Will my Q8200 non-overclock bottleneck a 7850

LeakingLava

Hi people. I have a Q8200 and I'm planning to buy a 7850. Will it bottleneck? I've been googling around for this question and I can't seem to find the exact answer I'm looking for. I've also been googling around for the future effects of bottlenecking and I can't find an answer to it either. I wouldn't mind having this bottleneck because as I have found in some answers, I still get that HUGE fps jump from my 8800GTX. It's just that I've seen someone say 'I put my new X graphics card onto my system with Y CPU and after a month, my CPU blew up!'.

After seeing that, now I'm nervous about buying the 7850. o.O

Cuddlesworth

LeakingLava wrote: »

It's just that I've seen someone say 'I put my new X graphics card onto my system with Y CPU and after a month, my CPU blew up!'.

That's really scary. Did they catch the terrorists that did it? Because otherwise its a load of bull.

If you play a game which is CPU heavy, then the CPU will hold you back because the GPU is spending clock cycles waiting on the CPU.

If you play a game which is GPU heavy then the GPU will hold you back because the CPU is spending clock cycles waiting on the GPU.

You might not get 100% of the possible performance out of a new card, but you will get a considerable improvement regardless as most new games are GPU limited.

None of which will make your CPU "blow" up.

LeakingLava

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

That's really scary. Did they catch the terrorists that did it? Because otherwise its a load of bull.

If you play a game which is CPU heavy, then the CPU will hold you back because the GPU is spending clock cycles waiting on the CPU.

If you play a game which is GPU heavy then the GPU will hold you back because the CPU is spending clock cycles waiting on the GPU.

You might not get 100% of the possible performance out of a new card, but you will get a considerable improvement regardless as most new games are GPU limited.

None of which will make your CPU "blow" up.

Yeah that's what I thought too but when I saw the comment....meh, doesn't even matter anymore. Would I be alright for playing BF3 at 1920x1080 max graphical settings?

ED E

I suppose blow up could have been distorted from overheat due to a big GPU pumping out hot air into a small case. But still, its BS.


Depends on the game a lot, this should be noted. Things like Civ5 and League of Legends are CPU heavy and any shít GPU will do, while Arma2(cough DayZ cough) and the likes will benefit from the graphical power.


I'd say play the games you normally play and see whats maxing out(If you can graph CPU/GPU usage over the space of a minute or so then you can just alt-tab evey now and then, or put them on your second monitor if you have one).

LeakingLava

ED E wrote: »

I suppose blow up could have been distorted from overheat due to a big GPU pumping out hot air into a small case. But still, its BS.


Depends on the game a lot, this should be noted. Things like Civ5 and League of Legends are CPU heavy and any shít GPU will do, while Arma2(cough DayZ cough) and the likes will benefit from the graphical power.


I'd say play the games you normally play and see whats maxing out(If you can graph CPU/GPU usage over the space of a minute or so then you can just alt-tab evey now and then, or put them on your second monitor if you have one).

Well I've actually played League of Legends and my computer keeps up to it quite well. I can't really see any bad performance from the Q8200 there. I'm really only interested in maxing out BF3, Sims 3, Dirt3, Test Drive Unlimited 2 as they're the only games in my computer that I can't max out(that I'm interested in). Do you think the Q8200, along with the 7850, can keep up with these games?

ED E

I'm on a Q6600(Older but similar clock and quad) and a 5770. I'm finding most of the time the GPU is running at 30-50%, with either the CPU maxed or both being limited by something else. Not sure what that is, could be IO(Machine wasnt designed for 7HDDs) or more likely I'm thinking the RAM(Type DDR2 Size 1024 MBytes Manufacturer Samsung Max Bandwidth PC2-5300 (333 MHz) X4).

For LoL on max settings vSync'd the machine barely ticks over like this, GPU left at stock HAWK clocks(850/1200).

BF3: Still have yet to get around to it, but I'd be pretty sure its GPU heavy
Sims3: Havent played a sims game since the millenium
Dirt3: If its anyway like Burnout Paradise you'll be able to max it no bother(xbox controller is lovely for this too)
TDU2: See above

So yeah, cant really be sure. I get the feeling that for some titles it'd be totally wasted but for a few it'd be worth having if you want to run AA and MSAA/other post processing. I was an 8800GTX user myself and TBH its such a good card that you dont see a huge bump from upgrading, least I didnt.

