cpu bottlenecking?

[lewbaseball07]

Alright guys i wanted to make sure my e6300 is bottlenecking my 8800gt. I have an e6300 overclocked to 3.15ghz and when i have it at stock speeds i actually see an average of 25 fps decrease in pro street on high settings. The thing is iam planning to go sli because the 8800gt is only 130 bucks. Will i really see an increase in fps or will i need to get a better processor to take advantage of the sli setup? btw i play at 1280x1024. And iam talking about average increase not just an fps increase in one certain game.

 

[epsilon84]

I wouldn't worry about it too much, a 3GHz+ C2D is still plenty fast for almost any game. To really notice a difference you'd need something like an E8400 @ 4GHz, but thats gonna cost you another ~$170 even after the price cuts next week. If you can afford it then go ahead, it'll allow you to get the most out of your SLI setup, just don't expect the CPU upgrade to have anywhere near the same impact on gaming performance as the GPU upgrade. If I were to take a rough guess, I'd say an E8400 @ 4GHz would give you a general ~20% boost, whilst the SLI 8800GT would give you a 50 - 80% boost depending on the game.

Basically what I'm saying is that you can easily get by without the CPU upgrade, but if you do go ahead and upgrade the CPU as well, be aware that it'll be the icing, not the cake.

 

[lewbaseball07]

No man iam going to go big or go home on my cpu upgrade. I would deffiently go for the q9450 but id rather wait untill they come down in price drastically because i also need to upgrade my 650i mobo. But i think iam going to get the cake soon. Save the icing for later, because the icing will also have a strawberry topping (aka new mobo) wheither that be 700 series or 800 down the road. Great analogy by the way LOL

 

[Noya]

1280x1024? I don't think you'll see much of a performance increase in SLi from that low res. Not worth it IMO.

 

[lewbaseball07]

yea thats why i told you the res i play at. Don't really have the money or need for a bigger monitor yet.

 

[epsilon84]

It depends on the game though. Crysis can easily bring a 8800GT down to unplayable framerates at 1280 x 1024 if you push the detail high enough.

1280 x 1024 with max AA/AF is also about as taxing as 'vanilla' 1600 x 1200 or 1920 x 1200, so SLI could certainly help there.

 

[macer1]

then getting afaster CPU or new Motherboard is useless till you ditch such a low res

 

[hayder_master]

i am don't sure the e6300 bottlnick your card , but if you sure try the new one the e8600 better gaming cpu now

 

[lewbaseball07]

Well the reason why i wouldnt get an e8600 is that it won't have the longevity an overclocked q9450 would have. I never leave my processors stock clock. But my next upgrade after sli is deffiently a better and bigger monitor.