Pentium D bottleneck

[madass]

A friend of mine has a Pentium D, don't know the model number, its a 3.0GHz Pressler. He wants to buy an ATi Radeon HD4850. How much will the card be bottlenecked?

 

[edeawillrule]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sorry I'm lacking sleep lol.
That PD would hold it back big time.
If the mobo supports it then he should upgrade to a Pentium Dual Core E5200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072
It seems like it would be a downgrade but PDs suck and Core 2/Pentium Dual Core cpus provide double the performance per clock.

 

[AKM880]

What motherboard does he have? Just like edeawillrule said, it'll be bottlenecked by the CPU, unless you can upgrade.

 

[megamanx00]

It will be bottlenecked. How much varies as it could be a dual core with hyper threading model down to just a single core with no hyper threading. Some games will suffer from the weak CPU more than others. Overall though he probably wouldn't see too much of a benefit from getting anything faster than a Radeon 4830. If the PSU is weak just go with the 4670.

 

[AKM880]

Yeah, +1 for the HD4670.

 

[gamerk316]

I'd still go with the 4850, but there will be a bottleneck. I think the Pentium D's were all socket 775, so he might be lucky and be able to plob a mid-range Core2 in there as a cheap upgrade...

 

[AKM880]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was 775 too, but not all motherboards that run those Pentium D's can run a Core 2.

 

[madass]

Thing is his parents arent allowing him to get a newprocessor only a gpu. And im talking about 1024*768 0x AA-he has a 15 inch monitor

 

[AKM880]

Oh well then a 4850 running at 1024x768 resolution

 

[madass]

Whats that supposed to mean?

 

[efeat]

The 4850 would be a waste of money matched with that CPU and that resolution and that level of AA, no matter what games you played.

 

[Dustpuppy]

He'll get about 33-40% of the cards raw performance.

However, things like AA, HDR and ansiotropy are all handled entirely on the graphics card. So he'll be able to crank those up without dinging his frame rate. Downside is he'll never go above the modest frame rates.

The severity of the bottleneck will also vary dramatically from game to game. Keep sound quality to low and make sure any physics is set to low or turned off. Also make sure his power supply can handle it. Older systems especially brand name systems, will frequently lack the amperage on the 12v rail to handle the more recent cards.

eta: just noticed the very low resolution, it'll be severely bottlenecked that low. Probably score around 4500 +- 500 points in 3d mark '06.