7850 + Q9400 Bottleneck @ 2560x1600

Hello OC members, been a lurker here for quite some time but finally decided to reach out for some help. Thank you for the support in advance.

Currently I'm debating on making the jump from a 4850 to 7850, but bottleneck concerns have made me somewhat hesitant. Note that I am not planning on leaving the 775 platform anytime soon, so I'm stuck with my current setup for the time being. I built the system about 3-4 years ago so I may not have the exact model #'s for some of the parts.

Mobo: Gigabyte P35-DS3L
CPU: Q9400 @ 2.66ghz (not sure why any OC over 3ghz locks up the system)
RAM: 4GB OCZ Platinum something something...DDR2 1066 5-5-15
OS: 32-bit Windows 7 Ult. (I am aware of limited memory addressing issues)
Monitor: Dell IPS 30" 2560x1600

As you can see, the monitor resolution becomes the X-Factor here, from my understanding, higher res = more GPU workload which means CPU bottleneck becomes less likely.

So the simple question here is:
Will my Q9400 (at stock or 3Ghz) be a bottleneck for a 2GB 7850 @ 2560x1600?

Games I would play include pretty much everything (Racers, FPS's, MMO's, City Builders), although my preference is towards more cpu intensive gaming such as MMO's and Strategy/City Builders.

Again, thank you for the support guys, glad to be a part of the community.

PS. I've been in the IT industry for over 15 years and currently working as a network engineer, I'll gladly provide any insights or answer any questions I can to help support the community.

Despite the resolution it will create a bit of a bottleneck. My q9550 @ 4.1 with a 6870 going to a i7 setup was leaps and bounds faster (especially minimum frame rate) in terms of bottlenecks. That was only a s1156 setup too. If you could clock that q9400 up a bit it would help some but honestly you will see the biggest gain saving some money and moving to a i5/8gb RAM etc setup then going from there. At least that is what I would do.

Edit: or I suppose you could go with that 7850 and feel a bit of a frame jump especially at that res then save for a less bottlenecked setup. So many choices

ziggo0 said:

Despite the resolution it will create a bit of a bottleneck. My q9550 @ 4.1 with a 6870 going to a i7 setup was leaps and bounds faster (especially minimum frame rate) in terms of bottlenecks. That was only a s1156 setup too. If you could clock that q9400 up a bit it would help some but honestly you will see the biggest gain saving some money and moving to a i5/8gb RAM etc setup then going from there. At least that is what I would do.

Edit: or I suppose you could go with that 7850 and feel a bit of a frame jump especially at that res then save for a less bottlenecked setup. So many choices

Click to expand...

Thank you ziggs for the input, sounds like i should buy the 7850 and migrate it over to a new system soon, i already have 6 desktops at the house, what's one more right

Would you happen to remember how much of a performance increase (avg fps) you got after the i7 jump?

Makes me wonder if i should just opt for a lesser gpu, but at 2560x1600, even the 7850 might struggle on med-high in some games