Will a C2D e6400 bottleneck a new video card?

[Crian]

Hello all.

I've been sitting on the bench for a while regarding buying a new videocard, but my 9600GSO simply isn't cutting it anymore, especially for my 22 inch lcd. :(

So I'm thinking of getting a card along the lines of the 9800GTX/HD 4850 or higher, but I'm worried that my 1st generation C2D e6400 is already bottlenecking my existing card.

What do you guys think? Will my CPU be a major bottleneck for any of the latest generation cards?

[Lemur]

Hmm, hard to say, that CPU packs some serious punch, even if it is a bit old. It's not as though you're talking about putting a 4850 with a Pentium 4 or something like that.

That said, I've heard rumors that ETW really does take advantage of multi-threading, and the E6400 is a standard LGA 775 chip, so popping in a newer proc should be easy enough. I'm considering replacing the proc myself, just to see if it can make those interminable AI turns go by a little faster ....

But on the face of it, no, that CPU should not bottleneck the GPU. At least I don't think so.

[Crian]

Thanks for the assessment!

*Feels all warm and nostalgic over his old CPU*

I bought this sweet thing back in 2006 at the height of Intel's comeback against the AMD Athlon. Now, it's already phased out.

I bought this thing at about the same price as the Yorkfield Q9450 is now. It's kind of depressing to think about now, but back then this was state-of-the-art, second only to the e6500 and the Q6600 (until the core 2 extremes came out, but that was a little later).

I'm really dying to buy a new CPU but I'm holding back because then I'd need to replace my mobo as well. I bought the cheapest mobo that can handle a Core 2 Duo back then, with an FSB of 1066mhz. As much as I'd like to get a Yorkfield quad core, I'd really need a much better mobo to go with it so right now my only real choice is to get a better card.

I have a gut feeling prices are gonna get slashed by the end of the year so I'm sitting tight.

[Husar]

That said, I've heard rumors that ETW really does take advantage of multi-threading

From what I've seen it DOES use multi threading but overall only uses the equal power of a single core, that is on a dual core system it will use 50% of the available power, partly on the first core, partly on the second. On a quad core system it seems to use only 25% of the overall available power, distributed over all four cores, etc.

I might try to make a screenshot once I have a bit more time(or prove myself wrong, which I'd actually prefer for the sake of faster gameplay).

Now for the actual problem, just get a new card, try it, if it still lags, get whatever Lemur suggested as well, but no need to buy it all at the same time.

[Crian]

alright thanks!