How much would my CPU bottleneck a 5850 by?

[tjpartridge]

So I am looking at buying that stunning deal on Scan, the 5850 for £125 but I only have a Phenom II X2.

I was wondering whether anyone has any experience or knowlage as to how much my processor would bottleneck this card?

I will be upgrading it in the future so I see no need to buyu a different card, especially when its on such a great deal.


Help appreciated

EDIT - My CPU is running at stock 3.1GHz

[Blackmage]

Good question as I'm looking to buy one too, but waiting for the newer amd/intel processors coming out next year.

[nibbler]

Not an awful lot, you'll certainly get good framerates. Have you tried unlocking an extra core or two? I bought an athlon II x3 but now I'm running all 4 cores and all the extra cache too.

[Iron Sights]

what phenom II X2 do you have and whats the mobo, you "may" be able to unlock it

[tjpartridge]

Well as long as it'll be playable in most games until I upgrade i'll be happy


Yeah I did try unlocking but no dice :/
The reason I bought it was because of the possibility of unlockable cores. I figured if I did manage to unlock them I just got a quad core for half the price, but even if I didnt I still had the best dual core on the market (that was at the time of purchase).

EDIT

I made sure I bought a compatible mobo to attempt unlocking, but it is a M4A785TD-V EVO
CPU is the 550.

[nibbler]

It'll be a very slight bottleneck at most IMO.

[tjpartridge]

Okay, thank you for the help guys

[nibbler]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...locking_5.html
This backs me up to some extent, only small increase in power consumption until you really up the vcore, then it becomes apparent.

[tjpartridge]

Wrong thread I think bro, saw you posting about the vcore in another lol

[Domestic_Ginger]

Back to the core unlocking. You can try to unlock a quad and then selectively relock a single core to get a tri. Apologies if you have already tried it!

I would think of the improvement in terms of what you're upgrading from. I suppose it depends largely on the game and whether its CPU dependent and what res you are running at.

[DanceswithUnix]

You mention your CPU, but not what your current graphics card is

Still, I have a Phenom II X4 @ 3.4GHz, and my recent upgrade to a GTX460 from an 8800GT gave a huge boost to game playability.

I see some daft stuff said about cpu bottlenecks, even in reviews where you think the reviewer should know better. Honestly, all modern CPUs are pretty good as long as you get enough clock speed behind them and you have that.

[k3vst3r]

what resolution you playing at though?
bigger resolution, higher the detail, the less cpu will have effect on fps.

[shaithis]

I see some daft stuff said about cpu bottlenecks, even in reviews where you think the reviewer should know better. Honestly, all modern CPUs are pretty good as long as you get enough clock speed behind them and you have that.

There are more CPU bottlenecks now then there has been for ages and it is only going to get worse...but they aren't due to a graphics card bottleneck that we were all used to, they are due to poor console-to-PC ports.

As far as the OP is concerned, it will not bottleneck his card at all.....but CPU is becoming more important then it has been for quite some time.

[DanceswithUnix]

There are more CPU bottlenecks now then there has been for ages and it is only going to get worse...but they aren't due to a graphics card bottleneck that we were all used to, they are due to poor console-to-PC ports.

As far as the OP is concerned, it will not bottleneck his card at all.....but CPU is becoming more important then it has been for quite some time.

I thought one of the points of the Xbox was that console to Windows porting is easy? Still, I have to agree with you about the outcome, a bottleneck exists but just because a machine would benefit from a CPU upgrade does not preclude it benefiting from a graphics update.

My son's PC is CPU limited playing World of Warcraft. But still, when I plugged in an 8800GT instead of the 8600GT those frames looked much prettier and his not very good frames per second had better viewing depth.

[Random_guy]

It depends on what game you're playing. I noticed a big jump in performance on BFBC2 and Crysis when I went from a E6750 (@3.2Ghz) to a Q9400 (@3.0Ghz), but in other games it made no difference.

You should still notice a performance increase with the 5850, even if its only that you can turn on more eyecandy without noticing a drop in framerate (rather than a raw increase in FPS).