5850 bottleneck help please

thanks alot BDDazza, some useful information really appreciated, one last thing if i intend to upgrade my pc in say 7 months time would it still be a better investment in the 5770 then having a 5850 bottlenecked now and running fully later ? thanks again mate

First & foremost, it is a Dell Inspiron system, i'm surprised the PSU in that thing even supported a 2600xt, it may not be able to handle the 5850 at all.

Second, i'm not sure the 5850 will even fit into the case, it's a rather big card, not as big as the 5870, but big enuff.

third, Dell usually prevents overclocking on their proprietary crap systems. Best bet is to start building a new Rig as a whole, even if you buy the components months apart, start with a good quality Corsair PSU, then get a decent mid-tower case, like the Antec 900, then go woth an i5/i7 mobo/CPU/RAM combo, the rest is cake...

Though to answer your original question, no, you would not see that much of a bottleneck with that Core 2 duo, especially if you can OC it. A small bottleneck, maybe, but it would not be overkill to buy that card (provided it fit in the case and the Dell PSU can handle it) with the intensions of upgrading at a sooner date.

I haven't even heard of legionhardware, their charts are hard on my eyes.

stranger, in a lot of the other threads you really purse the arguments too far.

Back to OP, I doubt 18 amps on the 12V rail will push a 5850.

Here's a nice cheap PSU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product
It has a $20 mail-in rebate + New Year's instant savings.

ok so i upgrade my psu, and i checked and it would fit it my case, but now im slightly confused if the bottleneck would be huge or not, mixed comments. would it be more worthwhile getting a whole new rig, just trying to get as much gaming quality on a small budget that's all.

My 5850 is 9 5/8 inches long...... Would I buy one for your set up, yes. It'll be something of value you can carry over to your next build. You'll need to upgrade your power supply along with it. This one for a minimum... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 05........ if it will fit in your case. Not familiar with the 530 at all. Wish you would have said what your future plans are and been more informative about what you have now...opsys/resolution, etc. If you don't want to do a "$400" upgrade now the 5770 will be better than what you have now, especially at lower res and DX9....... just my opinions........ but it wouldn't be something I would consider very usable in a couple of years............ correct me if I'm wrong but some people were having trouble with the 5000 series and XP.............. yes/no ?

I would like to repost the steal of a PSU I found.

ok guys would my psu run a 5770 thanks again ...

Here is a good link to get an idea of about weither your CPU will bottleneck: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] aling.html

It show's a 5870 with several different speed processers including Core 2 duo's, phenom II, i5 and i7 systems.

You'll notice that at lower visuals, the CPU bottle necks, but at high settings, the GPU bottle necks most systems, allowing the 2.7 ghz system to hold pace. That is until you CF, which is show on the right of the charts.

1) your current PSU will not handle a 5850. It's surprising that nobody noticed that before sabot00, but anyway.......

2) your CPU will generally bottleneck that card. Of course some games are more CPU bound than others, and you have to consider the resolution and settings used, but for the most part it's safe to say that your current CPU at it's current clock speed would hold back a single 5850.

3) You could certainly use more RAM. With today's memory demanding games there is a significant, and sometimes dramatic, difference in trying to play with 2GB of System RAM vs 4GB. Not only that but your RAM is DDR2-667 which is a bit slow now adays which will only compound the issue of moving data back and forth between your RAM, Video Card, and system page file (which would be worse if your hard drive is slow).

4) Are you even sure that monster will fit in your case?

Simply put, I don't think you going for a 5850 is a good idea, but hey it's up to you. At the very least you need to upgrade your PSU and make sure it will fit in your case. After that, yes the rest of your system will generally be a big bottleneck for the 5850, but it may not be such a big deal for you now if you upgrade your CPU, Motherboard, and RAM relatively soon. If not, then you are better off going with a 5770 and using the rest of the money to upgrade at least your CPU and RAM.

[quotemsg=2051622,41,324619]No, 512MB's fine up to 1920x1200 without AA, at 1440x900 it's a breeze.
If the price is the same then get the 1GB.

Sabot' you're not smoking crack are you ?