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GTX460 with an E6400 on a P5N-E

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repo man11

Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2001
My boss just got COD Black Ops for Christmas. I had to go and update his video drivers for it to even load without locking up. Default resolution is 1024x768, and bumping it up from that results in some stuttering. He has a 9800 GT now. A GTX 460 seems like the obvious upgrade, but would it be badly held back by the rest of his system?
 
It would be bottlenecked badly, dont even know if there would be an improvement.
 
I can play it pretty well with my setup. I played it a bit on my old system: e6300 + 2gb + 8800gt and going to a new cpu raised my fps quite a bit. However, it was still more than playable on my old system and I killed tons and tons of folks with it. I still can't turn up some stuff like AA/AF, but my fps stays above 50 and is usually around 80ish.

I'd think a nicely clocked quad would do better than a new GPU for the time being.
 
I can play it pretty well with my setup. I played it a bit on my old system: e6300 + 2gb + 8800gt and going to a new cpu raised my fps quite a bit. However, it was still more than playable on my old system and I killed tons and tons of folks with it. I still can't turn up some stuff like AA/AF, but my fps stays above 50 and is usually around 80ish.

I'd think a nicely clocked quad would do better than a new GPU for the time being.

I was showing him an E8400 for $170.00 on Newegg today, but I'm not sure which would be the better upgrade. I don't think he's ready to buy both at this point. My hunch is that the video card would do more, but I could be wrong (which is why I've made this post). Overclocking my bosses personal computer isn't really an option (though I do have the E6400 a tiny bit overclocked). It has to be dead reliable.
 
I was showing him an E8400 for $170.00 on Newegg today, but I'm not sure which would be the better upgrade. I don't think he's ready to buy both at this point. My hunch is that the video card would do more, but I could be wrong (which is why I've made this post). Overclocking my bosses personal computer isn't really an option (though I do have the E6400 a tiny bit overclocked). It has to be dead reliable.


E6400 is a weak CPU for modern DX10 and DX11 games, it is low clocked and with just 2 Mb L2 memory; yes, it would be a bottleneck.

E8400 + 9800GT > E6400 + GTX460

The motherboard you mentioned is nForce 650 SLI, so get another 9800GT in the future. SLI in that mobo 9800GT would be almost as good as GTX460 768 Mb.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-review/15

Browse that chart and you will see that a 9800GT is about half the speed of GTX460 768 Mb.
 
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Between this thread, and reading some others about Black Ops, a CPU upgrade seems to be the obvious choice. I recommended that he buy a Q9505, and he ordered it today. Thanks.
 
would help posting rest of system specs to see what is the bottleneck

It's a P5N-E with an E6400. It has four gigs of RAM, and XP Pro 32. More RAM won't help anything. Windows 7 might, as it would get full use of the RAM, and DX11. But he's definitely an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" sort of guy. At this time, I still don't think there would be enough clear cut advantages to Win7 to convince him to switch over. He's in his mid to late fifties.
 
p5n-e sli

hi i also have a p5n-e sli with an e6750, bought black ops and after a day of trying to play it , burned out my 8800 gts, replaced that with a asus engtx460 768mb and it studders badly, i have 4gb of ram, i think my e6750 is bottlenecking my new video card, dont know if best chice would be a q9505 or change motherboard and get a amd x4 but then would have to buy new ram and also might have to buy a new windows 7 as my version now it tied to my p5n-e sli, anyone have any suggestions? would overclocking my e6750 help? new to that so if someone could explain how to do it if it would help, thanks
 
hi i also have a p5n-e sli with an e6750, bought black ops and after a day of trying to play it , burned out my 8800 gts, replaced that with a asus engtx460 768mb and it studders badly, i have 4gb of ram, i think my e6750 is bottlenecking my new video card, dont know if best chice would be a q9505 or change motherboard and get a amd x4 but then would have to buy new ram and also might have to buy a new windows 7 as my version now it tied to my p5n-e sli, anyone have any suggestions? would overclocking my e6750 help? new to that so if someone could explain how to do it if it would help, thanks
Why does everyone assume that stuttering must be a bottleneck? If the CPU is a bottleneck for the new card's performance, then it simply won't run faster than the old graphics card did. It shouldn't suddenly introduce stuttering - it's not going to be SLOWER because the GPU is "too fast".

The issue here is DPC latency, which affects GTX460's in socket 775 systems. I figured it out today with my system, and it really sucks. nVidia doesn't have a fix for it, and it doesn't look like they really care.
 
I received and installed the Q9505. With all at default speeds, it went from just under 10,000 points in 3D Mark 06 to 13,000. Black Ops ran smoothly at 1152x864, with all other settings at default. I don't know if would have dropped the frame rates too low to go to a higher resolution, I didn't try. My boss is happy.
 
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