4850 + a64 4000+ ?

[RaZz!]

hi there,

after i've bought myself a new shiny 22" widescreen monitor i ran into some performance issues with my 7800gt ;)
i've always played e.g. bf2 in 1024x768 with 4xAA and 16xAF. but now with 1680x1050 and higher fov the game runs choppy even without any AA and AF at all.

so i came up with the idea to get my hands on a newer gfx - and the radeon 4850 seems like the perfect choice (regarding the price/performance ratio).

well, the only problem is that i don't really know if it's worth the upgrade, as my rig is equipped with an old athlon 64 4000+ (see rig in sig).
but i'm still expecting the 4850 to get much higher fps in 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16xAF than my 7800gt with 1680x1050 (without any AA and AF), because with higher res and AA/AF i shouldn't be that much of cpu limited, am i?

what do you guys think?

a new rig with new cpu etc is planned soonest for the end of 2008... ;(

[xMrBunglex]

your CPU will be fine. Intels clean up on synthetic benchmarks, but your processor is more than enough to run any game out there. at high settings and resolution, i don't see how you could possibly hit any significant CPU bottleneck.

[Big.Wayne]

Oooh I dunno xMrBunglex, a super scale battle in a popular RTS game would really eat up the cpu cycles!

RaZz, I know its a drag but I recommend you seriously consider upgrading your platform, you will never get the full benefit from these new cards unless you pair them with a fast CPU and subsystem.

Yes there is some effort involved but if you get smart and flog off your old kit at auction you may well recoupe quite a few $$$ towards your INTEL platform!

Used ASUS socket 939 boards and good DDR memory sell for decent money, at least here in the UK they do.

[xMrBunglex]

i love my Intel setup, but i respectfully disagree. i think lots of people underestimate AMD's now that Intel has been the benchmark king for the past two years.

[Heretic]

You'll be CPU bound in a few games (RTS games especially), but not so much that you wouldn't get playable frame rates. In nearly every FPS, you'll be just fine. I'd be more worried about only having 1gb of ram, but if you're upgrading soon it may not be worth it to get another stick of DDR.

[RaZz!]

thanks so far for your input!

Oooh I dunno xMrBunglex, a super scale battle in a popular RTS game would really eat up the cpu cycles!

RaZz, I know its a drag but I recommend you seriously consider upgrading your platform, you will never get the full benefit from these new cards unless you pair them with a fast CPU and subsystem. [...]

till the transition from 1024x768 to 1680x1050 due to the new monitor i was quite satisfied with the performance of my rig, may it be cpu or ram - enough for my needs. i'm not playing rts games anyways (atleast no newer ones :p:). playing bf2 and ut3 and some older games that won't care about a gfx-change anyways :p:.

so i thought if i get decent fps in 1024x768 but not in 1680x1050, i'm gpu limited but not cpu limited.

and as i said before i'm building a new rig at the end of the year, so the graphics card would be the only thing i'd buy for my current rig (because i can continue using it in the new rig then, that's not the case with ram or something else :)).

[Big.Wayne]

i think lots of people underestimate AMD's now that Intel has been the benchmark king for the past two years.Well I haven't personally used an AMD system since socket 939 so you may well be right but I reckon if AMD had a processor that gave a Core2 Duo a run for its money I would probably be aware of it. I've seen that newer AMD processors are running quite well but they don't appear to overclock as well as their Core 2 Duo counterparts.

[Big.Wayne]

i'm gpu limited but not cpu limitedWell then the HD4850 will certainly sort that out for you and appears to work fine on nForce4 motherboards . . . . sorted! :)

[Kingcarcas]

I had a 3000+ with a 7950gt, jumped to an E4500 and later added my 3870. I saw an article where X2s were bottlenecking 8800GTXs when it first came out, that's why i decided to overhaul.:shrug:

[C'DaleRider]

Personally, if you're going for the 4850, I'd save for another month or so and get the 4870. Why not get the better of the two? It's not like it's going to be any slower on your current system but the 4870 will definitely have a longer lifespan in your new system you're planning on building later this year. Honestly, that's where I'd head....and I'd even think about waiting until August to upgrade your video card anyway since that's when the 4870X2 is supposed to debut....may give a small price drop on the single gpu'd 4870....or maybe not. Or you may find a rebate on that card about then....

