Hi all!
I was an ATI guy, but HAD to switch to NVIDIA cuz I saw the damned MAFIA 2 Physx trailer a while ago...I have a simple HP 19" monitor @ 1366X768, and the HD 4830 I had churned thru any game i threw at it. Now i have an EVGA GTX 260, which I bought with future (Physx) plans...I can forget Batman(Frickin' hard to do), Dark Void, Cryostasis, Darkest of Days, or whatever...but NOT MAFIA 2!!!!! The first one was one of THE best games i have played in my entire life, and by the looks of it, the second one is no exception. (I know i sound like a child, but believe it or not, NVIDIA CAN change people...8))
Ok now, all I wanna know is this: I have a C2D E7400 @ 2.8GHz and lets say I buy a GTX 470 or a GTS 450 in the coming months. Will my CPU become a bottleneck? my other option would be to buy some inexpensive C2Q, but will that help? and btw, i thought of completely upgrading my system to a Core i5 750 with an EVGA P55 LE mobo (suits my needs perfectly cuz of sound cards and all) . On that board, only a PCIE 2.0 x16 and a PCIE 2.0 x4 are present. lets say I put my GTX 470 or 450 in the x16 slot, and the current GTX 260 in the x4 slot for dedicated Physx processing. Will that x4 lead to a bandwidth problem? As I've heard, x16 is way better than x4, and I don't wanna lose performance as I bought this GTX 260 JUST to get sheer power in future Physx titles, when the time is right. I'm not thinking about upgrading my monitor, as for some weird reason, i just LOVE it..(maybe the glossy surface) So the resolution I play games on will always be 1366X768.
Can anyone shed some light on my ***tty situation? thanx in advance!
These are my system specs to get a better insight (not showing off, I know this is a simple build ^^)
Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.8GHz
Asus P5KPL-AM mobo
Transcend JetRam 4GB DDR2 800 @ DC
EVGA GTX 260 Core 216
Creative X-FI Titanium PCIe
Samsung 500GB HDD 32MB (Dunno model)
Asus 20X DVD Rewriter W/Lightscribe
In Win FANQUA chassis (Luv it!)
In Win Commander 750W
HP 1859m 19"
Creative Fatal1ty gaming Headset HS-800 (can't bother with USB ****)
Thanx for the input LOLUMAD, but as u said, that's a bit expensive...that's why i chose Core i5. i have to put my sound card too, so I need a vacant PCIe x1 slot for that, which is not blocked by dual slot VGA's...sadly all the future GTX 4xx's are king size **** and the GTX 260 is the same. If u look at the P55 LE, you'll see why i chose it. Value + fits my needs pretty well except for that damn x4 PCIe part. i can live with maybe a 10% performance loss as i play at a low-mid resolution, but not more than that cuz I intend to put this GTX 260 to good use... anything u can come up with? btw, I love that AMD setup, but sadly, SADLY in Sri Lanka there are no dealers for AMD. All the a******* here think that even Pentium 4's are better then Phenom II X4's, and people here are too dumb to figure things out. about 90% people here use $400 computers to do simple word processing stuff, and they all use Intel, and most of them even don't now that there's a company called AMD. It's hard to believe, but that's how it is here. I can buy anything related to intel, but not even a cooler related to
AMD. Of course, I can get them from my cousins in US & Canada, but then again warranty issues arise. So my only option is to buy an intel something, and I just wanna know what will happen with that crazy PCIe x4 issue and Physx. Thanx again for ur lightning fast reply! :D
OK,
So After reading that I was in the same place as you were a few months ago.
What Is your budget? If you can tell me that I can figure out whats best for you and since you must go intel than I would suggest two things.
a) Upgrade that Cpu to a Core 2 quad q9550 and get some better ram.
b) Upgrade to either 1156 or 1366 and if you can afford a new mobo, ram, and cpu than you are good to go.
Your resolution is very low so Don't expect that much bottle neck. It seems to me that the GTX260 can handle that monitor just fine.
Thanx Pathogen...my budget is something like 400-500$$. how are things looking? I can easily get a Q9550, but does it give that much performance and prevents a bottleneck? I love 1366, but it's way above my budget...:( and what's that about ram? i never had any issues with my current ram...i know they're not 'Gaming' stuff tbh, but they did the job just fine. :)
Phenom 2 955 beats Core i5. If you're getting a Core i5, don't.
Well, he can't get any AMD and the 955 and i5 are very similar.
For $500 you can get 1156.
Core i5 $200, $200 motherboard, $100 4 gb ram.
Than you are all set.
He said in Sri Lanka no one sells any AMD products, so it may be difficult for him to get anything other than intel, as he said.
Yes, I can't buy an AMD system here...bad luck:( So, as u guys tell me, i can get an i5 system, but can anyone recommend a mobo that fit my needs? I just need to plug in my X-FI, that's all actually. installing a dual slot VGA either blocks the damn PCIe x1 or the SATA ports in most mobo's (under $200 ones, of course), so the one I selected (I can get EVGA pretty easilty from here, along with ASUS, GIGABYTE and MSI) is the P55 LE from EVGA (great value too). Like I said before, the problem lies with that PCIe x4 thingy... will I lose a lot of performance with dedicated physx on my GTX 260 in that slot? If not, I can get that mobo and enjoy the rest of my life...:D If anyone can fill me in on that particular issue, I'd be more then grateful... cuz i just can't bear the thought of a GTX 260 on a x4 slot :S
Just because its been replaced doesn't mean the c2q architecture is no longer capable. The q9550 is still clock for clock comparable to the phenom 2 line and you should be able the get 3.6+ on air. I have no idea what pricing is like were you are so I cant really say which way to go.
you probably wont lose any performance if its a physx card in that slot, if you ran like tri sli and one of the slots was x4, then you'd really notice. Bandwidth is hardly an issue when compared to buying a better card. the x4 shouldnt make a big difference in buying the mobo or not, just go for it!
Thnx for clearing it up Renzuokun, that was all over my head... now I can buy the new stuff without any doubts and spend the rest of my life peacefully... :D
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130258
Such a wonderful board, but expensive. It's the best P55 board for SLi.
yeah pretty good, more like the best...but $329? :(:(:(
thats still x16 x16 x4 , but a great motherboard!
It doesn't support three way SLi, did I read his post wrong again? I thought he wanted a GTX470, and a GTX260 for Physx... Was I wrong?
Nope, ur correct...that's exactly what I want. So, ur recommending the GD65 eh? I dunno whether this applies to my Physx config, as they're clearly talking about SLI or Xfire, but the MSI product page says the PCIe 2.0 ports gets limited to x8 when 2 cards are used. I really don't want my future GTX 4XX to work on x8!!! With the EVGA P55 LE, the main card works at x16 2.0, and the Physx card works at x4 2.0. I recently found out that for dedicated Physx, the bandwidth is not a problem cuz even at x1, u only lose something like ~10%, and in x4 ,only a tiny ~2% something. BUT u need x16 2.0 fully if ur using a single card for graphics, especially the GTX 4XX's, unlike the automatic x8 limitations in SLI or Xfire...(correct me if I'm wrong). You guys know anything about this? Cuz other than that sh**** x8 problem, the MSI GD65 is a clear winner...It has more than all the extreme stuff u can ask from a mid range board. oh and thank u all again for helping me out. :D
The MSi board has a PCIE 4x slot right below the second PCIe slot, it looks smaller than usual, but your GPU will go in there.