Overall, this post hasnt be very informative :rolleyes: Oh yeah, I assume you're running 1080, if you were to go higher than that you'll want an even beefier GPU and all the above is redundant.

LeakingLava

ED E wrote: »

I'm on a Q6600(Older but similar clock and quad) and a 5770. I'm finding most of the time the GPU is running at 30-50%, with either the CPU maxed or both being limited by something else. Not sure what that is, could be IO(Machine wasnt designed for 7HDDs) or more likely I'm thinking the RAM(Type DDR2 Size 1024 MBytes Manufacturer Samsung Max Bandwidth PC2-5300 (333 MHz) X4).

For LoL on max settings vSync'd the machine barely ticks over like this, GPU left at stock HAWK clocks(850/1200).

BF3: Still have yet to get around to it, but I'd be pretty sure its GPU heavy
Sims3: Havent played a sims game since the millenium
Dirt3: If its anyway like Burnout Paradise you'll be able to max it no bother(xbox controller is lovely for this too)
TDU2: See above

So yeah, cant really be sure. I get the feeling that for some titles it'd be totally wasted but for a few it'd be worth having if you want to run AA and MSAA/other post processing. I was an 8800GTX user myself and TBH its such a good card that you dont see a huge bump from upgrading, least I didnt.

Overall, this post hasnt be very informative :rolleyes: Oh yeah, I assume you're running 1080, if you were to go higher than that you'll want an even beefier GPU and all the above is redundant.

Yeah just 1080. But I'd like to be running eyefinity in the future future. Not at the moment though. Lol. I'm reallllly laggy when I play Dirt3. It's playable but really laggy. And that was at a reduced resolution so I am thinking that it could be just the GPU that was holding me up. I'll try out other games like that burnout paradise and some other ones to try and have an idea for my other games. Thanks

Monotype

I think the term 'bottleneck' is thrown around way too much. Far too much bull**** surrounding this idea. A new graphics card doesn't magically put extra strain on your CPU. Now you'll probably go playing more advance games and turn up all the detail so that could put a bit more strain. However, the 8800 GTX was a fairly power hungry, hot card at the time - possibly not as much as some of the cards that followed it, but the 7850 is quite cool and I certainly wouldn't expect any vast increases in heat to occur unless your case is very poorly cooled.

So at the end of the day, the 7850 will see a big improvement in a lot of games. Will the CPU hold you back? Probably a small bit. A good graphics card is more important in most games, but a few will take advantage of a faster CPU. 2.33GHz from a few generations back isn't great, but it's not bad at all for games which can use the cores properly. You'd want to look into upgrading in a while, but I don't think it's top priority unless you have the funds to cover everything.

I'd look into overclocking, if your motherboard supports it - with a nice heatsink those CPUs often hit the early 3GHz easily. That should be enough to cover you for another while in CPU demanding games.

LeakingLava

Monotype wrote: »

I think the term 'bottleneck' is thrown around way too much. Far too much bull**** surrounding this idea. A new graphics card doesn't magically put extra strain on your CPU. Now you'll probably go playing more advance games and turn up all the detail so that could put a bit more strain. However, the 8800 GTX was a fairly power hungry, hot card at the time - possibly not as much as some of the cards that followed it, but the 7850 is quite cool and I certainly wouldn't expect any vast increases in heat to occur unless your case is very poorly cooled.

So at the end of the day, the 7850 will see a big improvement in a lot of games. Will the CPU hold you back? Probably a small bit. A good graphics card is more important in most games, but a few will take advantage of a faster CPU. 2.33GHz from a few generations back isn't great, but it's not bad at all for games which can use the cores properly. You'd want to look into upgrading in a while, but I don't think it's top priority unless you have the funds to cover everything.

I'd look into overclocking, if your motherboard supports it - with a nice heatsink those CPUs often hit the early 3GHz easily. That should be enough to cover you for another while in CPU demanding games.

