw a chart where an E8400 + Radeon 4890 got 30fps and an E8400 + Radeon 5850 got 31fps that would be a bottleneck. Right now, you can get an old school Athlon X2 3800 and pair it with a Radeon 4850 1GB and Radeon 5850 in new games and you'd probably see results like that.

OR, if it's heavily optimized for 3+ cores. Which means the E8400 will get outperformed by i7's by at least 35%.

So if going up in cards still increases performance, and adding more cores doesn't increase speed by at least a third, I don't see a bottleneck. Because a bottleneck like mine would mean "stop buying video cards dude, time to upgrade your CPU now or be stuck in the stone age". I just ain't seeing that with the E8400 and Radeon 5850.

/rant

 

[Headfoot]

For bottleneck, I prefer to mean if you upgrade to the next level you see no performance boost or no appreciable performance boost. If we saw a chart where an E8400 + Radeon 4890 got 30fps and an E8400 + Radeon 5850 got 31fps that would be a bottleneck. Right now, you can get an old school Athlon X2 3800 and pair it with a Radeon 4850 1GB and Radeon 5850 in new games and you'd probably see results like that.

OR, if it's heavily optimized for 3+ cores. Which means the E8400 will get outperformed by i7's by at least 35%.

So if going up in cards still increases performance, and adding more cores doesn't increase speed by at least a third, I don't see a bottleneck. Because a bottleneck like mine would mean "stop buying video cards dude, time to upgrade your CPU now or be stuck in the stone age". I just ain't seeing that with the E8400 and Radeon 5850.

/rant

^^^^ This, right on

 

[Apocalypse23]

BFG10K: Noted, thanks for the points.

To all:

Alright, well I restarted my computer and the fps is better now, 60-90, with a low of 40 fps, the CPU usage is 99% while gaming for both cores however. It turned out that i had my pc running for the whole day yesterday, also had it on sleep, and then continued gaming....right now i can hear my 5850 fan spinning like crazy while gaming, so that's a positive.


I still feel the need to upgrade, so any suggestions about the items I listed would be welcomed.