Right speed for 5850?

[xiiifigs]

OK guys, maybe this has been discussed to death but I didn't see it anywhere else. Basically I feel something isn't right with the speed of my rig, considering it has a 5850. The rest is the following:

Q6600 in an MSI P35
8 GB RAM
Win7 Home Premium x64
8800GT as PhysX card using the corresponding hack.

All drivers are up-to-date. Seriously, all of them, as well as BIOSes, firmwares, etc.

I'm getting 62 FPS average on Dirt 2's benchmark at 1680*1050 with everything on max.

Far Cry 2 Demo Ranch Long 70,53 FPS average on 1680*1050, all max.

I'm not saying I should get Core i7 performance but don't these seem low?

Thank you all in advance for your 2 cents.

 

[rolli59]

Overclock that CPU a couple of notches and see how that affects it.

 

[shadow187]

Your CPU is bottlenecking. OC it some bit.

 

[xiiifigs]

My bad guys, the CPU is at 3.0 GHz (333.97*9 MHz) at the moment. I guess that was an important omission as it was the first thing I did. Framerates differ like 1-2% between 2.4 and 3.0 GHz. By the way, thank you both for the quick replies.

 

[shadow187]

 

[xiiifigs]

Hello Shadow, I'm with you, I saw the same graph which is what raised the question. My system is showing 70,53 FPS where the graph shows 92 FPS for 5850@1680*1050. What gives? Is the Q6600 such a bottleneck?

 

[rolli59]

Here is the cpu setting for that benchmark above.

"Intel Core i7-975 Extreme (Bloomfield) 3.33 GHz, 6.4 GT/s, 8 MB L3 Cache, power-saving settings disabled
Overclocked to 4 GHz (25 * 160 MHz)"

That is much more CPU power than Q6600 @ 3.0

 

[xiiifigs]

OK rolli, thank you for your input too.

If anyone out there has a similar config to mine with the same numbers then I will need to settle for that explanation.

I guess I just didn't expect a Q6600 to be such a bottleneck, regardless of the fact that I know it can get its ass handed to it by the i7-975.

Again, thank you both for your replies, I appreciate it.

 

[xiiifigs]

Let me just get down to my point: if you anyone out there knows for a fact (i.e. had a 5850 with a bottleneck from the Q6600) please chime in.

Shadow and rolli, I do get your guys' point and reasoning and appreciate your input, and please let me know if you do know of similar cases.

 

[rolli59]

PII x4 955BE not that far away from yours http://www.overclock.net/ati/703503-far-cry-2-benchmarks-hd-5850-a.html
I7 920 std clocks http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=425&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=9

 

[xiiifigs]

Props and thanks to you rolli, even the i7-920 does seem to be somewhat bottlenecking in the benchmarkreviews charts.

I know benchmarks using an i7-975 are done to make sure they're not bottlenecking the GPU, but man, the difference between an 975 and a"real-world" CPU almost make the benchmarks pointless from a buyer's point of view. Nobody's fault though, it just seems to be getting harder and harder to predict an upgrade's effect.

 

[xiiifigs]

Best answer selected by xiiifigs.

 

[OvrClkr]

I have a GTX 260 and I get 74 avg FPS with the exact same settings as the OP @ 3.8Ghz

The OP has a huge CPU bottleneck.