E4400 bottle neck?

[Cold_Turkey_14]

Anyone know if an E4400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115014) overclocked to 3.0Ghz would bottle neck this card? ASUS HD 4870 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121291)

Thanks in advance.

[crazycanuck]

Personally if your looking for a cpu upgrade i would look at dual cores with around 3.0 ghz native clock speed. Is this a new build or your current processor.

That proc is only running at 2.0 ghz and thats pretty low by todays standards and newer gpu's need higher cpu clocks to feed them instructions faster. As i explained to another person you dont want a situation where the gpu is waiting for the cpu to call for frames. hence a bottlneck.

That card would work nicely with this processor that i recommended to someone else for a cheap cpu upgrade.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036

thats apretty high overclock for that processor..and with out adequate cooling you might be in for a bad time. @ 3.0 ghz it would be much better then stock..but i don't know if you can increase that processor that high..

Nothing says you cannot try it though. But a good cpu cooler would definitely be in order.

[Cold_Turkey_14]

Personally if your looking for a cpu upgrade i would look at dual cores with around 3.0 ghz native clock speed. Is this a new build or your current processor.

It's a current friends build. His birthday's coming up on the 27th of this month so I figured I'd give him something like a video card since he's currently running a 7900GT KO that's been giving him a lot of issues with his games lately.

That proc is only running at 2.0 ghz and thats pretty low by todays standards and newer gpu's need higher cpu clocks to feed them instructions faster. As i explained to another person you dont want a situation where the gpu is waiting for the cpu to call for frames. hence a bottlneck.

Well his CPU's already overclocked to 3.0Ghz and stable, I'm just wondering if it'll still be bottlenecked.

That card would work nicely with this processor that i recommended to someone else for a cheap cpu upgrade.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036

That would be a nice processor to have, think I should get that for him instead?

[crazycanuck]

well the processor i linked to has 6mb L2 cache which alone is a step up from the 2mb he currently has, that in itself is a nice bump. If he's a good overclocker and knows what he is doing he could probably get that one to 3.4-3.6 stable. A new video card would definitely help as well though.The 7900 is getting pretty old and tired. maybe you can go in with his parents..you get him the processor and they get him a newer video card.

Like a 9800gtx or something similar like a GTS 250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133246

between that card and processor its a very nice upgrade from what he currently has.

[Baron_Fel]

depends on game and resolution obviously, why make a thread without mentioning these things?

[Cold_Turkey_14]

depends on game and resolution obviously, why make a thread without mentioning these things?

Well in that case, Supreme Commander, since it's the game that he plays the most. :)

[YahooElite]

a 9800GTX+/GTS250(same card) will do very well with supreme commander, been there done that. but yeah as baron said it'll depend on the res that he'll be playing games on.. but if hes into nvidia more so then ATI the GTS250 is the way to go, i suggest evga brand for nvidia cards.. a GTS250 isnt too much of a drop from a 260 so it'll do well at medium res's such as 1440x900 which is what i play on.

[Cold_Turkey_14]

a 9800GTX+/GTS250(same card) will do very well with supreme commander, been there done that. but yeah as baron said it'll depend on the res that he'll be playing games on.. but if hes into nvidia more so then ATI the GTS250 is the way to go, i suggest evga brand for nvidia cards.. a GTS250 isnt too much of a drop from a 260 so it'll do well at medium res's such as 1440x900 which is what i play on.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember what res he plays on, I think he has a 22" ASUS monitor so would that be 1680x1050?

But your saying a GTS250 would do him justice with the processor he has? 'cause all I really care about is a card that can play this game at an adequate frame rate that's enjoyable for him and at the same time not be bogged down by the CPU.

Thanks for the ideas guys. :)

[YahooElite]

well it would really depend especially on what power supply he has, any video card that your looking at thats new would need a decent enough power supply that has a PCI-E 6pin connector.. surprised no1 asked about it btw..

but if he were to have a good CPU like the 1 being suggested above a 250 would do great with it.

hell mines only a Q8300 and does great with my 9800GTX+ so i doubt itd be an issue.

[crazycanuck]

dont forget...the better the video card he gets the faster the cpu needs to send frames to it for the game to run smoothly. I can tell you how many posts over the last number of years i have read and responded to At Nvidia SLI zone forums where someone bought a new Graphics card but saw no gains or very minimal gains. It all came down to the CPU being to slow.

The GPU processes the frames as the CPU calls for them. If the CPU isn't calling for the frames fast enough the GPU has to sit and wait until the next instructions come down the pipes. This is a bottleneck. A balanced system has a cpu clocked high enough to feed the gpu's the instructions and enough ram to handle the information for quick fetching. That way the information being transferred from Ram, CPU and GPU is flowing "freely" with no bottlenecks or places to slow down the process.

3.0 GHz is certainly better then that procs native speed..but to really let that new GPU stretch its legs a better processor and a clock spped of 3.2-3.4 on a quad core will be the sweet spot. I ran 2 8800 gts 512 on a q9400 @3.2 ghz and there was a huge noticeable difference between the stock spped of 2.66 and 3.2 ghz. Even noticeable on one 8800 gts only and that was at 1680x1050 res as well playing codw@w. I was able to play with higher graphical settings and keep a higher stable frame rate with a 3.2 overclock.

[Baron_Fel]

With Supcom you want all the CPU power you can get. An E4400 would likely struggle on 3v3 matches on large maps, for instance.

Supcom is very easy on the GPU, a 4870 1GB could max it at massive resolutions no prob.

[Cold_Turkey_14]

With Supcom you want all the CPU power you can get. An E4400 would likely struggle on 3v3 matches on large maps, for instance.

Supcom is very easy on the GPU, a 4870 1GB could max it at massive resolutions no prob.

Thanks, that's all I really needed to know, maybe some time down the road he'll upgrade his CPU, I'll leave that up to him. In the mean time I'll probably just get him the 4870.