It seems my FX-55 is bottlenecking my HD3850

Does that seem right to you guys? cause i got a stock 3dmark06 score of 5400. Then i OC'd my FX-55 only 200mhz and got over 800 more points. What do you think is wrong?

wait, you overclocked your cpu and got more points in a benchmark, no ****.

Oh thanks strangestranger for making me feel welcome with my first post. Anyways to those of you who are being helpful, thank you for answering. So a score of ~6200 3Dmark06 points with a 3850 sounds right to you guys? it just seems like all of the reviews i've seen it has scored 8000 to 10,000 depending on the setup. So I'm guessing the Core2's are rocking my FX-55 as bad as it looks? haha thanks!

Wow ok well thanks for your input. I'm guessing i need a larger heatsink to OC my FX-55 to the max for the time being, because a college student has trouble finding the money to get the HD3850, let alone a whole new build. Thanks to all who helped.

yea ive been looking into it a lil bit, but an upgrade for me wont happen for a while, due to having pretty much no cash ...but thanks for your input, and what processor did u upgrade to from the FX-55, dirty_harry2?

Listen to chuck on this one.Your taking about a 1,200 point hit on 3d06 just because you have a single core proc(which is bullcrap).In the real world of FPS in games at good resolution,IMO,that 3850 is good match for your FX-55.

I upgraded to an AMD 6400+ gegt_canadian, hell of bang for the buck.

ONce again: the FX55 will be bottlenecked in 3dMark.

In an actual game, at 1600x1200 or above, it's not going to matter much - if at all. The graphics card becomes the bottleneck.

bottleneck. :x I'm just kidding, forgive me!

There are only a handful of games that can multi thread. Oblivion, Supreme commander... maybe cutting edge titles like crysis. And then, the performance increase is usually around the 10% area (supreme commander being the exception to the rule)

If you saw huge gains, chances are it wasn't from multithreading.

This is wrong! I play at 1600x1200 on all my games. Results speak for themselves. I had an FX-55 running with my 2900 XT, and when I upgraded to my 6400+, I went up in frames in all my games...

Now I know what you are thinking, faster processor, more frames right? Well I had my FX-55 OC'ed to 3.1 ghz. Also my 7950 GT was getting more fps than my 2900 XT. CSS I went up by 70 fps, BF2142 30 fps, crysis 10 fps, COD4 20 fps and DOW I don't know because it is capped at 60 fps on fraps. However I never dropped below 40 like I did on the old setup.

What Mobo/and or chipset are you running. Nforce 4 will hold you back a little...so I have been told.

I base no evidence on that though.

strangestranger

I did not mean to sound so forward in my correction of cleeve. I am going on all personal experience. I feel that the FX-55 was a bottleneck though. Please however prove me wrong, I need to learn more stuff.

Yea it wasn't because of multi-threading, BF2142 more than doubled in FPS and that is single-threaded. I think my mobo had some serious issues, it did die a few months later (I think it died, something died anyway).

Well, it's hard to 'prove' you wrong when you haven't really provided evidence to support your own claims.

You said "when I upgraded to my 6400+, I went up in frames in all my games...".

Well, how many frames per second did you gain, and in which games?

Canadian, do some looking online and see what your old stuff will sell for used. Upgrading might not cost as much as you think. I remember i had a POS Dell 4600 that I was parting out and some dude paid $90 for the motherboard. I took that money and bought a vastly superior board for no additional cost to begin my next build. 939 technology is quickly becoming harder to find, so you might be able to find someone who really wants an fx-55 and board and is willing to pay for it. A very good am2 board and dual-core cpu can be had for very little cash, less than $200 easy. Also, that DDR RAM will probably sell for more than it would cost to upgrade to 2 gigs of DDR2. You might be able to upgrade at no/minimal cost.

well in CSS my avg frames were 91(which was 1 less than my 7950GT), and they went up to 162, Crysis was like 10 fps, and I went up to 20. Dawn of war, well I can't tell. BF2142 went up from 40 to 70 fps. COD4 went up 20 fps. I dunno.

I play at 1600x1200...maybe something was wrong with my old MOBO?

It's not so much the addition of cores that make the difference, it's the swap of architecture. Going for 1 or 1.5 instructions / cycle to 2.5-3 will make a huge difference.

If you took a P4 and added another core (PD), the increase still wouldn't be outrageous, even in multi-threaded apps.

Oblivion is a 'dual-core' optimized game. Here are some single vs dual core tests:

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2747


Or if you want the raw numbers:

Dual Core: 39.4 FPS
Athlon64 X2 4200+ (2.2 Ghz, 512k cache x 2)

Single Core: 36.2 FPS
Athlon64 3500+ (2.2 Ghz, 512k cache)

About 9% difference... and that's at 1280x1024! A helluva lot lower res than 1600x1200, where the video card will be a lot more bottleneck than a CPU will. Sure as hell not the difference the OP saw, in his games that AREN'T dual core optimized...

Oblivion was in infancy of dual core optimized games. On paper it's dual core but in real gaming performance there is no difference between single or dual.

Yes, but the OP listed CSS and Dawn of war - not dual core optimized at all, to my knowledge.

In any case, other than Supreme Commander, I've yet to see a dual-core optimized game that's more bottlenecked by the CPU than the GPU. But I'l look around... maybe Crysis will surprise me.

I'll admit I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of increase dual core shows in these new titles, I didn't think it'd be that dramatic.

However, at a decent resolution like 1600x1200 - the res the OP was talking about - I'm still going to maintain that the bottleneck shifts more to the graphics card, not the number of cores.

Crysis:
single core 2.4 GHz: 18 fps
dual core 2.6 GHz: 25 fps

This isn't much of a difference, especially when you take into account the .2 GHz faster the dual core is running.

Bioshock:
single core 2.4 GHz: 44 fps
dual core 2.6 GHz: 61 ps

Bioshock shows a surprising leap, I'll admit, even taking into account the .2 GHz speed deficit.

But check the last page, the OP is reporting a 72 fps increase in CSS (I don't believe that's dual-core optimized), a 30 fps increase in Dawn of War (also not dual-core optimized).

That's the result of single-core bottlenecking at 1600x1200. Something else is going on.

I call BS since Crysis is GPU limited than anything else. Even if you overclocked 200mhz it would show 1 fps increase.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html
Tested with a gtx @ 1600x1200 high settings.

Athlon 64 FX-60 @ 2.0 GHz 24fps
Athlon 64 4000+ @ 2.4 GHz 18fps

Single core is clocked higher while FX-60 which is dual core was underclocked. That is 33% difference with 400mhz lower clocked dual core even in GPU limited situations.

Yep, pretty much the same results, demonstrating a .2 or .4 clockspeed difference is neglegable.

As i said before though, I'll admit I'm surprised at the amount of increase dual core shows in these new titles. I hadn't seen a new comparison and had based my opinion on old info.

So thanks to Marvelous for providing those benches and setting me straight.

On a side note, it looks like Dawn of War *is* dual core optimized. I'm still not convinced it accounted for a 30fps difference at 1600x1200 though.

However, this still doesn't account for a 72-fps difference in a single-core app like CSS, especially when the fellow had his single-core FX-55 CPU overclocked to 3.1 GHz. I still think something funny was going on with that fellow's machine.