That's very very good news to hear. That was what I was thinking at first. I mean, it just doesn't seem plausible that a better GPU brings the whole computer down. Yeah I'm currently looking at overclocking the Q8200 using a hyper 212 EVO. I'll just buy the 7850 first and see how things go then overclock. Yeah the motherboard supports overclocking. I just haven't tried it out at all so I wouldn't know how good it is or what not. It's an eVGA 680i SLi. I've heard that it's really good when it first came out so I'd say it could do what I want from the Q8200.

ED E

LeakingLava wrote: »

I'm reallllly laggy when I play Dirt3. It's playable but really laggy.

Have you turned all the settings down & filtering off?

Oh, now that I look:

Dirt 3 Minimum System Requirements
o OS: Microsoft Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
o CPU: AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 2.8GHz, Intel Pentium® D 2.8Ghz
o RAM: 2GB
o Hard Disk Space: 15GB
o GFX: AMD RadeonTM HD 2000 256MB, NVIDIA® GeForce® 8000 Series 256MB
o DirectX®: DirectX® 9
o Sound: DirectX® compatible soundcard
[Minimum requirements are the bare minimum to get the game playing. In some cases you may even need to reduce the screen resolution.]


Dirt 3 Recommended System Requirements
Specifications: Enhanced for DirectX 11
o OS: Windows® 7
o CPU: AMD PhenomTM II X4 B50 or Intel® CoreTM i7-860
o RAM: 3GB
o Hard Disk Space: 15GB
o GFX: AMD RadeonTM HD 6930 Series / Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
o DirectX®: DirectX® 11
o Sound: DirectX® compatible soundcard

You should meet the minimum spec fine, they say fast dual you have a slightly slower quad, that is unless its one of those terribly written games that insists on running on 1/2 cores even though you feed it four.

Ever OC'd the 8800? If you have the cooling you might push another bit out of it

LeakingLava

ED E wrote: »

Have you turned all the settings down & filtering off?

Oh, now that I look:



You should meet the minimum spec fine, they say fast dual you have a slightly slower quad, that is unless its one of those terribly written games that insists on running on 1/2 cores even though you feed it four.

Ever OC'd the 8800? If you have the cooling you might push another bit out of it

I didn't really bother going around because it takes A LOT of time to load up the main menu. Don't know if it's because of the graphics even of the main menu or the CPU being plain crap. So if I played around with the settings, it could've taken me more time than the playing of the game itself. So yeah. No I haven't overclocked the 8800. I think it has the stock cooler. I don't really want to bother much. I've already ordered the 7850 :P

ED E

Good stuff. Post back when you've tested her out, would be interested to see what rates you can get.

LeakingLava

ED E wrote: »

Good stuff. Post back when you've tested her out, would be interested to see what rates you can get.

Yeah definitely. Thanks for all the help

Any cheap air coolers you can recommend in case I really do need to overclock the Q8200?

Monotype

ED E wrote: »

Dirt 3 Minimum System Requirements
o CPU: AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 2.8GHz, Intel Pentium® D 2.8Ghz

You should meet the minimum spec fine, they say fast dual you have a slightly slower quad ...

That's the original pentium D 800/900 series they're talking about, given that they've matched it up with the Athlon 64 and the newer pentiums were called "Pentium Dual-Core"... not sure if they went up to 2.8GHz anyway.

They're less than half as powerful as the Q8XXX architecture when you're talking about clock speed. A Q8200 at 2.33GHz would be somewhat equivalent to a pentium D at 4.66GHz. That's not counting the extra cores!

Of course, that's just minimum specifications we're talking about although the recommended specifications seem a bit odd; I'd forgotten that the 6930 even existed.

LeakingLava wrote: »

I didn't really bother going around because it takes A LOT of time to load up the main menu. Don't know if it's because of the graphics even of the main menu or the CPU being plain crap.

CPU usually helps here alright, but it could be hard drive that's a bit slow too.

LeakingLava

Monotype wrote: »

CPU usually helps here alright, but it could be hard drive that's a bit slow too.

Yeah that was one thing that I was thinking about, too because I experienced some delay when I was trying to load up a map in BF3. I figured, this could not be the CPU or the GPU because it was just a picture and it says Loading. So ya know. I'll try out Dirt3 again later on. Do you think the 8800GTX should be able to run it at 1080 for a reasonable quality?

ED E

Mine did for quite some time, and a second monitor for a short while before the 5770H went in.