Worth considering in any event...........

[[cTx]Raptor22]

Upgrade your RAM instead. When I went from 1GB to 2GB the jittering stopped completely and was smooth as butter. The GPU doesnt help at all (I had an 8800GTS 320MB) and it still hopped all over with so little RAM.

[vengance_01]

hi there,

after i've bought myself a new shiny 22" widescreen monitor i ran into some performance issues with my 7800gt ;)
i've always played e.g. bf2 in 1024x768 with 4xAA and 16xAF. but now with 1680x1050 and higher fov the game runs choppy even without any AA and AF at all.

so i came up with the idea to get my hands on a newer gfx - and the radeon 4850 seems like the perfect choice (regarding the price/performance ratio).

well, the only problem is that i don't really know if it's worth the upgrade, as my rig is equipped with an old athlon 64 4000+ (see rig in sig).
but i'm still expecting the 4850 to get much higher fps in 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16xAF than my 7800gt with 1680x1050 (without any AA and AF), because with higher res and AA/AF i shouldn't be that much of cpu limited, am i?

what do you guys think?

a new rig with new cpu etc is planned soonest for the end of 2008... ;( the 4850 will be bottlenecked by 4000+ Single Core, but would be a nice jump, and when you move to a core 2 system, you can carry the 4850 over.

[vengance_01]

Personally, if you're going for the 4850, I'd save for another month or so and get the 4870. Why not get the better of the two? It's not like it's going to be any slower on your current system but the 4870 will definitely have a longer lifespan in your new system you're planning on building later this year. Honestly, that's where I'd head....and I'd even think about waiting until August to upgrade your video card anyway since that's when the 4870X2 is supposed to debut....may give a small price drop on the single gpu'd 4870....or maybe not. Or you may find a rebate on that card about then....

Worth considering in any event........... 4870 is just not worth it over the 4850 in his case and in general. You can get 4850's for 175$ AMIR. Its only about 20% faster. O/C the 4850 and should be near 4870 performance for a much cheaper price tag.

[xMrBunglex]

most people seem to forget that the monitor is usually the bottleneck in a modern computer. all 22" LCD monitors only refresh at 60 Hz afaik. that means your CPU only needs to be able to hande 60 FPS in your shooter games to make your monitor the effective bottleneck. think about it this way. let's say you're playing BF2. you have three main components that determine what you see - CPU, video card, monitor. each of those has its limit. let's just make some numbers up to illustrate my point. these are the hypothetical limits of each individual component:

video card: 200 fps
CPU: 150 fps
monitor: 60 fps

in the above situation, your CPU will bottleneck your video card and you'll be limited to 150 fps even though your video card could handle 200 fps if it had a faster CPU to feed it data. HOWEVER, your monitor is only going to display 60 fps anyway, so you're still dropping 90 frames every second. in that case, does it really matter that your CPU isn't as fast as it could be?


now let's use the same hypothetical computer with an old, out-dated video card:

video card: 40 fps
CPU: 150 fps
montir: 60 fps

what would be the smartest thing to upgrade in this system? the video card, of course. are you not going to buy a 4850 simply because your CPU isn't the latest and greatest anymore? it's still more than enough to play this game. upgrade your video card and keep your CPU.

[RaZz!]

there's a huge difference between a monitor running at 60 hz and a game having 60 fps. even though the monitor is "theoretically" only displaying 60 fps there should be atleast 75 to 85 fps for the game to appear fluent/smooth. but that's just my subjective pov and i know that there are debates and controversies about this all over the web, so i'll just leave it at that :p:

nonetheless, i agree with you. if my cpu is able to pull 90+ fps in 1024x768 with my 7800gt (the lower the res the more one gets cpu-bound), i think i'm fine with upgrading to the 4850.

...and you guys think the 4850 would work without any hiss on my nforce4 mobo? just want to be sure it'll work out :p:

btw: i also considered the 4870, but.. i don't know. for what i'm using my pc atm the additional 60 € (which the 4870 costs more over the 4850) aren't worth it. another factor i have to consider is my psu, as it has only 29a on the +12v rail.

