Hi all.
i was wondering if my AM2 4600 was powerful enough to handle a 8800gts 320 or 640 meg video card or even the ati hd2900 i my specs are
msi k9 platinum
amd am2 4600
550 psu
2 gig gskill mem
i read some cards are bottled necked by processors and was wondering if mine was gonna be like that with one of the newer cards tks for your help....

Video cards are bottlenecked at low resolutions. A c2d 6300 will get 100fps with a 8800gtx at 1024x768 while a x6800 will get 140. If you crank up to 1600x1200 or pull 4xMSAA 16AF at max quality, both will make 40fps because the card won't handle it, making the cpu fast enough.
So, gaming at 80, 100, 150, 200fps is the same. Your cpu is fine to couple with any card.

I hate these questions. Of course It can handle it.

There may be a bottleneck at times. There is always bottleneck though. Something will always be waiting for something else. It is near impossible to have both cpu and graphics working full speed together.

Who got this bottleneck craze going? Was it a toms review or something.

That proc will be fine, I have a 939 4000+ and all games absolutely fly with an 8800 GTS 640

The "cpu is a bottleneck" theory comes from the GTX CPU scaling article that Tom's did a little while back, as PMR said, an E6300 gets 100fps @ 1024x768 where as an x6800 gets 140fps, but tests at low resolutions are meaningless just as 100fps+ is meaningless because the eye can't see anything over 24fps anyway.

The one thing it did show however was that an old single core gets almost no improvement in fps going from a GTS to a GTX, but anything dual core saw a huge jump.

if not, OVERCLOCK!!!

ok thanks everybody for the help yea it was on toms
site seen a lot of post on other forums also but tks for the info much appreated now on to the money spending....lol

yes, please stop these threads talking about the CPU bottleneck, it would be so miniscule 99% of the time, and unoticable. anyway, andybird123 the eyes perception can't be measured in fps, take a look at this http://www.100fps.com/how_many_fra [...] ns_see.htm