what graphics card with this cpu?

[davegl1234]

Hi, I have been asking very similar questions over the last few days but am still a little unsure of what i'm going to do so any help would be great.

I am in the process of buying a graphics card but am unsure of what to go for, bearing in mind my phenom quad core 9650 2.3 cpu. I would like to play high resolutions (say 1920x1200) due to my 28 inch monitor. I'm thinking of a geforce 9800 gtx+, or if i can afford it a gtx260. Just wondering for each of these cards whether my cpu would be good enough or whether I would need to overclock my phenom at all to be able to take advantage of these cards, especially considering if i were to spend a fair amount more on the gtx260. If so what speed would you recommend (would 2.6 do it)?

Also I was thinking of perhaps buying one 9800 gtx+ now and maybe one in a few months (due to money issues and as I only have onboard graphics at the moment) to run in SLI. I guess this definetaly would bottleneck ridiculously at any overclocking I could muster?

Could the cpu come more into play further down the line as well, as games start taking advantage of multi-threads? Or are we talking too long or not making a great deal of difference? Could be cpu suddenly become a lot more useful when games start multi-threading?

Cheers

 

[xxcoop42xx]

ok ill help as much as i can, i dont know much about AMD cpu's because ive never owned one. ive always had intel but i do know that a 2.3GHz quad-core will bottleneck both of those cards, not super bad (great movie lol) but enough to where you will want to overclock. id say to about 2.5-2.8GHz range should be good for those cards and as always the higher the clock the more fps/performance you'll get. as of now i have both the GTX 260-216 and SLI 9800GTX+ and my cpu is a oc'ed Q9300 from 2.5GHz to 3.2GHz. at 2.5GHz SLI was a waste and the GTX 260-216 was held back but at 3.2GHz the SLI shines like it supposed to and the GTX 260-216 falls behind the SLI but thats because its 2x 9800GTX+ > GTX 260-216. i plan on buying another GTX 260-216 next month for SLI. so overclock your cpu a bit and then you will be fine with either choice.

 

[davegl1234]

Sweet, just what i wanted to here! nice one.

Just wondering what the deal is with multi-threading games? I've been searching around but not finding much.

Can I expect a sudden performance increase in my cpu when games start taking advantage?...just thinking about future upgrades of the cpu too.

 

[davegl1234]

Plus does that clock range (2.5-2.8 ghz) apply to games that use multi threading as well?

 

[xxcoop42xx]

well multi-threaded means that it will use more than just 1 ore 2 cores, it helps with application stability and such. as for game performance i cant really give you any info about that as i dont know. but i know that apps using more than 2 cores usually are more stable and probably perform better. but like i said there's no 2-core crysis game and no 4-core crysis game, you know what i mean. its hard to say multi-threaded works/runs better if you cant compare them with 1 thing.

 

[L1qu1d]

at 1920x1200 I would say you'd benefit more from a 1 gig 4870 or the cheaper 260 GTX SP 192 (not 216, its just a waste). Even though alot of cards manage 1920x1200, you might say oh i don't need AA. Well you might be right, but think of it like this, if you can max AA games now (not max, but can do AA) it means that later gen games will have a better chance standing at that resolution with out AA. Ofc thats not a guarantee, but thats how I run my cards.

I mean I would go so far as to say even the 280 GTX, but honestly its price tag just doesn't show much appeal. If you could find it around 350$ I mean then thats your best buy. But 400$+? meh

260 GTX Sp 192 or 4870 1 gig (I'd even say the 512, but if you ever choose to go with a 4870 x2 or just want to play texture heavy games, the 512 ram might put it down, just look at the 9800 GX2, which is basicall 2 9800 GTXs under clocked)

 

[cerulean]

Also I was thinking of perhaps buying one 9800 gtx+ now and maybe one in a few months (due to money issues and as I only have onboard graphics at the moment) to run in SLI. I guess this definetaly would bottleneck ridiculously at any overclocking I could muster?

This threw a red flag up for me. Onboard graphics? Is this a preassembled/store bought PC (Dell, HP, etc...) or did you build it yourself? If it's preassembled, what type of power supply / mb do you have? If you're planning to put a powerful graphics card in there you'll need to ensure you have enough juice for it. Also, I would check to make sure you can even O.C. that rig, as well (if preassembled), since the manufacturer can place restrictions on this.

Given you have enough juice to power those cards, 2.6 GHz is where you'd want to be around minimally. I'm not sure how well the phenoms overclock, but I'm sure you should be able to manage a 300 MHz overclock on the stock cooler. If you have a good aftermarket cooler you could probably go quite a bit higher, as well.

As far as having multiple cores. This will only benefit you if you have a game or application that uses more than 1 thread simultaneously. Most current games do not use more than 1 thread to do most of the work and, therefore receive only minimal benefit. Note that even if a game is single-threaded you still receive a minor benefit since graphics drivers are multi-thread optimized.

If you have a game that is multi-threaded you may not need as high of a CPU clock to run it with acceptable fps, HOWEVER, many of the games that are multithreaded are already very demanding, which is probably the reason they chose to thread optimize them for increased performance. Point being, the higher your clock rate, the more performance you will get in ALL cases. Your performance (and power consumption) will increase more dramatically as your clock rate increases on multi-threaded games since you are increasing the clock rate for all cores in your CPU. i.e. a 2GHz to 2.5 GHz overclock is effectively a 1 GHz performance increase if your game runs 2 threads at 100% utilization.

 

[davegl1234]

Thanks for the input. I am in the process of building it at the mo, but its my first attempt (wish I had read more about mulitple core cpu's and gaming before!).

I have a ASUS M3N-HD/HDMI motherboard that apparently comes with a host of overclocking features so i think i'll look into overclocking it a little.

I was thinking of Nvidia at first just in case I decided to SLI (as its a 750a SLI chipset) but it seems i probably wouldn't have the cpu to make it worthwhile anyway so i'll check out the 4870.

I was thinking of buying a 750 corsair psu, i guess that will be sufficient?

Nice one

 

[xxcoop42xx]

if its a nvidia chipset i would say go with a GTX 260-216, they are slightly faster than the 4870 and it would work better with the mobo being both nvidia. i recommend EVGA because of lifetime warranty and step-up program

 

[Techno-boy]

If I'm were you, and if I am gaming at that high resolution then I would buy Radeon HD 4870 X2. No Doubt.

Or wait until Radeon HD 5870 with DirectX 11 comes out next year in Q1/Q2 2009. (If you desperately need DirectX 11 and more powerful GPU for high resolution or if you can wait that long)

This is because I like to put high Anti-Aliasing and high image details but to make this possible at that high resolution like 1080P (which will be standard in the near future) or 1920x1200, without ruining performance then Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the right choice.

Anyway, this is just my recommendation but the last words and decision will be yours... Good Luck!