939 4800 and 2900xt

[amddiesel]

I was wondering if a 4800 x2 at 2.7 will be the bottleneck for a 2900 xt or a 8800 gtx?

 

[Malaga93]

no

 

[erocker]

I agree. No. Though, I would go for the 640mb GTS instead.

 

[r0ck]

http://livedeviant.com/graphic-cards/review-8800gtx-vs.-8800gts-on-both-intel-and-amd.html

BTW, 2900=bad.

 

[Jakc]

Didn't the 2900 depend less on CPU than the nvidia alternatives?
I can't remember now, but I think i saw some reviews on a lower end processor where 2900 beat 8800 gtx all the way?
Hmmm I'll try to find it.

 

[erocker]

It's quite possible if the 2900 actually uses itself for physics and doesn't dump them off to the cpu like Nvidia. I think OC'd the processor can handle any of them. I run a 320mb GTS in my 939 x2 3800, and I love it. My 3dMark06 scores are comparable to many AM2 and Core2duo offerings.

 

[shinigamiX]

I haven't seen that anywhere... are you sure? If that's true the only reason I can think of is that the GTX is powerful enough to be bottlenecked more @___@

 

[erocker]

I haven't seen that anywhere... are you sure? If that's true the only reason I can think of is that the GTX is powerful enough to be bottlenecked more @___@

True! However the gains outweigh the bottlenecking. That's kinda why I suggested the GTS. But more the reason for cost.

 

[halbhh]

no bottleneck problem. it's a good combo. And a high resolution monitor is a reasonable indulgence with the 2900

 

[funnyman06]

it would be stupid to upgrade to AM2, your current dual core at 2.7 will be fine with a 2900XT. What resolution do you run at, because the higher the resolution the more GPU dependant you run and the lower the resolution the higher the CPU dependancy will be...

Also with better drivers, i bet the 2900XT will get alot faster, hardware wise it is much better than the 8800 series. It has a far more memory bandwith, and it has more stream processors. I just hope AMD/ATI gets on the ball and gets some good drivers out so we can see the real power of the 2900XT.

2900XT 320 stream processors 106GB/s Memory Bandwith
8800GTX 128 stream processors 87GB/s Memory Bandwith

 

[amddiesel]

I usually game at 1280x1024 with medium aa and medium af and usually high to very high textures selected in games

 

[amddiesel]

If i can get descent frames id like to go up to 1600x1200 but on a 17'' crt it gets a little small for my eyes

 

[halbhh]

It wouldn't hurt to put some money into a better monitor. But the 4800 is plenty for the 2900 for now, imo.

 

[inquisitor03]

Hi, I currently run a 939 4800x2 @ 2.7 with an XFX 8800GTX Extreme.

I game at 1280x1024 and i feel that the processor is too slow for some things. It's on par with low end cheap Core 2.

What i would like to know though and it annoys me a a little is the fact that I can run for example, FEAR with everything on at 1280x960 and it runs superbly smooth (>60fps) for 90% of the time and then all of a sudden the frame rate will drop to below 20-30 when there's any complicated scenes to render.

This could be 1 room in 10 that run slowly but it ruins the feel for me so i then end up turning the options down so that the complicated scenes run ok. I then feel cheated becuase for the other 90% i feel i could have a better looking game.

The built-in benchmark doesn't drop below 65fps and runs well over a 90fps at other times. Maybe there is a need to have a more complex benchmark to thoroughly test everything within the game becuase by those scores FEAR should run without any problems!

Maybe i'm expecting too much?!?


FYI -
3DMark05 - 14620
3DMark06 - 9631

 

[amddiesel]

i run fear with my 1900xtx with no hiccupps but are you using all of the anti-alaising and AF filtering maxed?

 

[inquisitor03]

I started off with 4xAA and 16AF but turning them down or off didnt seem to make much of a difference on the lower FPS so i have now lowered the res to 1024x768 and now i have 4xAA and 16AF and it seems to run ok.

this is why i suspect it's the CPU that can't keep up and not the GPU

 

[halbhh]

I'm not sure of the memory preferences for that game, but there are games that like more than 1 GB. If you have just 1GB, you could test this out by closing everything else, including lots of resident processes until most of the memory is free and see whether that makes any difference. Myself, with very heavy multitasking, even though 100MB was listed as free, I was having troubles at 1GB that disappeared at 1.5GB.