AMD Athlon II X2 255 and a ATI HD 6870

[cburke82]

So my CPU is the Athlon 255 stated in the topic and I just purchased the HD 6870. Ass of right now I mostly play WoW and I know that processor is fine there. My question is, now that I have a good GPU if I wanted to go buy Crysis or something like that how bad will that CPU effect my game play. I have seen the benchmarks for the card and Im happy with those but they are all done on much more powerful CPU's.

 

[purple stain]

Your dual core will more than likely get bogged down by the weight of Crysis or any other intesive game and it will take your 6870 with it.If you have the money i would suggest upgrading to a Athlon ii x4.The good ones don't cost more than $100.

Do you have the athlon ii or the first generation?

What socket is your mobo?

 

[cburke82]

Your dual core will more than likely get bogged down by the weight of Crysis or any other intesive game and it will take your 6870 with it.If you have the money i would suggest upgrading to a Athlon ii x4.The good ones don't cost more than $100.

Do you have the athlon ii or the first generation?

What socket is your mobo?

I have the Athlon II socket AM3. If i decide to start playing crysis and such im thinking about the Phenom II X4 965 what do you think about that combo?

 

[purple stain]

Yah i have the 965 and it's great.It's a really good prossesor.

 

[cburke82]

Yah i have the 965 and it's great.It's a really good prossesor.

I see you have the setup im looking to have sooner or later lol what how high can you crank up the setting and what sort of frame rates do you get?

 

[sabot00]

On video games you don't need a very good processor, so I'll answer for him, considering only the CPU bottlenecks; maximum settings in all games like fluid FPS.

 

[purple stain]

Well i have the 965 O.C. to 3.9ghz and my XFX6870 is up to 975/1225.I can max out almost any DX9 game like COD Black Ops but on the more demanding games like BFBC2 i can to turn it down a bit.I still can max it out but i pull back on the AA and AF but i still get 50+ fps.

I agree but it's a small gain, but still a gain.And it is futureproof to upgrade to a quad core.I'm sure he's more than intrested in playing Crysis 2.

 

[cburke82]

crysis is a dual core game, he would have the exact same FPS with the x2 as he would the x4......

here is the proof

athlon II x2 @ 2.8ghz 65FPS
athlon II x4 @ 2.8ghz 68FPS
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/114?vs=105

that website is cool thanks for the link

when I adjust the second processor to the one im thinking about it gets better

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/121?vs=102

it shows about 18 FFPS improvement now it doesnt show the whole system specs and I doubt the 6870 and the phenom 965 would really pull 80 FPS so the GPU must have been much more savage than the 6870 lol

 

[purple stain]

So what is your decision? What are your plans?

 

[megamanx00]

Yeah, the 255 is a bit underpowered for that GPU, unless you're running eyefinity ^_^. Anyway, at the very least you can overclock your CPU, but if you're going to replace your CPU I say get a 955BE C3, a good CPU cooler, and overclock it .

 

[cburke82]

So what is your decision? What are your plans?

downloaded the crysis demo yesterday...With all settings as high as the demo will let me (very high 8xAA) I get about 27-32 FPS not bad for that processor. Do you guys think the full realese version of the game will run smoother? What do you use to OC your card? I have a lenovo so I cant OC the CPU right now so im going to end up with the 965 stock but if im avg 30 FPS full settings Im not in a big hurry to spend the $150 lol I might just wait until I can get a bigger case and new mobo and the processor at the same time but thats going to be around $300 give or take and I dont need the extra 15-20 FPS that bad this second.

 

[purple stain]

Crysis is still difficult to max out even after years of it's release.Still one of the worlds most demanding games.You will need a corssfire setup in order to run it on it's max settings.Otherwise i would say tone down the AA and AF and put it on high settings and you should get in the 50's fps.
I was playing the ripped version of Crysis 2 and it isn't nearly as demanding as the original Crysis.I had everything maxed out and was averaging 50+fps.So if you are into Crysis that i guess it's something to look forward to in Crysis 2.I'm sure Crysis 2 beifnits from a quad core CPU so it's well invested.

