bottlenecking questions

[ste2425]

For crimbo ill be getting a new 20" HD tv and a 4850 but im wondering will it be bottle necked in my rig? Ive looked up bottlenecking and have a little bit of background knowlege on it. Im fairly certain its when a piece of equipment is limited due to other parts not being able to keep up. Would my rig be bottlenecking the 4850? i intend to oc' the cpu to round the 3.0 mark too.
cheers guys all help would be appritiated, like i said i have a basic knowlege on it but not enough to be able to tell in advance.
ste

[RadeonX2]

I'd say YES, lacking of L2 cache bottlenecks even if you clock it near 4GHz. I had an E2140 before @ 3GHz it did bottleneck my 9600GT now having a Quad with 8MB of L2 cache I know it will still be bottleneck but not much.

[ste2425]

ok cheers how much of a performance impact will it have?

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

In benchmarks like 3DMark06 you'll see some bad bottlenecking but for gaming you should be fine. The higher the resolution the less the CPU will hold back the GPU. Game at your max resolution and you should be fine.

[RadeonX2]

Well I'm relying on 3Dmark06 benches on E2140 @ 3GHz scores around 11k+ Q6600 @ 3GHz scores 13k+. I guess an E6600 clock @ 3GHz scores 12k+. THIS IS WITH 9600GT

[ste2425]

ok mate cheers i was just wondering because if i get a rather large performance impact i might as well get a older card that performs to the same level if that makes sense and save a few quid

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

Originally Posted by RadeonX2

Well I'm relying on 3Dmark06 benches on E2140 @ 3GHz scores around 11k+ Q6600 @ 3GHz scores 13k+. I guess an E6600 clock @ 3GHz scores 12k+. THIS IS WITH 9600GT

Yeah I agree with you. I dont think it's the cache that makes the biggest difference for 3DMark though. If you managed to disable 3/4 of the cache on your quad the CPU would still push the score up because it has 4 cores. It's just the way 3DMark06 was designed

Originally Posted by ste2425

ok mate cheers i was just wondering because if i get a rather large performance impact i might as well get a older card that performs to the same level if that makes sense and save a few quid

I would get the 4850 personally. It handles AA and AF much better than previous generations from ATI or Nvidia. Like I said before, if you game above 1280x1024 the bottleneck will become less and less severe. For actual gaming you probably wont notice any bottleneck and you will still be able to load up all the eye candy.

[ste2425]

alright mate cheers prblem solved:P ill be gaming at 1680x1050 so i should be fine lol
thanks again pps
ste

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

No problem always glad to help. Also just to be clear I'm not saying cache is irrelevant nor is clock speed. Just that in your situation a 4850 is still a good investment. If you can get the CPU to 3Ghz you will see better minimum frame rates.

Do you have a specific 4850 in mind?

[r9]

You will bi fine.

[phanbuey]

yeah 3dmark uses a multi-threaded CPU test also, which makes it wayyyyy more sensitive to CPU than what would really happen. That CPU would drive a single 4850 or 4870 just fine. Dual Cards - then you might need a slightly faster CPU w/ more cache. by "bottleneck" we're talking like 80FPS MIN in everything but Sup Com.

[ste2425]

Do you have a specific 4850 in mind?

errrm nope not at the mo, the 4850 will be a bit after crimbo the tv is first as i think theres no point in having all the power under the hood and a crappy moniter to let it loose on But im fairly pushed away from the Radeon version as i heard something was wrong with the actual GPU carn't remember exactly but i no that something about it was meant to be at a cirtain level and it was actually lower if that makes sense.