How much will my stock q6600 bottleneck my new 5850?

[csquared587]

Hi,

I am currently running my q6600 @ 2.4ghz(stock) with an 8800 GTS 640mb and 4gb ddr2 ram. I upgraded to a 1920x1200 monitor and the 8800 wasn't performing up to my expectations. I bought a 5850 from newegg yesterday, but now I am worried my q6600 will be a HUGE bottleneck. I want to learn to overclock, but at the moment how much do you guys think the q6600 will hinder my 5850?


Will I see any improvement from the 8800 at all, or will the CPU hinder it that much?


Thanks for any help.

 

[MARSOC_Operator]

I don't think you'll be bottlenecked by your Q6600, even at stock speeds. Bottleneckeing would be an issue with your current CPU, only in case of doing crossfire. (or a single 5970). Your CPU can handle up to a single 5870 smoothly. ATI cards-- unlike Nvidia-- are generally are not major CPU hogs. And a Core 2 Quad is still quite a powerful processor for gaming.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

In games/programs that only use two cores, yes it will bottleneck. You have 4 cores but the low clockspeed will be limiting.

However, the Q6600 is very overclockable, easily reaching 3.0GHz without much effort, and can reach up to 3.6GHz-4.0GHz. 3.0GHz should eliminate most of your bottlenecking.


http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277550-28-will-stock-q6600-4ghz-bottleneck-5850