I use MSI Afterburner to OC my GPU and i OC the CPU from the BIOS.If you don't think it's worth buying the CPU now and you want to wait i would suggest waiting until april or may.That should be when the new AMD Bulldozer chips will be released.If you can afford the Bulldozer chips then i would say go ahead but if you cannot i'm sure the prices will drop for the older generation Phenom ii chips.You could possibly get a Phenom ii x6.

 

[cburke82]

Crysis is still difficult to max out even after years of it's release.Still one of the worlds most demanding games.You will need a corssfire setup in order to run it on it's max settings.Otherwise i would say tone down the AA and AF and put it on high settings and you should get in the 50's fps.
I was playing the ripped version of Crysis 2 and it isn't nearly as demanding as the original Crysis.I had everything maxed out and was averaging 50+fps.So if you are into Crysis that i guess it's something to look forward to in Crysis 2.I'm sure Crysis 2 beifnits from a quad core CPU so it's well invested.

I use MSI Afterburner to OC my GPU and i OC the CPU from the BIOS.If you don't think it's worth buying the CPU now and you want to wait i would suggest waiting until april or may.That should be when the new AMD Bulldozer chips will be released.If you can afford the Bulldozer chips then i would say go ahead but if you cannot i'm sure the prices will drop for the older generation Phenom ii chips.You could possibly get a Phenom ii x6.

So the Msi software works n the XFX card then right? what kind of temps are you seeing on that card with that OC?

 

[purple stain]

Well with the MSI software you can set a fan speed profile.The max temp for the 6870 is somewhere between 90c and 100c.I set my fan speed to match the temperature.For example if my GPU is at 50c the fan speed is at 50%.In the most GPU intesive games the highest i've seen the temps is around 70c.It's not an extreme O.C. either i haven't messed with the voltage for it,it's still at stock.But the hotter it gets the louder it gets to.

I was very disapointed when i first got my 6870 and heard how loud it was at full load.I'm trying to buy an aftermarket cooler for it but they are very expensive at the moment.The one i was looking at is around $50.And if you alter/mod the 6870 in anyway it voids XFX's lifetime warranty.

 

[cburke82]

Well with the MSI software you can set a fan speed profile.The max temp for the 6870 is somewhere between 90c and 100c.I set my fan speed to match the temperature.For example if my GPU is at 50c the fan speed is at 50%.In the most GPU intesive games the highest i've seen the temps is around 70c.It's not an extreme O.C. either i haven't messed with the voltage for it,it's still at stock.But the hotter it gets the louder it gets to.

I was very disapointed when i first got my 6870 and heard how loud it was at full load.I'm trying to buy an aftermarket cooler for it but they are very expensive at the moment.The one i was looking at is around $50.And if you alter/mod the 6870 in anyway it voids XFX's lifetime warranty.

Cool thanks. Do I just download straight from the MSI website. I read somewhere that you need to patch the software to work with newer cards. Im not worried about fan noise I have a small case so just to be sure I added a case fan and set the toggle switch to be at full speed all the time lol. So safe to say my case is loud at the moment also I have my computer hooked up to my 40" LCD and the speakers tend to drowned out the fan noise wile im playing anyway. Ill set my GPU to your OC and see what happens hopefully I get a few more FPS even with this weak CPU lol.

 

[purple stain]

Yes you can just dl it from MSI's website.I just and dl'ed and it worked first try,no patching or updating it just plug n play.

 

[cburke82]

Yes you can just dl it from MSI's website.I just and dl'ed and it worked first try,no patching or updating it just plug n play.

one more question. BEcause afterburner is a software OC I will have to have the program up and running wile playing to get the OC right?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

your CPU should be fine for most games still. Maybe Starcraft II would benefit from a faster CPU among a few other games. Crysis will run fine. It would be a good idea to invest in a quad core but only once you run across a game you wish to play that doesnt run so well.

 

[purple stain]

It's usually running in the background but sometimes it won't do it's thing.Go to the Settings option on the bottom of MSI Afterburner.There select Start with Windows and it will always be running even if you forgot to open it.One thing i'd like to add is that MSI Afterburner will overwrite/overrule any clock speeds or fan speeds that are set in CCC.

 

[cburke82]

It's usually running in the background but sometimes it won't do it's thing.Go to the Settings option on the bottom of MSI Afterburner.There select Start with Windows and it will always be running even if you forgot to open it.One thing i'd like to add is that MSI Afterburner will overwrite/overrule any clock speeds or fan speeds that are set in CCC.

