Cheapest CPU to cut the bottleneck of my 6850+future cards

[iixwh3l4nxii]

Well I can't seem to find the answer for this

Basically I have a 6850 and it's being bottlenecked I believe by my terrible Core 2 Duo E4700

Games such as GTA IV, Battlefield 3, Far Cry 3 and all the new(and even some old) titles

at first I just thought about getting an i5 3570k, but I earn £100 a month, if you're from the US then put it this way, a 3570k costs £170 here a low end z77 board costs about £60 and 8GB of Vengeance/Kingston/Gskill etc. RAM costs £30-40

that's an expensive upgrade for me and I really don't care for raw power in my computer, i've never owned a fast computer and I have no desire for 20 second rendering and high 3d mark stats, all I want is a responsive system that can play games smoothly

so I was thinking about something on the AMD side, I could grab an x4 Ahtlon 651 or 631 for around £50, a motherboard for £40 and ram is the same price of course...

so can someone tell me what wont bottleneck my 6850 and possibly a 7850 or an 8850(since by the time I can afford it, the 8000 series should be released)

if this is the wrong section let me know, since this concerns Graphics cards but mostly CPUs I figured I'd go for CPU area

Any questions or suggestions are welcomed, thanks.

 

[rolli59]

Go with a pentium G8xx and a H series motherboard.

 

[iixwh3l4nxii]

I didn't even know the Pentium line continued, let alone on 1155

CPU benchmark shows that it's really not that much if at all better than my current Core2Duo, how can you be sure it wont bottleneck a (6/7/8)850?

 

[rolli59]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/404?vs=63

 

[iixwh3l4nxii]

synthetic benchmarks don't always translate to gaming performance though

the 965 BE is the same price and beats it as well, it also means spending less overall

idk, i'll look into the G8 series for a while untill new replies come in, I wont disregard it just yet, thanks for the link though

 

[rolli59]

The Pentium allows you to upgrade to an I5 at a later date that bests any offering from AMD.

 

[iixwh3l4nxii]

Yeah I was thinking that and it's a good point, but I'm worried I will have to completely upgrade again when haswells come out, because they aren't on the 1155 platform? right?

idk, I guess you're right, i've looked at some benchmarks and its pretty impressive, I just wont want to make the same mistake as last time when I upgraded from Pentium D to Core2duo on the same 775 platform, only to get a minute performance difference

 

[iixwh3l4nxii]

don't want to make...* seriously annoying how you can't edit your own messages on this site

 

[rolli59]

You should be able to use the quick edit button (center lower right) easily, I do it all the time. Haswell will be a new socket.

 

[iixwh3l4nxii]

damn, ohwell surely even modern GPUs for the next few years wont be bottlenecked by a 3770k if that's what I have to upgrade to in the end

 

[rolli59]

True. And after Haswell is out ebay or other auction sides will have a few I5 and I7's for sale.

 

[iixwh3l4nxii]

I hope so, i5's on ebay are selling for £10 less than retail, that's with no heatsync and after being used for over a year, ridiculous

 

[Kindredsouls]

Correct, Haswell won't be on the LGA 1155. However, from what I'm hearing Haswell isn't going to focus a lot on raw performance gains, its going to be more about lowering wattage. Some of Intel's data from the recent developer's conferences suggests 10%~ faster over Ivy Bridge. Not all that exciting if you ask me. Since their biggest competitor isn't AMD anymore and now it's ARM, not that surprising either.