Will my E6850 bottleneck my upgrade to ATI 5850/5870?

[yodude7]

Guys,

I'm planning an upgrade from my 8800gtx to either an 5850 or 5870 (leaning to this) mostly for BFBC2 gaming @ 1920x1200 at a good frame rate. I recently added an OCZ SSD to the rig and clearly have seen drastic improvements. Other than the SSD and the vid card, I really don't want to invest any more $$ on other components. My question is am I overkilling on the 5870 only to be bottlenecked by the rest of my rig:

C2D E6850 @3.33
Gigabyte p35-DS3R
4GB DDR3 (800mhz)
Win 7 x64
OCZ SSD


Thoughts? I've heard gaming at high resolutions like 1920x1200 is more gpu intensive than cpu so would I be fine? If you do suggest a CPU upgrade, what is the best bang for the buck that WOULDN'T require me to upgrade my motherboard?

Thx

 

[tviceman]

Guys,

I'm planning an upgrade from my 8800gtx to either an 5850 or 5870 (leaning to this) mostly for BFBC2 gaming @ 1920x1200 at a good frame rate. I recently added an OCZ SSD to the rig and clearly have seen drastic improvements. Other than the SSD and the vid card, I really don't want to invest any more $$ on other components. My question is am I overkilling on the 5870 only to be bottlenecked by the rest of my rig:

C2D E6850 @3.33
Gigabyte p35-DS3R
4GB DDR3 (800mhz)
Win 7 x64
OCZ SSD


Thoughts? I've heard gaming at high resolutions like 1920x1200 is more gpu intensive than cpu so would I be fine? If you do suggest a CPU upgrade, what is the best bang for the buck that WOULDN'T require me to upgrade my motherboard?

Thx

If you have headroom to overclock further it would help. Your processor will be a little bit of a bottleneck, but I also don't think you need to upgrade it at this time because it's very capable. Wait until next winter to upgrade your cpu/mb is my opinion.

 

[yodude7]

Well the question then is is the 5850 plenty to game @ 1920x1200 with my setup or should I spring the extra $ for the 5870. The performance difference is suppose to be 15-20% but that's on the latest hardware. On my setup, it might be negligible and if it is, I don't want to bother with the step up. Thoughts?

 

[GaiaHunter]

Something for you too look at if you are concerned with bottlenecks (even though these articles don't include 5850/5870 but you can extrapolate).

This first one has a Pentium E6300. Your E6850 is a bit faster.
Building A Balanced Gaming PC

This one is about bottlenecking a E6850

Intel E6850 Bottleneck Investigation

In my opinion your processor is still capable - of course in games that want more than 2 cores it will suffer a bit - but those are still the exception.

I think the 5850 is enough for your resolution - some will even say it is excessive.

In this thread http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2047861 , people are talking (until the normal "you suck", "you are stupid", " you are even more idiot" part) about Bad company 2 - some benchmarks there and whatnot.

 

[Tempered81]

this guy has an E6400 @ 3.2ghz & 850mhz 5850 on a 22":

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4233976&postcount=7

I am more than impressed with my single 5850, system in sig.

@830/1100. Card will clock higher but I don't see the point with a c2d@3.2Ghz and a 1680x1050 display.

Vantage Graphics Score 15119.2

Crysis max quality @ 1680x1050
No aa:
Play Time: 34.00s, Average FPS: 58.82
Min FPS: 24.59 at frame 142, Max FPS: 80.66 at frame 134
Average Tri/Sec: -48844204, Tri/Frame: -830451
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.10

2xaa:
Play Time: 37.19s, Average FPS: 53.78
Min FPS: 27.81 at frame 142, Max FPS: 71.56 at frame 93
Average Tri/Sec: -43231668, Tri/Frame: -803859
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.14

4xaa:
Play Time: 41.66s, Average FPS: 48.01
Min FPS: 31.65 at frame 1315, Max FPS: 61.30 at frame 982
Average Tri/Sec: -38045872, Tri/Frame: -792406
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.16

Go 5850 you will not regret it unless you have to have the absolute fastest of course. 5870's over clock too.

