Is my system balanced or bottlenecked?

Ketchup92 · Apr 6, 2013

I've been wondering this for a while, as my system isn't quite performing as well as I thought it might, given my new(ish) graphics card. Here are my specs:

Q9450 @ 2.66 GHz
Radeon HD 7850
4GB RAM
20" Display @ 1680x1050

Is my CPU holding back my graphics card at the moment? I realise that the CPU would probably be the next thing to upgrade but thats not exactly what I'm asking, its more whether my CPU will be noticeably bottlenecking performance?

Cheers

envy14tpe · Apr 6, 2013

Hard to say. I would plan on upgrading the CPU/mobo soon though. Wait for Haswell. You already got a system
and clearly you don't upgrade often (which is fine). Maybe in the Fall you could upgrade.

Kamen_BG · Apr 6, 2013

Your CPU has 12MB of cache so it's almost as good as a Phenom @ 3GHZ which is on the edge with your graphics card.
Try overclocking your CPU a bit. It might substantially increase your FPS.

jitpublisher · Apr 6, 2013

Your CPU in itself is not that bad, but only running at 2.66ghz is a bottleneck. No matter what else you look at in a gaming CPU, clock speed is still very important and should be a primary concern. A top notch gaming CPU, no matter how many cores, what make or brand or type, needs to be running at least 3ghz, at least. 3.2 to 3.4 is getting into the ballpark, even more is better. Slower that than that, and it simply will not push a modern GPU anywhere near its potential.

Ketchup92 · Apr 6, 2013

Thanks for the opinions guys, I appreciate it. Perhaps I'll have a look at overclocking my CPU by a few hundred MHz, though i'm a novice with that...

I was having a look at the CPU hierarchy chart tomshardware does and the Q9450 is in the 4th tier of CPUs. The advice from there is not to bother upgrading unless you upgrade to something 3 tiers higher or more, otherwise the upgrade may be slightly parallel and not particularly worth it. So should I perhaps wait a bit before looking at upgrading it?

ASHISH65 · Apr 6, 2013

no need to upgrade,just take it to 3.2ghz and you are ready to go.

"do not worry much about bottleneck"

jitpublisher · Apr 6, 2013

Ketchup92 :

Well, that is up to you. However, I feel that their CPU hierarchy charts are just a little skewed and include too many CPUS positioned into the same performance range. But, on the other hand, a CPU is the one thing in your PC that can performance can be positively increased, sometimes with some CPUS, quite dramatically by overclocking. There are many factors when considering a CPU for performance reasons and this is one of them. Overclocking would be a great way to squeeze some power from your current CPU, which will overclock quite well. Unless you have an OEM system like DELL or HP, then your overclocking options will be slim to none.
There are several youtube videos on exactly how to overclock your 9450.

envy14tpe · Apr 6, 2013

Try overclocking, but that requires a special cooler. The stock cooler sucks for overclocks.

If you want to upgrade CPU. You could grab a FX-6300, but I think its for overclockers. Great value.
A new motherboard will be required too.

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Is my system balanced or bottlenecked?

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