CPU bottlenecking Question

[happy medium]

All settings low @ 1.8

Average Framerate: 47.66
Max. Framerate: 65.87
Min. Framerate: 32.90

@ 1.6 the lowest my cpu will go without crashing.

Average Framerate: 39.64
Max. Framerate: 56.34
Min. Framerate: 28.69

it's still playable!

Edit for the last test @1.6 I set the resolution to 1280x1024 all high settings except Physics and geometry set to low.

Average Framerate: 30.19
Max. Framerate: 43.25
Min. Framerate: 22.59

Seems the 8800gt gpu is the bottleneck to me?

I think the Call of duty series,Resident evil 5, Nfs Shift, Left 4 Dead, and many others will play at min 30 fps with his cpu.

Edit: just played some Call of Duty modern warfare 2 with the cpu @ 1.6 with good details. Ran fine with very,very few hickups. Watching my fps with fraps the fps seemed just fine except for the crazy firefights where it kinda skipped a little but nothing serious.

 

[RussianSensation]

I would probably pick up a 9600GSO for $50-60 or 9800GT for $75 off Newegg. I wouldn't spend more $ since you will probably upgrade your overall setup in a year and because you will eventually want a DX11 card. Doesn't make sense to spend $100 on a graphics card for your setup imo.

 

[toyota]

well my cpu clock for clock is a little faster, but not much.

I'll try it at 1.6 all settings low and see what happens.

an Opty isnt even close to your cpu clock for clock. your cpu would need to be at about 1.2 for you to be about equal to a 1.8 Opty. and btw just putting my E8500 at 1.6, which is WAY faster than a 1.8 Opty, made several games like Ghostbusters and Red Faction Guerrilla basically unplayable. you are mistaken if you think that an Opty at 1.8 will still give you 30fps minimums because in several current games it wont even allow you to average 30fps.

 

[happy medium]

an Opty isnt even close to your cpu clock for clock. your cpu would need to be at about 1.2 for you to be about equal to a 1.8 Opty. and btw just putting my E8500 at 1.6, which is WAY faster than a 1.8 Opty, made several games like Ghostbusters and Red Faction Guerrilla basically unplayable. you are mistaken if you think that an Opty at 1.8 will still give you 30fps minimums because in several current games it wont even allow you to average 30fps.

I wasn't aware that the clock difference was that bad? Even with a 2mb cache e5400?
I know that a e8500 is 400mhz faster then my cpu due to the extra cache clock for clock.
My e5400 @ 3.6 = a e8500 @ 3.2 .

I can see a e8500 @ 1.2 = a opty @ 1.8.

Fact is I played Call of duty modern warfare 1,2 WAW, NfS Shift,Left for Dead,Medal of Honor Airbourn,Far cry 2,Race driver Grid @ 1.6 and it was playable. I wouldn't try it with my copies of Crysis ,Crysis Warhead or Stalker though.

Where do you get these figures comparing these cpu's?

 

[myocardia]

well my cpu clock for clock is a little faster, but not much.

Your CPU is at least 25-30% faster clock for clock. In other words, he'd need to be at at least 2.2-2.3 Ghz, to match yours at 1.8 Ghz. Sad, but true.

 

[toyota]

I wasn't aware that the clock difference was that bad? Even with a 2mb cache e5400?
I know that a e8500 is 400mhz faster then my cpu due to the extra cache clock for clock.
My e5400 @ 3.6 = a e8500 @ 3.2 .

I can see a e8500 @ 1.2 = a opty @ 1.8.

Fact is I played Call of duty modern warfare 1,2 WAW, NfS Shift,Left for Dead,Medal of Honor Airbourn,Far cry 2,Race driver Grid @ 1.6 and it was playable. I wouldn't try it with my copies of Crysis ,Crysis Warhead or Stalker though.

Where do you get these figures comparing these cpu's?

from various reviews and my own comparisons when I had a 2.6 5000 X2. the games that really suffer and in some cases become unplayable are the newer more cpu intensive games like GTA 4, Ghostbusters, Red Faction Guerrilla, Far Cry 2 and a few more. even in games that are perfectly playable a 1.8 Opty gives up a massive amount of performance when being used with a higher end gpu. thats why I am saying when you have a cpu thats going to limit your performance that much then theres no point in putting a very high end gpu in there.

 

[happy medium]

from various reviews and my own comparisons when I had a 2.6 5000 X2. the games that really suffer and in some cases become unplayable are the newer more cpu intensive games like GTA 4, Ghostbusters, Red Faction Guerrilla, Far Cry 2 and a few more. even in games that are perfectly playable a 1.8 Opty gives up a massive amount of performance when being used with a higher end gpu. thats why I am saying when you have a cpu thats going to limit your performance that much then theres no point in putting a very high end gpu in there.

In all fairness the guy has a x800xt ,and a 8800gs/gt will net him more then double the fps for about 75$. It will make games that are not playable ,playable. I think it's worth it in this case.

 

[toyota]

In all fairness the guy has a x800xt ,and a 8800gs/gt will net him more then double the fps for about 75$. It will make games that are not playable ,playable. I think it's worth it in this case.

well yes all but a few game would be playable. still with a 1.8 Opty I would just go with a 4670 as even that card would be held back a bit. a 4670 would be massive increase over what he has now too.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Just out of curiosity, I downclocked my Opteron 185 to 1.8GHz and played Left 4 Dead a little bit. If there was a speed difference, I didn't notice it, and all of the video quality settings save for AA were set at max.

