• Upgrading from a 07 build. Bottlenecks?
    6 replies, posted
Alright, so I'm finally upgrading my 07 build to the somewhat modern era, planning on getting a GPU at a bare minimum. Budget wise, I'd like to stay under 200 for the GPU, but if need be, I'm willing to bump up to 400 for a CPU/GPU/Mobo combo package. Here is what I have so far; CPU: Intel C2D E6550 @ 3.15 GHz GPU: 8800 GTS 320 RAM: 4 GB 1066 Hz Mobo: Gigabyte P35-DS3L v2 Power: 500W Thermaltake I was looking at the Radeon HD 6850 for the GPU, as its only 160(ish), leaving me plenty of money for college tuition. However, if I get that, would I need to upgrade my CPU to prevent bottlenecks or am I fine? I have had no beef with the CPU at all during my time with it, I personally still think its plenty fast for what I'm doing. Also, I'm worried about not meeting the minimal requirements for a power supply with the 6850. I've read that the recommended is 500W, but I assume that is the max running power the card uses, plus a huge buffer. *EDIT* Link to the GPU I'm eyeing. [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125353[/url]
500W is sufficient, and the 6850 might just get a tad bottlenecked as the E6550 isn't an astonishing cpu, but its not a ridiculous bottleneck and it will run better then with an 8800 nonetheless. If you need to save your money for college, then just a gpu will improve your performance, but I would highly suggest switching to either a 2500k or at the very least an i3 2100. If you wont upgrade your cpu then you could just as well just go with a lower end gpu tho.
[QUOTE=naos;33269220]500W is sufficient, and the 6850 might just get a tad bottlenecked as the E6550 isn't an astonishing cpu, but its not a ridiculous bottleneck and it will run better then with an 8800 nonetheless. If you need to save your money for college, then just a gpu will improve your performance, but I would highly suggest switching to either a 2500k or at the very least an i3 2100. If you wont upgrade your cpu then you could just as well just go with a lower end gpu tho.[/QUOTE] Alright, thanks. Taking your advice into consideration, I might just wait till a few months into next year's classes, when I have a more stable source of income to go along with paying for tuition. I might just rebuild the computer at that point, if it would be recommended to bump up the CPU along with the GPU. [editline]14th November 2011[/editline] Actually, taking a look at passmark, would this be a viable alternative to the 2500K? [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103943[/url]
Oh wow, not even remotely. Investing in an apu with an 6530D that is rubbish in comparison to even a relatively low/mid end gpu for the same price when you already have a relatively solid build as it is would be taking steps backwards. The FM1 socket is a waste as it is now, you most likely wont even notice a reasonable performance increase, not to mention how you would have to shell out a hundred dollars more for getting a compatible motherboard. I'd just invest in a reasonable gpu, such as an 6850 up until you can make a proper cpu upgrade. Of course you wont get the same performance as from a 2500k, but it will be a very noticeable performance increase nonetheless. Unfortunately the lowest you could go for an i5 2500k and a compatible motherboard would be 360 dollars, that with 4 gigabytes of ram, leaving you with only 20 dollars on a gpu budget, so unless you would have to shell out 120 dollars more. But buying the gpu now and cpu later on isn't a bad plan anyhow, you will still have a capable machine up until you've saved up some to spend.
Alright. One final follow up question and then I'll be done. My current motherboard doesn't specify what version of PCIe x16 it uses, so am I to assume it is 1.0? The 6850 however states its a PCIe x16 2.1. Would that conflict in any way, or is there some sort of backwards-compatibility solution? Would there be any performance downsides?
At x16 PCIe 1.0 you'll get maybe 1-2% performance loss. Nothing you'll notice. PCIe is fully compatible in all directions - it'll just use the bandwidth that's available to it.
[QUOTE=naos;33279851]Unfortunately the lowest you could go for an i5 2500k and a compatible motherboard would be 360 dollars, that with 4 gigabytes of ram, leaving you with only 20 dollars on a gpu budget, so unless you would have to shell out 120 dollars more. But buying the gpu now and cpu later on isn't a bad plan anyhow, you will still have a capable machine up until you've saved up some to spend.[/QUOTE] Why is the lowest he could go an i5-2500k? The 2500 or 2400 are much cheaper, and even though the 2400 is "multiplier locked", you can change the multiplier to match a 2500 on stock settings. [QUOTE=Allstone;33280724]PCIe is fully compatible in all directions.[/QUOTE] It's a great idea on paper, not so much in implementation. There are many motherboards out in the wild that don't implement the PCIe bus properly, resulting in crashes and worse. Never assume PCIe cards from one generation will work on a motherboard using another generation of PCIe. There are some motherboards that have been known to only implement certain PCIe slots to work with non-video cards only, and not specify it anywhere in the product description.
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