Thats good CCC is broken for me I dont have the game tab to adjust anything so ill just use after burner lol

 

[purple stain]

When was the last time you downloaded updates from ATI for your 6870?Latest drivers are as of 2/15

 

[cburke82]

When was the last time you downloaded updates from ATI for your 6870?Latest drivers are as of 2/15

Just installed the card 2 days ago so the drivers are the new ones from AMD's site. If I feel like I really need to use CCC ill re install those but for now im going to be lazy lol. Yesterday I got the card to be stable at 1000 core clock and 1200 mem clock with a slight voltage bump but I didnt see any improvement wile running the crysis GPU benchmark. Im guessing that because the CPU is probably bottlenecking my GPU I wont see any extra performance from an OC at the momment. Its nice to know for the future that this card will OC though thanks for the tip on the MSI software

 

[-Fran-]

U'll only notice a bottleneck when the CPU can't deliver enough data for the card to process. So, let's be careful when pointing "bottleneck fingers" to the CPU/GPU.

And since the only resolution information you gave was your 40" LCD, let's assume is Full HD and you use it at 1920x1080@60Hz, where the 6870 pretty much max'es out almost every game and the card isn't starved at all.

If you go from the Athlon II x2 (wich is 3.1Ghz and based on Deneb) to the Phenom II X4 (3.4GHz , L3 cache wich doesn't affect games at all or a marginal improvement) you'll be wasting money IMO. Since you're only gaming in your rig, or at least sounds like the most CPU intensive app you run on it.

If you want a real, but CHEAP upgrade, like the first comment, I'll suggest the fastest Athlon II X3/4 you can find and OC it a little bit (3.2Ghz should be enough for any game for it to not be starved these days).

Where do I come with all this info? My own Phenom II experience. When I play light games (like Wow) i use it @2.8Ghz and never get down from 60FPS in open areas, cept when the 4890 can't keep up with shinny. In BBC2 or any UT3/Valve engine goes up to 3.9 Ghz cause they like CPU speed and cores.

Hope it helps you decide.

Cheers!

 

[purple stain]

If you only play WoW and no other game then stay with your current CPU.If you will play games like Crysis 2, Battlefield 3 and other new games then upgrading to a quad core will really benift the card.

 

[cburke82]

U'll only notice a bottleneck when the CPU can't deliver enough data for the card to process. So, let's be careful when pointing "bottleneck fingers" to the CPU/GPU.

And since the only resolution information you gave was your 40" LCD, let's assume is Full HD and you use it at 1920x1080@60Hz, where the 6870 pretty much max'es out almost every game and the card isn't starved at all.

If you go from the Athlon II x2 (wich is 3.1Ghz and based on Deneb) to the Phenom II X4 (3.4GHz , L3 cache wich doesn't affect games at all or a marginal improvement) you'll be wasting money IMO. Since you're only gaming in your rig, or at least sounds like the most CPU intensive app you run on it.

If you want a real, but CHEAP upgrade, like the first comment, I'll suggest the fastest Athlon II X3/4 you can find and OC it a little bit (3.2Ghz should be enough for any game for it to not be starved these days).

Where do I come with all this info? My own Phenom II experience. When I play light games (like Wow) i use it @2.8Ghz and never get down from 60FPS in open areas, cept when the 4890 can't keep up with shinny. In BBC2 or any UT3/Valve engine goes up to 3.9 Ghz cause they like CPU speed and cores.

Hope it helps you decide.

Cheers!

Im gaming at the one just under that (1760x1000?), for some reason when I set my res to 1920x1080 i loose the top and left edeges of my screen Im with you on over clocking for the value the problem is right now I have a *** mobo that is locked and so I cant OC no matter what CPU i use. But I should at least get 3-4 FPS from an OC GPU and thats based on benchmarks from here and other sites. So I said that because I OC'ed my GPU and got the exact same fps in crysis. So what I have decided is 35-40 FPS with 4xAA in crysis is good for me now lol Later as games get more demanding ill upgrade my mobo and processor at the same time and go crossfire 6870's I think that should be a good set up for some time lol maybe ill work on that next year? not sure.

Side note how long do you think a crossfire 6870 and I dont know say Phenom II X6 system will be able to run most games at max res?