CPU Limiting.....

[digitalmicron]

Hey guys I just wanted to know how much you guys think my CPU is limiting my GPU. I recently upgraded my system and I recycled a few things as I was on a budget and I was trying to get the best bang for my buck. I reused my CPU and PSU from my previous system. Here's my specs on my current setup....

Geforce 650 Ultra I Mobo
Intel Pentium D 945
4 GB DDR-II 800
Geforce 9600GT
320 GB Sata HD
Windows XP 32-bit

I normally game at 1280x1024 because my monitor sucks right now. It's a big CRT piece of crap. But I'll be upgrading to a 19" LCD later on this week. I'm buying a year old gateway monitor off a friend for 50 bucks.

Hey I also wanted to know how much power I'd be saving if I upgraded to a Q6600 Processor...

Alright guys get to it.

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[shadowduck]

Not that much- Q6600 uses a lot of power. It does however run cooler than a D 945.

Your CPU actually should not bottlenecking you to badly. Pentium D 945 is not that old. However a C2D/Q anything blows the Pentiums away.

 

[digitalmicron]

I thought the C2Ds and C2Quads were basically built the same way.... Just one has 2 and the other has 4 cores.

 

[lucuis]

I thought the C2Ds and C2Quads were basically built the same way.... Just one has 2 and the other has 4 cores.

Pretty much, the Duos have 2 cores, and the Quads are 2 Duos mashed together.

To the OP, i'd be willing to bet your CPU is indeed bottlenecking your Graphics Card. It's hard to say by how much unless you run some benchmarks.

If you could run a 3DMark06 one time through at default settings and post the individual scores it help. Make sure if you do to post the CPU SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores, not just the overall. Also run it just after a reboot, with everything you don't need running in the background off, like virus software, firewalls, web browser, etc. Then we could compare your Graphics scores to other systems with a more powerful CPU to see how much the difference is. If your processor is the bottleneck, your graphics scores will obviously be noticeably lower then a system with a more powerful processor.

You'd see a major performance increase with a Q6600 in place of your Pentium D.

 

[digitalmicron]

Ok I'll do that later on tonight then. I actually just got a copy of 3DMark06 last week because I was going to run some benchmarking too see how much of a performance gain that I was getting since the recent upgrade. I'll post the score that I get from each test to do a comparison.

Thanks for the input guys.

 

[digitalmicron]

Ok I ran the test last night and here are the results...

SM2 - 2932
SM3 - 3198
CPU - 1632

Overall is 6771

Would those scores go up alot if say I bought a Q6600 and Overclocked to say 3.0 Ghz. Thats what I've been wanting to do but I just don't have the funds. Thanks.