Will I be ok

SpeedZealot369

Platinum Member
Feb 5, 2006
2,778
1
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Hi, I just bought a x1900xt and I was wonding if my cpu and ram will bottleneck it? my cpu is an amd64 2ghz 800fsb(1600) 512 cache and my ram is 2x512 2.5-3-3-8 T1 ddr400.

Thanks. Also I'm playing on a 19" crt so I can jack the rez up to anywhere I want.


Appreciated.
 

Shortass

Senior member
May 13, 2004
908
0
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I find it doubtful that your new video card will bottleneck that system, though it will be running at pretty much peak performance I imagine. Obviously updating a CPU may help by 5-10FPS in the newest games, but that's really negligible performance increase considering the cost. Then again, if you play Oblivion you'll find that your system will still cry like a little baby at this highest of resolutions with full graphics enabled, but I guess we're pretty much all feeling that (though it will look really sexy regardless).
 

SpeedZealot369

Platinum Member
Feb 5, 2006
2,778
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But I read somewhere that at high resolutions (like what I'll be doing with my 1900xt) cpu doesnt even play a part anymore... is that true?
 

santz

Golden Member
Feb 21, 2006
1,190
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i am sorry, thats not true, CPUpower is critical when playing games. But for the moment, I would recommend you to upgrade your ram by 512 mb to a total of 1gb of ram. this will give you a performance boost as your existing ram will bottleneck your games if you play at high resoulutions.

even in low resolutions, 512 mb is not enough.
windows xp itself take up over 128 mb of ram to run, (not considering other applications running in the background, like antivirus, networking, etc). the remaining 350mb of ram or so is definately not enough.


rap upgrade is recommended over cpu upgrade for you right now.

an additional 512mb of ram is not very expensive too :)
 

santz

Golden Member
Feb 21, 2006
1,190
0
76
oh yea, one more thing, i have a x1900xt too, thats y i put forward above recommendations.
 

JBT

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
12,094
1
81
You'll be fine... If I were you I would OC that CPU a bit though. well.. and the video card... and the memory... but thats just me.
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
He already has 1 GB of ram. It says 2x512.

No i dont think that the card will be bottlenecked by the CPU, it could be under some circumstances as 2ghz amd's are 3 years old (irrelivent of core revision, performance hasent increased much since the clawhammer clock for clock) and that is a top of the line card today, so it may be held back slightly. Nothing for you to go and upgrade your CPU over though, itll be fine with an X1900XT. Almost every game is GPU bottlenecked anyways, only a few seriously tax the CPU.