A "bottleneck" question

Ive been playing COD4 and Unreal Tournament 3, and some Quake Territory

Of course id love to play Crysis....

I just know from past experience that sometimes the card isnt able to run at full swing because its waiting on the CPU and memory bus. Is this the case if I get a 8800 series?

Yes it will be (the cpu) the bottleneck for your system, and I will say it 1 more time. The single most gaming improvement a gamer can make is to upgrade his card. No, you wont be pulling the top framerates with that cpu, but if you game at 10x12 res or higher you wont see much bottlenecking, or, enuff for you to not appreciate your upgrade

Thanks for the information, that is exactly what I needed to know.

My computer is hooked up to my 40" 720p LCD so I end up playing games at 1360 x 768, not a really high resolution. Sounds like I wont need a new mobo/CPU/memory for a bit longer!!

Thanks again!

Yeah I have an Athlon X2 3800+ only clocked to 2.3 ghz and I can play Crysis with everything on High, no AA, on 1280X1024 and still squeeze out 30-40 fps with my 8800GT. You should be fine with that 4200+ of yours but it sucks that they discontinued all the 'good' CPU for socket 939 like the 4800+ and FX-60.   AND PLEASE get yourself a 8800GT or ATI's Radeon 3870 and STAY AWAY FROM THE 8800GTS. If you go for the GTS you will be kicking yourself in the future.

Yea, I am leaning towards the 8800GT. And if prices come down a bit in the future, may choose to go with a 780i in and 2 8800GT in SLI. But one 8800GT is a great value and will let me take "baby steps."

I cant really afford to drop 1k on a PC ya know, id rather make a house payment.  

FYI - Best buy has the BFG - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT OC Graphics Card on sale for only $238.

1360 x 768 is pretty lowactually, and your CPU might bottleneck a tad with older games.

However, if you want to play new titles like Crysis, the CPU will make little difference, the graphics card will be the deciding factor. Especially if you want to add a bit of AA.

Well thank you everyone, I really appreciate all the great information! Now I just need to wait for that x-mas gift money!!! =)

I see what you're saying, but I did mean older games...

Next-gen games like crysis, that require the pixel shading power of high-end cards, will be more videocard dependant and show less of a bottleneck with the CPU at low resolutions I reckon...

The 8800GT or 3870 would be a great upgrade for your system.

Just been checking my system after what cleeve said about newer and older games and i have tested in oblivion and found the CPU to be bottlenecking so when i played Crysis i assumed it was the CPU again but i just oced the graphics card and instant frames Cheers Cleeve      
Im off to see how hard i can push it now.
Mactronix

Heheh. Yeah, I hear you. Not even disagreeing with you.