Would A Q9450 and DDR2 800 RAM Bottleneck A 7850?

[WuMyster]

Hi There guys,

As you can see from the thread title, I am wondering whether or not my Q9450 @ 2.7GHz and 4GB of DDR2 RAM will bottleneck the 7850 badly. I am a student with limited amounts of money and just recently bought a SSD which doesnt help my finance situation. I have enough for a 7850 which I can OC which gives me a very good card since they OC like crazy but how would my bottlenecking reduce my performance? I am getting a new card realistically only for BF3 and future games.
As I don't have much money, if the bottlenecking issues are quite bad then Ill have to wait for a completely new build in a few years as this is a Dell XPS 630i which I spent £700 on about 6 years ago. Since this is Dell, Im pretty sure with their motherboards they locked OCing which really screws me over.

So, how would the bottlenecking impact me? Would it just be a few FPS id lose since some people are saying the Q9450 is still a pretty solid CPU.
If the GPU option was to be the best option then over time I'd obviously move it to a new build and crossfire it.

Thanks for the help.

 

[MustangSVT]

what is your current card?

 

[WuMyster]

what is your current card?

2 old and crusty 9800GT in SLi.
Ive OCed them a bit but they arent stable enough for OCs that will be noticed.

 

[cytg111]

no .. i am running a 580 gtx, same cpu as yours, and while I could problary push 20% more frames in BF3 with a SB/IB ugrade, that is it. IMO.

 

[WuMyster]

no .. i am running a 580 gtx, same cpu as yours, and while I could problary push 20% more frames in BF3 with a SB/IB ugrade, that is it. IMO.

However, in your sig you state that its @ 3.51. Mine is at stock clocks which is 2.7.

I am also running DDR2 800 memory.

:S

 

[cytg111]

Allright .. what i did was i ran a number of scenarious against the anandtech bench db and made a final decision upon that .. before that I posted much the same Q as yours right here, and got about the same answer i am giving you now. So. A direction + an educated guess and your own footwork will get you there.
(and actually i am running at 2.7 atm too)

 

[WuMyster]

Allright .. what i did was i ran a number of scenarious against the anandtech bench db and made a final decision upon that .. before that I posted much the same Q as yours right here, and got about the same answer i am giving you now. So. A direction + an educated guess and your own footwork will get you there.
(and actually i am running at 2.7 atm too)

Oh, since your on the same clocks i think ill just go for the GPU upgrade then!

Thanks! Any other suggestions are still open to mind!

 

[cytg111]

also

"Im pretty sure with their motherboards they locked OCing which really screws me over"

- do a bit of research ... there are very creative ppl outthere

 

[WuMyster]

also

"Im pretty sure with their motherboards they locked OCing which really screws me over"

- do a bit of research ... there are very creative ppl outthere

I have! There literally is no news for the Q9xxx CPUs!

 

[Spjut]

The CPU will hold it back in games that only takes advantage of 2 cores(Starcraft 2, Crysis)
In games that do benefit of 4 cores though, it should be fine

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

You shouldn't be bottlenecked in most games, those processors are pretty fast and it is a quad core; DDR2 doesn't have an effect on gaming compared to DDR3.

 

[Arkaign]

The CPU will definitely hold it back in quite a few games these days at only 2.7ghz (compare IPC, this is quite a bit slower than SB/IB at 2.7ghz).

That said, why not get that card? It's a great card, you can go ahead and have fun with it, and then later when you can drop in an upgrade cpu/mobo/ram (not that expensive when you resell the $$$$ Q9xxx!) you'll be set!

 

[reallyscrued]

If you can run the DDR2 in dual channel, then no.

I realized way too late that moving my memory around to enable dual channel actually stopped all the stutters I was getting in BF3.

 

[nyker96]

I personally think if u overclock it to 3,2+ should be better, at 2,7 it's definitely going to hold the some games back. however, still not many games will be cpu limited. the ram i doubt will matter that much.

however, if most games you are running 40-60fps already, then it wouldn't matter even if you get a Ivy bridge. your gaming experience will be decent enough already. most of the time, when I upgrade the gcard, that's the most important factor, I can turn up the eye candy and resolution, not to mention physics effects etc.

 

[myocardia]

xx

 

[cytg111]

...BF3 will definitely be cpu-bound, at least on 64 player servers, but 64 player servers aren't the only servers. Besides, you may very well not be one of those people who complains about not getting 60 fps at all times....

I play on 64p servers most of the time .. and I be running smoooth.

And as you say, there is always going to be a bottlneck *somewhere* ..

 

[tweakboy]

No that CPU is fine. There wont be a bottleneck. the vc will like that Q chip.

 

[2is]

At stock it will be a bottleneck in games that rely on the CPU heavily. In games like BF3 SP you'll be fine in games like BF3 MP you'll be held back quite a bit. I know I was with a Q6600 @ 3.2GHz and a 5870. That same 5870 is paired with a 2500K now and there's a very nice performance boost, particularly in minimum FPS which dropped quite low on the Q