Minimum CPU to push the GTX 295

Currently I have a e6850 w/10% OC is it going to be enough?
Vista 64 ult 8 gigs ram

I would say an e8400 at stock speeds would be a minimum, so a 3.3ghz 6850 should be fine.

Perhaps

My Q6600 bottle necked my gtx260 at 2.4, so I would have to disagree with the above posts. I would say a quad with at least 3.2-3.4 to get the full benefits of the 295.

^+1
I may be wrong here but any CPU upgrade/overclock will result in a performance increase. Thats not to say you had a bottleneck or more correctly a system restriction before.

Mactronix

hmmmmmmm i'd have to disagree with you and strangerstranger. Im on a 2mb cache core 2 (e6300) and ive noticed a boost every time i oc. gone in steps from stock to 2.1ghz, then to 2.4ghz, to 2.8ghz, and now finally on 3.0ghz. The last 200mhz oc I definetly felt in games and its a shame i cant go any further on my crappy ram. Ive got a 4870 and im sure as eggs are eggs thats its not operating at full potential for want of cpu power. Games want 2 fast cores much much more than 4 quick-ish cores btw, so a stock q6600 is not gonna cut it alongside say even a e6850. Crysis 1&2, farcry 2 and both stalkers love all the mhz you can throw at them. Besides gaming with fraps on and the odd not so infrequent jerkiness without the HD grinding away and neither the fps going under 25 is nailed-on cpu limitation, which I do experience. Cheers.

oh ok fair enough. Nice explanation for a cpu bottleneck btw!

That is not a bottleneck, that is a cpu limitation, not the same thing.

Your system performance needs to be severely restricted for it to be a bottleneck.

If the rest of your system can process information at a suitable rate but one component cannot, it is a bottleneck.

You will, never ever ever ever get a fully balanced system even with a software app that had a balanced load between cpu and gpu.

This may come as a surprise but i actually do like helping people and noobs like you you spread fud about what is needed cause too much harm in regards to newbs with your "definition" of a bottleneck.

Im a little confused with the article above. I think I must be missing something.
Quote" A sustained processor queue of less than two threads per processor is normally acceptable, depending upon the workload."

While in Task Man. I see where threads are listed but it cant be the queue.
How do I see the actual queue?
My threads are 739 on a dual core Amd at 3.2G while Im typing this.
I know that cant be right.

SS+bottleneck explanations =oh oh
It all comes down to the definition of bottleneck. Too many people refer to restrictions as bottlenecks. Now, If I say a restriction is somewhat of a bottleneck? Each carries so much weight, with the term bottleneck is as SS said, not allowing for competant performance, whereas a restriction allows for acceptable performance, but has slowdowns/restrictions in certain areas regarding HW

Sorry to be an arse about this but not everyone has an unlimited budget and the thought of the uninformed being told by 10 people that they need a 3ghz cpu or else and spending more than they need to annoys me greatly.

The worst part is that there is never, ever and proof to back up what they say.

So someone buying a Gtx295 is just going to be dropping it in their newly bought Bestbuy HP desktop?

I believe I was more on point with what this post was: Will an E6850 bottleneck a gtx295?

The answer is yes, to a certain degree, considering our definitions of 'bottleneck' vary a great deal as we've seen.

Yes, but you cannot visualise your bottleneck nor prove it exists, so your kinda screwed there.

Why thank you, you still have no way of backing up what you say, i could, if i can be arsed get some benchies which show a "slow" CPu gettig perfectly playable fps.

All you can do is prove my point.

Perfectly playable is also subjective as well as the definition of bottleneck.

Edit: He stated Minimum CPU to PUSH the gtx295, he never stated Minimum CPU to run a gtx295, you could run a gtx295 with a 10 year old CPU if you wished.

I'm not sure, but I have to disagree with your statement. GTX295 will be on PCI-express and I don't think any motherboard with a socket fitting a 10 year old CPU have a PCI-express slot. You could also have issues with a 10 year old CPU running XP and Nvidia's drivers, I'm not sure if Nvidia will put out GTX 295 drivers for anything before XP. I'm not sure of these two issues, however, and I didn't look at Nvidia drivers or try to find socket 478 motherboards with PCI-e.

I'm not trying to be mean, but you rudely asserted your intelligence, and I find that annoying.

The linked article is defining an acceptable queue in the context of an Oracle Database - Meaning, for each processor in your server, there should be 2 threads at a time in the queue awaiting a response (or less) - in sustained operation. So unless you have an Oracle database running on your PC, it's safe to ignore this specification.

Also, you are looking at the total number of processes running on your computer - Not how many happen to have transactions awaiting a response from a database that you don't have...


As far as the rest of the discussion here... Without defining a context, even in as minimal a fashion as setting a screen resolution, any discussion is essentially meaningless. - (The amount of Processor power needed to max this card at 1024x768 is very different from what's needed to achieve the same result at 1920x1200) - And doubly so since nobody can actually buy one of these cards yet. Therefore, it's probably also safe to ignore everything posted on the topic, too.

Thanks for all the info and the article was informative as well. Im going to order the card as soon as its available and I'll post FPS results based on the my current system and with the switch to the gtx295. I will use the crysis demo, 3d05, 3d06. Thx again.

Sorry=P Was actually going to use a different word which required an*, ended up using transcendent and forgot to change it, fixed for ya.