[Heretic]

No reason for the 4850 to not work on nf4...if you're worried about mixing ATI+Nvidia, don't be. I've been running an x800 in mine for far too long :p

[Jakalwarrior]

"Got new monitor, have to run at higher res, FPS dropped"
That screams, new video card. Now if you had said new game unplayable even at lowish settings, that might be a cpu issue :P

[WrigleyVillain]

Raptor22;3104267']Upgrade your RAM instead. When I went from 1GB to 2GB the jittering stopped completely and was smooth as butter. The GPU doesnt help at all (I had an 8800GTS 320MB) and it still hopped all over with so little RAM.

Oh, wow, yeah. And BF2 was the game that helped "standardize" 2GB in a gaming rig when it was new and very popular.

[RaZz!]

thanks so far, guys!

i never had that much of a trouble with my 1gb of ram in bf2. though, i have to set texture detail to medium - on high the constant texture reloading is annoying, but graphicswise there isn't much of a difference between high and medium texture settings. anything else is on high. never had any issues with fps - until now with the higher res ;P

so i think it'll be the 4850 :)
now i'm only waiting for it to drop to 130 €, and then it's mine :D

[WrigleyVillain]

If you're not going to upgrade your whole system I'd still buy another 2x512 of PC3200 (I'm assuming thats what you have now) along w the 4850. No more than $40. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there is someone here that would even be willing to send you some for the shipping cost. Though all I've got left for DDR is 2x256 of Corsair BH-5 which is hanging on my wall. Ah, the memories. :D

[RaZz!]

4x512 mb would also give me headaches, as the nf4 on my asus a8n-sli isn't capable of running 4 sticks with 400 mhz ddr (as far as i remember it lowers itself to 333mhz then :rolleyes:) - that's one of the reasons i've never upgraded to 2gb :p:

even though, 2x1gb would work out, but that would mean an additional 70+ € for some good ram modules plus i could trash my current ram ;/

but yeah, well, actually that's one of the reasons i want to get rid of thta rig in the near future. can't run 4 ram modules at 400mhz ddr... welcome to stoneage :D:D:D

[WrigleyVillain]

I see.

[[cTx]Raptor22]

I see.

Yeah, thats kinda lame I guess... :(

[Corsa]

can't run 4 ram modules at 400mhz ddr... welcome to stoneage

B4 u changed ur lcd u werent using up all available Ram, now ur hitting the paging file...u need 2Gb, not another graphic card :cool:

...lower ur Ram speed to 333...clock speed is King :up:

[RaZz!]

but wouldn't exceeding the amount of available ram mean that the fps drop from time to time due to loading/reloading stuff to the ram? but that isn't the case. the game runs well and with a constant framerate.
it's just that this constant framerate isn't 60-80 fps like before, but 30-60.

[tiro_uspsss]

u've got decent DDR400 ram - sell it & get some generic 2x1GB DDR400 - the move to 2GB is *definitely* worth it! :yepp:

[RaZz!]

since yesterday i'm running the 4850 - and it was definately worth the money.

even though my 3dmark scores are pretty weak, which is due to my cpu, games run pretty well, especially source engine games, bf2 and oblivion showed a huge performance boost. ut3 on the other hand runs pretty much the same - but i can crank up the details and add AA, AF etc. and the fps stay at the same level. this shows kinda good how cpu-limit ut3 seems to be :)

just a little comparison:

7800gt | 4850

3dmark05:
~8000 pts | ~ 13000 pts

3dmark06:
~4000 pts | ~7000 pts

source engine stresstest:
~80fps | ~170fps

note: 7800gt is oc'ed whereas the 4850 is on stock, cpu on stock clocks also.

it's nice how the 4850 handles aa and af without that much of a performance hit.

the only thing i don't like so far is the cooler - it's loud, in idle about the same noiselevel i had with my 7800gt at full load :p:

my original plan was to wait for nehalem, but the more infos on nehalem appear the more i think it'll be too pricy until mid '09. and i don't want to wait another year for an upgrade, so i'll probably wait for the intel pricedrops on their current dualcore cpus and get myself a e8400, mobo and ram.
this stuff has become very cheap in the past. all 3 components for around 300€ (or even less after the pricedrop) is a good deal imo.

hopefully, my psu will be able to handle such a config. don't want to spend money on a new psu :D