Will a Radeon HD 6850 work decently with my system?

[Lazar_99]

I have a AMD Athlon II X3 445 and 4gb of DDR3 RAM. Will my system work decently if i install a Radeon HD 6850? I mostly play games and edit videos and stuff like that.

 

[clarkjd]

It depends...What do you mean by "decently"? And what are you FULL current specs?

 

[Lazar_99]

It depends...What do you mean by "decently"? And what are you FULL current specs?

By decently i meant by not having the CPU bottleneck the GPU or vise versa.

Full specs: AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz, 4gb of DDR3 Transcend
MSI 870S C45 FX motherboard
250GB Seagate HDD
Corsair CX500
Gainward GT 240 1gb GDDR5

I'm not really sure that there won't be a bottleneck but i can unlock the 4th core and can also use the auto overclock feature my motherboard has...

 

[clarkjd]

By decently i meant by not having the CPU bottleneck the GPU or vise versa.

Full specs: AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz, 4gb of DDR3 Transcend
MSI 870S C45 FX motherboard
250GB Seagate HDD
Corsair CX500
Gainward GT 240 1gb GDDR5

I'm not really sure that there won't be a bottleneck but i can unlock the 4th core and can also use the auto overclock feature my motherboard has...

When it comes to gaming, adding the 4th core won't prevent bottle necking, because most games won't take advantage of more than two cores. Also a 500 watt PSU will limit how big a graphics card you PC can handle. I would recommend something in the class of an HD6850 or HD6870.

 

[Lazar_99]

When it comes to gaming, adding the 4th core won't prevent bottle necking, because most games won't take advantage of more than two cores. Also a 500 watt PSU will limit how big a graphics card you PC can handle. I would recommend something in the class of an HD6850 or HD6870.

So if i unlock the 4th core i would still have a bottleneck like i did with 3 cores? If so then how am i able to get rid of the bottleneck lol I mean this doesn't make any sense. If your theory is correct then i won't have a bottleneck because i have 3 cores. I play all these new games which probably use 4 cores considering the 6850 will draw a large amount of processing power from my CPU and not to mention that i want to record gameplay and upload videos to you tube, i have YT partnership so its important that i can record aswell.

 

[clarkjd]

So if i unlock the 4th core i would still have a bottleneck like i did with 3 cores? If so then how am i able to get rid of the bottleneck lol I mean this doesn't make any sense. If your theory is correct then i won't have a bottleneck because i have 3 cores. I play all these new games which probably use 4 cores considering the 6850 will draw a large amount of processing power from my CPU and not to mention that i want to record gameplay and upload videos to you tube, i have YT partnership so its important that i can record aswell.

The fourth core will help with general system performance, NOT anything to do with in-game performance. for example, with the 4th core you could run other applications(like recording gameplay via FRAPS or similar, Virus scan, etc.) and it wouldn't affect the FPS within a game you are playing at the same time. But games themselves do not utilize more than 2 cores(at least not yet). Where you get the bottle neck is if you have an older and slower CPU and it is unable to supply data fast enough to the GPU. To test if this is the case, reduce your video settings to lower detail. If your FPS increases, then the GPU is your bottle neck, if your FPS stays the same, then your CPU is the bottle neck.

 

[Lazar_99]

The fourth core will help with general system performance, NOT anything to do with in-game performance. for example, with the 4th core you could run other applications(like recording gameplay via FRAPS or similar, Virus scan, etc.) and it wouldn't affect the FPS within a game you are playing at the same time. But games themselves do not utilize more than 2 cores(at least not yet). Where you get the bottle neck is if you have an older and slower CPU and it is unable to supply data fast enough to the GPU. To test if this is the case, reduce your video settings to lower detail. If your FPS increases, then the GPU is your bottle neck, if your FPS stays the same, then your CPU is the bottle neck.

CPU bottleneck... Even with my GT 240 when i play GTA 4 it doesn't matter which settings low or high the fps is the same. I know its a CPU intensive game and i'm sure it needs more than 2 cores. I now got the 6850 and could max out battlefield 3 and runs smooth on 40 fps while i could hardly get 40 on high settings and 1600x900 resolution with my GT 240. But i do feel that the 6850 is choking the athlon II. I highly doubt that battlefield 3 uses only 2 cores because my friend had a X3 cpu clocked at 2.6 GHz and unlocked its 4th core and with a GTX 460 got 50-60 fps. My main priority is to take down his 460 with my 6850 but the 6850 needs a strong system in order not to have a bottleneck. I would add on all boxes of the 6850 that the recommended system specs are: High quality 500W PSU and a decent quad core processor (preferably phenom II X4 965 BE or any intel i5)

 

[Guest]

I recommend unlocking the 4th core. Games are starting to use 4 cores now, and you will have more confidence.


It won't be a massive, apparent bottleneck but there will be a small one. The thing that really stings the Athlon II is no L3 cache.

 

[Lazar_99]

I recommend unlocking the 4th core. Games are starting to use 4 cores now, and you will have more confidence.


It won't be a massive, apparent bottleneck but there will be a small one. The thing that really stings the Athlon II is no L3 cache.

Ok now there's a chance that with the unlocked core i will also unlock the L3 cache and the cpu gets converted into a Phenom II X4 B45, that would be a real bonus...