Need sage advice from the gurus

[Havoc13]

To all who reply Thank You in advance.

Just so you know I am not an overclocker, but I am a gamer. I play Counter Strike Source and associated games, Battlefield 2142, Guild Wars, Company Of Heros, etc.

I currently have a Dell with a P4 3gig, 4gigs of PC667 and a ATI 1950XT video card. I have a different PCI-E card and memory that can go back into that machine so I can give it to my son.

Although I do not know this for a fact I would assume from what I have read elsewhere here that my video card is CPU limited. I am looking to rectify that situation.

So I'll have 4gigs of PC667 and a 1950XT to put into a new motherboard. I just don't know where my baseline is. In other words what CPU minimum should I be looking at? If better memory would make it considerably faster that is an option I would consider but obviously if I can keep what I have and still get the most out of my vid card I would prefer that route.

So what are my choices for CPU & memory (and motherboard type if you know)?

Thanks again,
Havoc13

p.s. I will check back often so if I have left anything out, please feel free to ask me.

 

[Havoc13]

Did I ask the wrong question? It's had many views but no replies.

I have no need for a better video card (no need for dx10 yet), I just want to get a cpu that will not restrict the one I have without having to buy the top end quad core cpu.

 

[swtethan]

P35 motherboard (asus P5k, Ds3R)

Core 2 e6850, or Q6600

take your pick, your memory is fine

 

[bryanW1995]

what type of pc667 is it? generic, name brand? d9's? If you're really really not going to take advantage of any of the great overclocking potential that c2d's offer, then just get a cheap p35 board with an e6550. If you're just kidding like I know you are because you can't resist the allure of huge oc's, go with an e4500 and p35 ds3r. They'll set you back about $280 and you won't be gpu limited. A blind squirrel monkey could overclock one of those cpu's with that mobo to over 3 ghz. You probably wouldn't even need to add any voltage at that low number, too.

 

[Havoc13]

The memory is Micron 8HTF12864AY-667E1. I'll be honest I've gotten lazy, and I just wanna build it and use it, that's why I say no overclocking, I don't wanna have to deal with mods or crazy cooling.

 

[bryanW1995]

then the e6550 is the way to go. You can get a cheap p35 board for under $100 AR at newegg right now, and yesterday they had an e6550 for $184 with free shipping. Stock hsf should be just fine with no oc.

 

[Havoc13]

That cpu will allow my video card to live up to some (most?) of it's potential?

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: Havoc13
That cpu will allow my video card to live up to some (most?) of it's potential?

IIRC the core 2 duo's will let your video card freeeeeeee! Only the 8800's and the 2900's have a cpu bottleneck.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, I have an x1950xt right now that I yanked out of my opteron 180 system. These c2d's are FAST. The equivalent video card to the e6550 is probably the 8800 gts 320.

 

[aigomorla]

wow, you havent specified budget.

Also, 4 gigs WONT work on 32bit. So im kinda scratching my head on how you got all 4 gigs to work in windows on a p4 when its not 64bit.

A lot of info you specified is kinda wierd.

But if you want top Tier:

Gigabyte P35-DQ6 or Asus P5K-Delux
Q6600 G0 <-- Might as well get the quadcore if your not overclocking. Future Proof yourself a bit longer.
Tuniq Tower <----- kinda definitely needed to keep quiet + Quadcore In check.

Lower Tier:
Abit IP35-E
E6750 <--- however the quadcore is only a tad bit more :T
Sunbeam <--- the one that looks like a AC Freezer, but cheaper.

Your also definitely going to need a good PSU. This is the most commonly overlooked area. Also the biggest area of problems. Cases that come with PSU's. The PSU is always Trash, or close to trash.

Corsair 520W is my first recomendation. Very quiet, and VERY reliable.
OCZ GameStream series, is also very good.

If your budget is fairly good, PCnC and Seasonic are some to look at. Silverstone Zeus series, NOT STRIDER. My personal favorate at the moment is my Antec Quattro 850W. Its doing VERY nicely in my ES rig.


As for ram, You see, you need to give us a budget. If you get a DDR3 board, then you need DDR3 ram. And DDR3 ram is uber expensive compared to DDR2 Ram.

But for DDR2 Ram, what company is YOUR Ram from. however i dont think you would need to upgrade in this department. Unless you want to do some overclocking.

But my personal favorate is Crucial Ballastix series. You can pick up 2 gigs for 100 dollars on average. I paid 400 for mine 1 yr ago, and im kinda sad they dropped that much.


If you think about overclocking for the first time, oh boy, scratch the lower tier out, and look at the higher tier PSU. The Crucial Ram using D9 micron chips would also help out very greatly in this department as well.

 

[Havoc13]

I didn't specify budget because I am not sure what ballpark I am putting myself into.

Yea My OS only sees 3 gigs of it, didn't know that before, was trying to keep in dual channel. The ram is from the HP Ram deal in the Hot Deals forum. The numbers on it actually google to crucial memory.

I have a couple Antec power supplies a 480 True Power and a 550, with only 1 optical and 1 (maybe 2) HD's I was hoping I could use one of those.

On the DDR3, yea I saw how spendy that was so I'm thinking I should stay with DDR2, just don't know if I should be going up to 800 or 1066 Ram.

& I'm kinda lost on the benefit of running a CPU with a 1333 FSB over a 1066 when I'm gonna be running PC667 Ram, any simpleton explanation on that one?

Thanks again guys for all the advice and help...

