Bottleneck between cpu & video card question

[kostapilot1]

Hello, I just have a question about putting a cpu and video card combination. The system rig will be as follows: Motherboard is a ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe Series by AI Lifestyle Amd Phenom 955 @3.2ghz 4Xcores, 4gig ddr2-800mhz Crucial Ballistic memory. Using this motherboard,cpu,ram,and running, windows vista 32bit os home premium service pack 2, microsoft flight simulator X service pack 2, and in the graffics settings 10% traffic 10% weather 40% scenery 100% aircraft 80% graffics which are all out of 100% and equals to a total of 47.5% out of 100% displayed also using the matrox triple head2go digital edtion which forces a high resolution of 3840 x 1024 x 32 which is displayed across 3 24inch sumsung monitors at a framerate of 17. Now using the motherboard,cpu,ram,windows vista, and microsoft flight simulator configurations I mentioned above, but using with an ati hd 3870 would probully run smooth, But MY QUESTION IS, this CONFIGURATION with AN ati hd 5870, will it run smoothe? Or will it bottleneck because the cpu will not be fast enough for the video card,plus the motherboard might be to slow for the card since it is only AM2+ socket.If the ati hd 5870 doesnot work out, will I have to buy a new computer to run it optimum?, or should I stick with ati hd 3870 original config?
For the configurations I have above, using different video cards and components combinations, if you would know how to use those to look up benchmarks, I would like to know how so to test a certain configuration, for example: My Motherboards Cpu Ram config, then add different video cards to test the performance against each other while always using the same pc program like microsoft flight simulator X to get good results. I would just like to learn to know how to use benchmarks,if you can tell me how, please because it is good for finding bottlenecks too.




Cheers, Kosta

 

[wolfram23]

Your CPU is decent enough but I know FSX is very very CPU intensive. Upgrading to a 5870 will, without a doubt, improve those framerates dramatically but that game specifically will be CPU limited. You can try to overclock to 3.8-4ghz to help with that.

I would also definitely suggest you upgrade to a 64 bit OS. In case you didn't know, with a 32 bit OS you can only use up to around 3.5gb of RAM and that's just not really enough these days. Most people here suggest 6-8gb these days.

 

[kostapilot1]

Your CPU is decent enough but I know FSX is very very CPU intensive. Upgrading to a 5870 will, without a doubt, improve those framerates dramatically but that game specifically will be CPU limited. You can try to overclock to 3.8-4ghz to help with that.

I would also definitely suggest you upgrade to a 64 bit OS. In case you didn't know, with a 32 bit OS you can only use up to around 3.5gb of RAM and that's just not really enough these days. Most people here suggest 6-8gb these days.

I'm sorry i'm replying to this late, I got busy, doing other things,but anyways I don't plan on buying a new computer untill all the newwer flight simulators come out, like in 2 years,so my upgradeing must be limited, to maybe just a video card,and if I choose a single ati 5870 on the system I have with 3 24inch monitors and matroxtriple head2go and to run that at 50% graphics and 18 framerate on microsoft sim X, can this setup run smothe without any overclocking? or does it need overclocking cause it will bottleneck?