 

[toyota]

I would not get a 5870 but a 5850 would be fine. I say that because the 5850 is within 5% of the 5870 when both are overclocked. with your cpu you will never even see that 5% difference in many newer games especially those like BC2 that are really utilizing more than 2 cores.

 

[MarcVenice]

At 3,33GHz you still have one of the fastest dualcores you can get. You're fine with either. If you buy a HD 5850 or HD 5870 depends on your wallet, but the 5850 does give more bang for buck.

 

[toyota]

At 3,33GHz you still have one of the fastest dualcores you can get. You're fine with either. If you buy a HD 5850 or HD 5870 depends on your wallet, but the 5850 does give more bang for buck.

thats true overall but in a game like BC2 that he is playing he will certainly need a quad for the best experience.

 

[MarcVenice]

thats true overall but in a game like BC2 that he is playing he will certainly need a quad for the best experience.

I can't find any benchmarks? I suppose I have to get in the beta to test performance? If it's really that intensive, it might be a nice game to benchmark.

 

[toyota]

I can't find any benchmarks? I suppose I have to get in the beta to test performance? If it's really that intensive, it might be a nice game to benchmark.

yeah its killing most dual cores but supposedly they are working on an update to help with the excessive slow downs. the physics and audio processing are just too much for dual cores to handle smoothly at the moment. of course they are recommending a quad too so dont expect dual cores to not be a large bottleneck even if they improve things in the final release.

 

[cbn]

With these BC2 benchmarks, doesn't the single player campaign use more CPU resources than the online multi-player?

 

[Leyawiin]

You have enough headroom that you'll see a healthy boost over the 8800 GTX with an HD 5850. Will it be all that an HD 5850 is capable of? No, but since you have no point of reference, how would you know (unless you stick it in someone's else much more powerful PC)?

 

[zerocool84]

With these BC2 benchmarks, doesn't the single player campaign use more CPU resources than the online multi-player?

Well I would assume so cus of the AI but they said that the retail game is going to be more optimized and with a ton of enhancements that aren't in the demo so I'd assume it'd run better especially for those of us with quads.

 

[yodude7]

Ok so this is what I'm thinking of upgrading to me. Please comment on whether these are good prices:

i5-750 - $179
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 - $119 after rebate
OCZ Technology 4GB DDR3-1600 - $79 after rebate
Visiontek 5850 - $263 after CB

 

[phatphoeater]

i5-750 - $179
Visiontek 5850 - $263 after CB

where are these items priced like this? combined they are about $60 less than newegg. if i can snag this setup at these prices it makes my phenomii vs i5 decision very easy.

 

[yodude7]

Microcenter for the chip
TigerDirect has 15% cb on/off. When it was on, I snagged the 5850 at $309 (which I think is currently out of stock) minus 15% CB.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

Personally I would wait to upgrade mobo/cpu till next winter as someonelse mentioned. I have a 5850 oced to what CCC maxes at 775/1125 with a e5200 oced to 3.4 and it rocks at all games at 1920x1200. Games that might require quads I don't know but haven't run into that situation and I don't know any 1 game that demands me to spend 400 bucks for a new setup.

Get the 5850 and see how it does with your setup if it isn't good enough then upgrade.

My 2 cents

 

[heyheybooboo]

Microcenter for the chip
TigerDirect has 15% cb on/off. When it was on, I snagged the 5850 at $309 (which I think is currently out of stock) minus 15% CB.

I think you are GTG. The e6850 is good stuff. I'm surprised you aren't clocking along at 3.6GHz ...




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[tweakboy]

It won't bottle neck too much. You will lose some frames per second but the video card will almost perform to full potential... Increase your OC would help. gl

 

[zerocool84]

There's few games that need a quad to run but most of them are RTS's and some FPS's. BF: BC2 is supposed to be optimized for quads when it comes out early next month. The only reason I went from an E6300 @ 2.9 to a Q9550 @ 3.5 was cus I play a ton of RTS's and I'd know it'd make a huge difference and it does.