JSFLY, just get the best video card you can afford, crank up AA and AF, turn on vsync, and call it a day.

 

[Arkaign]

Just out of curiosity, I downclocked my Opteron 185 to 1.8GHz and played Left 4 Dead a little bit. If there was a speed difference, I didn't notice it, and all of the video quality settings save for AA were set at max.

JSFLY, just get the best video card you can afford, crank up AA and AF, turn on vsync, and call it a day.

Left for Dead is based on the ancient HL2 engine, albeit tweaked a good bit. The AMD X2/Opteron 1x5's are great chips, and still usable to this day, but it remains true that when Conroe hit, it took the IPC crown by a pretty big margin. Look at this review of the original C2D E6300 and E6400 :

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=11

Even at the lowly clock speed of 2.13ghz, the E6400 was faster than the 2.6ghz X2 5000+, and nearly as fast as the 2.8ghz FX-62! Keep in mind, this was the original 2MB L2, 1066mhz bus E6300/6400 series, and it already has a relatively huge IPC lead, more than 20% easily.

Now, earlier in the thread, the guy who downclocked his wolfdale to 1.8ghz would probably have at least a 30% IPC advantage over the Opty @ 1.8ghz, as the E8xxx series has triple the cache, a higher bus speed, and a few minor core tweaks that came with the process shrink. In other words, it's serious apples to oranges. A hypothetical stock wolfdale at 1.8ghz would probably compare to a 2.6-3.0ghz Athlon X2/Opteron dual, depending on the app/game.

Still, it's worth the OP using the thing, just because there are better chips now doesn't mean he will enjoy gaming any less on it, so long as it runs. And with a 4670 or so, it will do just fine for most things.

 

[toyota]

Just out of curiosity, I downclocked my Opteron 185 to 1.8GHz and played Left 4 Dead a little bit. If there was a speed difference, I didn't notice it, and all of the video quality settings save for AA were set at max.

JSFLY, just get the best video card you can afford, crank up AA and AF, turn on vsync, and call it a day.

as Arkaign already mentioned that it is a relatively old game engine. sure its been updated and will take noticeable advantage of faster cpus but it doesnt take much for it to have playable framerates in the first place though. heck even a decent single core cpu can keep that game mostly playable. the point is that basically any game that runs poor or starts hitting its limit because of the cpu isnt going to to be able to do anything more with a very high end card anyway. in other words in your L4D example you will get about 40-60fps with that cpu whether you use a 4670 or 4850. of course a higher res will make a difference in some games but really anything beyond a 4670 is going to be cpu limited with a 1.8 Opty/A64 X2 cpu in most cases.

 

[theevilsharpie]

In other words in your L4D example you will get about 40-60fps with that cpu whether you use a 4670 or 4850.

That depends on the resolution and the amount of graphical detail used. In L4D, I'm clearly GPU-limited, as dropping my CPU clock speed by over 30% made no noticeable impact on performance.

 

[myocardia]

In all fairness the guy has a x800xt ,and a 8800gs/gt will net him more then double the fps for about 75$. It will make games that are not playable ,playable. I think it's worth it in this case.

Agreed, with one caveat. The OP also needs to jump on ebay and grab one of those $79 Opteron 170's, so he can be running 2.5-2.8 Ghz. That way, he won't be wasting nearly as much of that 8800GT's potential.

 

[happy medium]

Left for Dead is based on the ancient HL2 engine, albeit tweaked a good bit. The AMD X2/Opteron 1x5's are great chips, and still usable to this day, but it remains true that when Conroe hit, it took the IPC crown by a pretty big margin. Look at this review of the original C2D E6300 and E6400 :

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=11

Even at the lowly clock speed of 2.13ghz, the E6400 was faster than the 2.6ghz X2 5000+, and nearly as fast as the 2.8ghz FX-62! Keep in mind, this was the original 2MB L2, 1066mhz bus E6300/6400 series, and it already has a relatively huge IPC lead, more than 20% easily.

Now, earlier in the thread, the guy who downclocked his wolfdale to 1.8ghz would probably have at least a 30% IPC advantage over the Opty @ 1.8ghz, as the E8xxx series has triple the cache, a higher bus speed, and a few minor core tweaks that came with the process shrink. In other words, it's serious apples to oranges. A hypothetical stock wolfdale at 1.8ghz would probably compare to a 2.6-3.0ghz Athlon X2/Opteron dual, depending on the app/game.

Still, it's worth the OP using the thing, just because there are better chips now doesn't mean he will enjoy gaming any less on it, so long as it runs. And with a 4670 or so, it will do just fine for most things.

My e5400 wolfdale only has 2mb 's of cache and is not 30% faster per clock than a Athlon x2. It's more like 10/15%. My 800fsb, e5400@1.6 is about = to a Opty @ 1.8. An Intel e6600 conroe with 4 mb of cache is = to a Athlon 6000+ with games.

A e8xxx series is a whole different story because of the extra cache it has.

 

[toyota]

My e5400 wolfdale only has 2mb 's of cache and is not 30% faster per clock than a Athlon x2. It's more like 10/15%. My 800fsb, e5400@1.6 is about = to a Opty @ 1.8. An Intel e6600 conroe with 4 mb of cache is = to a Athlon 6000+ with games.

A e8xxx series is a whole different story because of the extra cache it has.

if you look at old benchmarks of when the Core 2 Duos came out the 1.8 E4300 beat the 2.4 and in some cases the 2.6 A64 X2/Opty. theres no doubt your cpu at 1.6 would be a bit quicker than an Opty at 1.8.