Bottleneck ? Radeon 6850 on ASUS P5KPL-AM EPU with E6300 2.8 GHz ?

[tytee]

Hi guys !

I'm currently running :

Asus P5KPL-AM EPU motherboard (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5KPLAM_EPU/)

A Pentium Dual Core E6300 2.8 GHz processor (http://ark.intel.com/products/41493/Intel-Pentium-Processor-E6300-(2M-Cache-2_80-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB)

2 Gb of Princeton RAM at 800 MHz with timings of 5-5-5-15.

Seagate Barracuda 500 Gb Hard Disk at 7200 RPM (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/internal-storage/barracuda-7200-kit/)

Display is an LG Flatron ez T713SH 17" CRT monitor (looks like this - http://s385.photobucket.com/albums/oo300/ryanaqua/Sale/?action=view&current=SANY0066.jpg&newest=1)
but can't find any specs on it online although I found a slightly different looking LG with the same name so I'm guessing the specs are the same - http://www.comx-computers.co.za/LG-T713SH-LG-17-CRT-Black-Monitor-Flat-Screen-Design-Information-Price-Buy-Cheap-p-22690.php) - the recommended resolution on it is 1024 x 768 but I can use 1280 x 1024 too I think.

I'm getting the mood to play some games again after going AWOL for some years. I've asked someone to bring me a graphics card and a power supply from the U.S. since it's way too expensive here.

Now I've read a bit about bottlenecking and lower resolution gaming needing more CPU power than GPU power but I'm still not fully sure I understand the whole concept. So, a clear explanation would be super ! My guess is a bottlenecking CPU is when the CPU is not fast enough to allow the GPU to work to its full potential and vice versa. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

I wanted some expert opinions on how my system will fare (Processor, RAM and Display included) if I connect an XFX Radeon HD 6850 and a 600W power supply to it.
Will my CPU bottleneck my GPU and in gaming terms what will it mean ? Will I be able to play certain games like GTA 4 and COD Black Ops that I've read are poorly coded and require more RAM or video RAM (not sure which).

I was also reading a bit about the difference between the PCI-e revisions and my motherboard having a PCI-e (which I guess means first generation) would probably be slightly slower than a PCI-e 2.0 one. But some people on the web have said that the difference is only 3 - 4 frames and it's pointless to change a motherboard solely because of that. Some comment on this would be appreciated too.

 

[tytee]

Here's a better picture of my display (http://talk.philmusic.com/index.php?topic=127214.0)

 

[vitornob]

Truly, the HD 6850 is a wonderful piece of hardware, it's kind of new and powerful.
Can't say the same about the CPU, or the RAM. Don't get me wrong, they do their jobs, but they are totally outclassed by the HD6850 technically speaking.

So yes, you will have a great bottleneck, and basically all the hiccups, lags, slow performance that you might have it will be your CPU fault.
About the video ram, for your resolution even a 512MB would be great. So, no problems here.
About the system ram, more ram is recommended, since some games already addresses about 4GB by it yourself, without mentioning the ram for the OS and other background programs.

Well, you CAN buy the VGA, it will boost your performance, but mind that you should schedule the next upgrade: mobo+cpu+ram ASAP

 

[tytee]

Truly, the HD 6850 is a wonderful piece of hardware, it's kind of new and powerful.
Can't say the same about the CPU, or the RAM. Don't get me wrong, they do their jobs, but they are totally outclassed by the HD6850 technically speaking.

So yes, you will have a great bottleneck, and basically all the hiccups, lags, slow performance that you might have it will be your CPU fault.
About the video ram, for your resolution even a 512MB would be great. So, no problems here.
About the system ram, more ram is recommended, since some games already addresses about 4GB by it yourself, without mentioning the ram for the OS and other background programs.

Well, you CAN buy the VGA, it will boost your performance, but mind that you should schedule the next upgrade: mobo+cpu+ram ASAP

Thanks for the reply !

Agree that the VGA and my current hardware are in different categories. But I thought since my current setup isn't giving me any problems yet and running smoothly uptil now, I should stick with it, specially since I'm quite broke and won't be able to replace the Motherboard-CPU-RAM all in one go. I was thinking of adding some more RAM to it. And possibly overclocking the processor a bit if needed and maybe get a different CPU cooler if needed. But this I'll check once I test the VGA and see whether I really need to and how it works out.

I haven't been playing PC games for a number of years so I'm not certain how much of a difference and bottleneck it'll be considering it's not a slow processor - 2.8 GHz is quite a bit. So we'll see. But if somebody can explain to me or give me a metaphor by which I can see the relative difference, that'll help a good deal.

We tend to exaggerate sometimes and have got used to the upper class products so much so that everything else feels useless, and I'm hoping this is the case here.

But anyway I'll update this thread once I am able to test the VGA out with my system.

Though if I am to change my Mobo-CPU-RAM, what would you recommend I get ?

Intel processor or AMD ? Any good companies for Mobo's ? RAM you've already told me should be at least 4 GB.

Note: I don't intend to play all games at the highest settings available. I just need to be able to play most games even from 2005 onward, at a decent setting for example around 35 FPS would be good, it would mean no lagging etc, so that's an estimate of what I'm aiming for.

Another question: Is it not true that you need the motherboard and cpu both to be unlocked to be able to overclock the processor ?
Last question : Does it matter if I have one 2 GB stick RAM of a different company and another 2 GB stick of a different company ? I'll still be getting 4 GB of RAM to work with or is there a difference ?

Cheers !

 

[tytee]

Just a quick update:

I've got my Radeon 6850 and I tried running GTA IV on it. It does work. I played around with the settings a bit. Didn't try to put everything to lowest though. But not able to get a completely smooth gaming experience. There is some lag consistently.

This could be a number of things:

I've read about the game being coded poorly.
I've got 2 GB of DDR2-RAM
I've also read about there being a game/windows problem where you have to disable the windows event logger to avoid the game from temporarily freezing after every key input made through the keyboard - and this did happen to me and I fixed it
It could also be a game problem - I've updated the game to the 1.0.4.0 patch

The consistent lag still remains. It's playable but not satisfying. I'm guessing the minimum FPS is dropping below 28 FPS thereby causing the 'lag'.

How can I fix the lag issue ? How can I ensure my min FPS remains above 30 ? Any suggestions ?

P.S. - I ran Mafia 2 and it runs beautifully.