Is it worth it?

[matace50]

First my question is: I have a pentium 4 3.0ghz w/HT and i am looking to buy a higher end graphics card such as a nvidia 8800. Do you think my processor is sufficient, or is it not worth buying a card like a high end nvidia 8 series.

If you say it is not worth it, then would you reccomend i upgrade to a Athlon 64 X2 4200+?, or would it still not make much of a difference.

I guess the idea im trying to get at is: Is my CPU going to heavily bottleneck my graphics card causing very lackluster performance in games like cod4, bioschok, lostplanet, and gears of war?

 

[Tmagic650]

Your processor is fine. How much system memory are you running? I wouild suggest upping memory to 2GB and buying the 8800

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Yes a Pentium 4 would heavily bottleneck that video card. Those processors are only good for GPUs upto the level of the Radeon X19xx or the GeForce 79xx series. The X2 4200+ wouldn't and would be a good idea.

 

[Tedster]

for games,the primary bottleneck is the graphics card.

Do you have AGP or PCI-E ?

 

[Tmagic650]

I agree Tedster,
while a better processor/motherboard helps, it's the video card that has the most affect on game play

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Agreed, but there's no point in getting such an expensive card and not being able to use it to its full potential. He'd rather get an X1950PRO\XT and save some money.

 

[matace50]

@ Tedster

I have a PCI-E card slot(right now i have a x600). Im just trying to figure out exactly how much my processor will hurt my gameplay. I dont care if my processor only slightly bottlenecks it, but if it is a significantly large bottleneck I would rather save a little money. What i dont want to happen is get a $300 card and have the exact same performance of a $150-250 card due to my CPU. As long as there is a visible performance increase with the higher costing card i am fine with that.

I also plan to have 3gigs of RAM (2 X 512MB DDR2-4200 and 2 X 1gig DDR2-5300 667mhz)

 

[Tmagic650]

"I also plan to have 3gigs of RAM (2 X 512MB DDR2-4200 and 2 X 1gig DDR2-5300 667mhz)"...

It's not recommeded to mix memory types or speeds. This hurts overall memory performance

2GB would be enough, specially if the video card has at least 512MB DDR or DDR2 on board. Your P4 is as good as my Celeron D 3.2GHz Cedar Mill. I can play all games like Bioshock and COD4 well except for Crysis. I can set Crysis for great graphics and very choppy game play, or so, so graphics and ok game play

 

[matace50]

Ok i didnt know that little fact about the mixing of speeds thing(thx i thought i was only mixing types is bad). Im buying some cosair DDR2 5300 667mhz, so can i take out the 2 x 512MB that came with my computer without a problem? and Also, are you able to play cod4 and bioshock on max or close to max?

 

[Tmagic650]

Yes COD4 and Bioshock play well on max settings. I plan to update my Corsair 512MB matched pair (1GB) of RAM with a Corsair XPS 1GB matched pair (2GB) DDR 400 memory... And maybe an Intel Core 2 duo processor in February 2008

 

[matace50]

alright cool...do you think there is much of a difference between the ddr2 4200-400mhx memory and the ddr2 5300-667mhz memory? and what graphics card are you running? Im not really sure if i should buy a fan for my evga 8800 Gt OC if it runs too hot
and my (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004) by some chance wont be able to cool it