Will I be bottlenecking my x1900xt

[SpeedZealot369]

Hey guys, just bought a new x1900xt and I was wondering if I might be going to bottleneck it. Here are my pc specs:

2ghz amd64 s939 3200+
2gb 2-3-2-5 duel channel
asrock duel sata
150gb raptor, 160gb pata
xfi platinum
fw 900 24" widescreen monitor
antec 480w

I think the only thing that can possibly be a bottleneck is the cpu, but I'm afraid of oc'ing it because temps are already in the high 40's at load, and would it even matter if I was gaming at 1920x1200 with eye candy on?

Thanks,

-SZ

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: SpeedZealot369
Hey guys, just bought a new x1900xt and I was wondering if I might be going to bottleneck it. Here are my pc specs:

2ghz amd64 s939 3200+
2gb 2-3-2-5 duel channel
asrock duel sata
150gb raptor, 160gb pata
xfi platinum
fw 900 24" widescreen monitor
antec 480w

I think the only thing that can possibly be a bottleneck is the cpu, but I'm afraid of oc'ing it because temps are already in the high 40's at load, and would it even matter if I was gaming at 1920x1200 with eye candy on?

Thanks,

-SZ

Wow, I have almost the exact same setup but I went ahead and bought an X1900XT anyway even though I thought my CPU could limit it. So far I don't think it's bottlenecking the card too bad, but I'm only running 1280x1024, widescreen within a week.

 

[Ika]

and would it even matter if I was gaming at 1920x1200 with eye candy on?

Not really; at that point, CPU bottleneck becomes second fiddle to GPU bottleneck. Don't worry about it.

But about your CPU... is it a Venice? and what kind of cooling are you running? I would probably suggest spending some money on an aftermarket cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer64 Pro is a good, low-cost choice), then overclock. If you really don't want to, though, then don't worry too much about it - it won't make too much of a difference in games.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

Originally posted by: Aflac

and would it even matter if I was gaming at 1920x1200 with eye candy on?

Not really; at that point, CPU bottleneck becomes second fiddle to GPU bottleneck. Don't worry about it.

But about your CPU... is it a Venice? and what kind of cooling are you running? I would probably suggest spending some money on an aftermarket cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer64 Pro is a good, low-cost choice), then overclock. If you really don't want to, though, then don't worry too much about it - it won't make too much of a difference in games.

I think it's a winchester, and I have a zalman (7000cu I think) on it. So at high resolution and with eye candy, basically the strain will be on the gpu so the cpu clock won't effect it much..

Also I will have a x2 on the x1900xt and will be ocing heavily, hopefully that will make up for any lost performance from the cpu and low-end mobo.

 

[supastar1568]

wanna get in on this.

Will be having the same setup

 

[cmrmrc]

maybe just a little bit but not much...faster cpu will always help though...try overclocking a bit...like to 2.2-2.4 ghz

 

[kmmatney]

You have a winchester with a Zalman cooler, so that cpu is plenty cool. In fact the high 40's at load is a low temperatue - You should at LEAST by able to hit 2.2 GHz, with no strain on the cpu. That would give you a 3500+ with no effort. To overclock higher, you will need to kick in a memory divider to keep the memory frequency near stock. However 2.2 GHz should be easy.

See this article - a typical temperature for a Winchester running at load is 54 C.

If you want to be real lazy about overclocking, you can try "ClockGen". It will let you overclock in windows, without fiddling with BIOS settings - good for small overclocks. its worked on all systems I;'ve tried it on so far.

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php