Radeon Hd 4850 Performance. Is this normal?

[mellow87]

Hi guys,

I just built my first PC and I'm also new to these forums, but I have read them occasionally (very helpful community) so I decided to start this topic to see you guys' opinion. Are these performance results normal for a 4850 and my system? And if so, how to improve?

My system:

CPU: Athlon II x3 445 Rana (Unlocked to Phenom II x4 B45 *No L3 cache*) stock clock

Board: Asrock M3A770DE

Memory: 4GB G-Skill DDR3 1600 9-9-9-24-2N (I manually set the speeds to 1600 because it was set to 1333)

GPU: Radeon HD 4850

O/S: Window 7 Ultimate 32-bit

Monitor: Some old 17" monitor, upgrading to 19" LCD in the next couple of days

*EDIT* forgot to mention O/S and Monitor, just added them in *EDIT*

So, first of all... I was abit dissapointed by the performance in Napoleon: Total War (could not max settings and enjoy a smooth experience even at low resolution of 1280x960).

Civ V runs decent, even though abit sloppy at times when game gets pretty long and there's loads of stuff happening when you end turn.

And I just tried 3dmark vantage and here are my results:

####
SETTINGS:

Res: 1280 x 1024 Texture quality: High
Multisample Count: 1 Shadow shader quality: High
Texture Filtering: Optimal Shadow res quality: High
Max Anisotropy: 1 Shader quality: High
Loop count: 1 Post processing scale: (1:2)

Rest of the settings on default.
####

RESULTS:

GPU score: 6968
CPU score: 10105

GPU TEST 1: 19.97 FPS
GPU TEST 2: 20.87

CPU TEST 1: 1277.72 PLANS/S
CPU TEST 2: 16.42 STEPS/S

FEATURE TEST 1: 21.65 GTEXELS/S
FEATURE TEST 2: 3.41 GPIXELS/S
FEATURE TEST 3: 21.63 FPS
FEATURE TEST 4: 19.42 FPS
FEATURE TEST 5 30.55 FPS
FEATURE TEST 6: 44.75 FPS

I appreciate the help, thanks!

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
Those games are CPU limited,so your CPU maybe holding you back.Try some other games especially First person titles and check your FPS.
Also OC your CPU, and see if your FPS changes in Napoleon or not.

 

[mellow87]

Hi Maziar, and thanks for the reply.

As far as OC is concerned, I don't think I can do it right now.. because under prime95 my CPU reaches max temp of 59C and I believe it is recommended to keep it under 60C.

Any pointers on how to see if my 4850 is performing as it should? Like some kind of benchmark or tests that just deal with the graphics card?

Thanks!

 

[mellow87]

shameless bump in hope of assistance !

 

[hunter315]

The hyper 212+ is now back at a reasonable price on newegg, you can get it and OC your CPU a fair amount, it will drop the temps quite a bit compared to the stock cooler.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065&cm_re=hyper_212%2b-_-35-103-065-_-Product
That should help to alleviate the CPU bottleneck.

 

[mellow87]

The hyper 212+ is now back at a reasonable price on newegg, you can get it and OC your CPU a fair amount, it will drop the temps quite a bit compared to the stock cooler.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065&cm_re=hyper_212%2b-_-35-103-065-_-Product
That should help to alleviate the CPU bottleneck.

so you really think this is a cpu bottleneck and not gpu? i mean with those specs.

thanks again, sorry if im asking obvious questions, im new to all this ..

 

[mellow87]

Update: So I checked my cpu/gpu loads while playing Napoleon Total War and my CPU load is mostly 100% on 1 core and almost idle on the other 3 cores.
And GPU is pretty much 100% all the time while playing.

Is it normal for it to only use 1 core? and if it is normal, then I guess the only way to determine bottleneck is to overclock CPU?

 

[unknown_13]

Update: So I checked my cpu/gpu loads while playing Napoleon Total War and my CPU load is mostly 100% on 1 core and almost idle on the other 3 cores.
And GPU is pretty much 100% all the time while playing.

Is it normal for it to only use 1 core? and if it is normal, then I guess the only way to determine bottleneck is to overclock CPU?

Almost idle? I think that Napoleon Total War makes use of Intel's i7 980x CPU, first game that truly makes use of 6-core CPU's. Something doesn't fell right.

Don't worry 'bout the GPU, Napoleon Total War is a pretty new game, it's normal to be at 100% load.

EDIT: And what did you mean your Athlon II X3 is unlocked to Phenom II X3?? Maybe you should try setting everything in BIOS to default settings.

 

[mellow87]

Almost idle? I think that Napoleon Total War makes use of Intel's i7 980x CPU, first game that truly makes use of 6-core CPU's. Something doesn't fell right.

Don't worry 'bout the GPU, Napoleon Total War is a pretty new game, it's normal to be at 100% load.

EDIT: And what did you mean your Athlon II X3 is unlocked to Phenom II X3?? Maybe you should try setting everything in BIOS to default settings.

Ah my bad, I meant to type X4 meaning I unlocked the 4th core and it's recognized as a Phenom II x4 B45 (except that the L3 cache didn't unlock).

Well, I will revert back to default BIOS settings (3 cores only) and try to benchmark and run games to see if I notice anything different.

Just a question, theoretically would a 3-core overclocked CPU perform better than a 4-core stock-clock CPU? and If that is the case, how much higher should the clock be to notice an improvement over the 4-core cpu?

Thanks again!

 

[Mousemonkey]

shameless bump in hope of assistance !

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