 

[Noubourne]

667 vs. 800 isn't going to get you much. A few percent. The important thing is that the C2Ds aren't really bandwidth-limited, so moving up the RAM ladder buys you somewhat more performance (I would guess less than 10% in memory-intensive apps), but it doesn't really free up your CPU to do any more work than before. 667 won't impact the performance of your CPU, just your overall performance a bit.

As for 4G "won't work" with 32-bit OS, uhhh, depends on what you mean by that. No, the OS can't use all 4G at once, but yes it should keep him in dual-channel mode, and it buys him more performance than someone with 2G, because the system can actually make use of 3. Whether or not his software does that is another discussion. No one task can be assigned to more than 3G is the way I understand it.

Better be sure all your games run on Vista (or 64-bit XP) before making that jump. Games are the only thing keeping me on 32-bit Vista. Since none of them are made to use more than 2G of RAM really, seems silly to fuss about it imo.

So where are the benches showing the 1950 is bottlenecked with a 3Ghz P4? I would like to see some stats on that before I believed it. It's gotta be pretty close!!!

If he's not OCing and he's concerned about CPU bottlenecks for his video card, then why not push him into a higher model CPU, like the E6750 or something. That way he won't NEED to overclock it, and he will likely be prepared for at least one more video card upgrade too.

 

[apoppin]

So where are the benches showing the 1950 is bottlenecked with a 3Ghz P4? I would like to see some stats on that before I believed it. It's gotta be pretty close!!!

we tested it in Video ... a 3.0Ghz P4 does bottleneck a x1950p

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=y&keyword1=bottleneck

 

[Noubourne]

Originally posted by: apoppin

So where are the benches showing the 1950 is bottlenecked with a 3Ghz P4? I would like to see some stats on that before I believed it. It's gotta be pretty close!!!

we tested it in Video ... a 3.0Ghz P4 does bottleneck a x1950p

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=y&keyword1=bottleneck

Great link! Thanks.

So 3.2Ghz to 3.6Ghz resulted in 3FPS difference in HL2 at highest quality with AA and AF on (shouldn't be running less on a 1950).

0FPS in FEAR.

And that's it. All the other results are synthetic, and signify nothing, because 3DMark actually weighs CPU speed/performance as part of their benches, so it is not any good for video card comparisons between CPU speeds.

That comparison lacks anything above 3.6Ghz on P4 architecture. Where does that match up with current C2D speeds? I guess what I'm saying is that there is no way to determine what speed CPU will stop being a bottleneck. With only 3FPS difference between 3.2Ghz and 3.6Ghz for single core on P4 architecture, it's probably pretty low on the C2D totem pole.

 

[apoppin]

no there is more to it then that ... you need to read thru the thread, not just the OP's opinion - i tested with my P4 2.80c @ 3.31Ghz and my P4 3.4EE @ 3.74Ghz and with my e4300 - all with x1950p/512MB [and later testing with HD2900XT]

STALKER and FEAR - with maxed in-game settings 4xAA/16xAF - x1950p was rather bottlenecked by my 2.80C @ 3.31Ghz and somewhat bottlenecked by my P4 3.4EE @ 3.74 Ghz with x1950p/512M - their minimum frame rates dropped below 30FPS at 14x9 - and it was not bottlenecked with my C2D at all ... all above 30FPS. With my P4 at 3.74Ghz i could enable more settings over the 3.31Ghz P4 using the same GPU!

My HD 2900 XT is rather bottlenecked by my e4300 at stock 1.8G [about the same as bottlenecked by an overclocked P4 3.4EE] but is not bottlenecked when e4300 is clocked over about 2.8 Ghz - 3.0Ghz

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Real-world bottleneck is still the GPU when working with modern CPU >2.5GHz. Negligible performance loss even with A64 @ 2.6GHz.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Real-world bottleneck is still the GPU when working with modern CPU >2.5GHz. Negligible performance loss even with A64 @ 2.6GHz.

"negligible" to you is not the same for everyone

STALKER/FEAR performance was not satisfactory with everything in game maxed with my x1950p and my P4EE @3.74Ghz ... same with a strongly OC'd A64 as Stumps has confirmed in video also.

 

[Markfw]

P4 @ 3.6 ~= C2D @ 1.8 IMO. Even apoppin's results kind of support that.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
P4 @ 3.6 ~= C2D @ 1.8 IMO. Even apoppin's results kind of support that.

very much so ... and of course C2D has the 2nd core

i would hate to pair my HD2900xt with it at stock
-otoh, x1950p would run very well with e4300 at 1.8Ghz
[but held back 'a bit' ... but still better than with a oc'd 3.31Ghz NW and way better than a 2.80c at stock]

 

[Noubourne]

Well minimum framerate opinions aside, it seems a better question for the OP is not maybe what won't bottleneck his current GPU, because most mid-range and up C2Ds will do the job just fine - but what C2D is likely to live past his next GPU upgrade and not force another CPU upgrade.

I would suggest something in the $200 range with nice OC potential. A 3.0Ghz C2D is unlikely to present a bottleneck even for the next product cycle of GPUs. I would say any respectable 965 board - the DS3 comes to mind - with any Conroe chip in the $200 range you are pretty much guaranteed over 3.0Ghz OC - which I doubt is necessary for his current GPU. That with a couple gigs of DDR2 800 should do the trick. Fancy RAM is unnecessary, so I would suggest 2x1GB CAS 4 DDR2 800 in the $120 range.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I would say if not overclocking spend $300-$325 on a E6850 3ghz C2D and be done worrying about it