A question about my rig.

Soadfan1

I recently bought a new pc and the main gaming specs are.

AMD x2 5200+ each running 2.6

2048 mb ram (I forget the exact speed of Ram 667 or something nearby)

Geforce 8800 GTX 768 mb

250 gb HD

I am a little concerned that my cpu will bottleneck at some point as I have read that these AMD cpus dont cut it at present.

Basically if a game doesnt support dual core does this mean i'm getting an ancient 2.6 ghz? Which is evidently lower than my older pc.

Will this also make my 8800 pointless? Ive been assured by many it shouldnt be a problem but thoughtI'd ask for more views.

Thanks

-Rob

Noray

I don't think you'll be experiencing problems with game for a while with that rig. Even at single core, an AMD at 2,6 GhZ is at least as fast as a Pentium at 3,5-4 ghz. Seems like a pretty damn good rig overall to me.

Deusfaux

your CPU is already bottlenecking your video card

core 2 duos bottleneck 8800's... but then they are markedly better than what you have.

if its no real cost to you, move to a c2d rig

Rook

It all depends on what settings you're using and what game you're playing.

Firing squad have done comparisons of the 8800s with different AMD processors (here) and the same thing with different Core2s (here)

Honestly that's a great gaming rig and I'd save your money and wait a while before I felt I needed to upgrade.

Stormwatcher

Ahahaha
I have a Sempron64 3000+ (It's actually a Venice core), and I can run any games fine with my 7800GS, even if it does bottlenecks sometimes.

You're fine, dude.

Alesis

I have to agree with the others, updating from such a rig to a core 2 duo wouldn't exactly be what I like to call a reasonable upgrade. If money isn't of concern, sure, go ahead and buy the best there is (there will be something better about the moment you bought it anyway, hehe) and have fun with it.

If not, use this rig as long it can play the games you like without problems. Until then faster Hardware will be available and you will get more performance for your money (though, your used hardware also won't be worth as much as it is now, but it will be a "reasonable upgrade" at least).

As long you get reasonable framerates in games bottlenecking isn't really a problem too. Just use a higher resolution and/or turn up anisotropic filtering, good Anti Aliasing and all the stuff that will mostly need performance of your 8800 but not the cpu. This will give you a better picture and the card won't be bored.

The speed at which a processor is clocked at doesn't say that much about its performance anymore. Different architectures, cache, memory interface, efficiency etc., in short how a processor is built have a huge impact on this and you should preferably look at ingame benchmarks to get an idea of the performance of a processor, thinking in GHz will really get you nowhere (In fact it's not hard to find a 1.8 GHz cpu that is remarkably faster than another one with 3.6 GHz).