What's a good way to test whether your CPU/Mobo or GPU is your bottleneck in games?

CaxusCaxus
edited April 2006 in Hardware
I'm trying to figure out if i'd see a bigger fps increase in Oblivion by upgrading my cpu or my gpu so i was wondering if there are good solid way to test to see which one is holding you back more. It's a pretty tough decision because i currently have a socket 754 Athlon 64 3200 (1mb cache) and a Radeon X800 XT PE. I would either upgrade to a socket 939 Athlon 3700 San Diego OR get an X1800 XT but i can't afford to do both right now. Getting the video card would also include picking up a $45 socket 754 motherboard that has a pci-e slot.

Comments

  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited April 2006
    Honestly- I'd wait until I could do both. I think it will be worth more if you do. Oblivion plays just fine on my son's 800XT AGP board with a 2.8GHz Northwood.

    I would double check my video options in Oblivion- there are tons. I think your problem may be there.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited April 2006
    Personally, I think the bottleneck is more in the GPU. I have a similarly performing card (X850XT), and an Opteron 148 @ 3+GHz, and the game still runs rather choppy in large outdoor environments. Its a pretty demanding game to say the least. Qel gave you some good advice though, and I would wait until you can replace both the CPU and the video card too. There are some exciting new chips coming from Intel and AMD right around the corner. I'd wait a bit :)

    Also, as Qel mentioned, check out the video options. I had to reduce my resolution to 1024x786 for Oblivion to play smoothly. I disabled AA as well, which made a huge difference. The game still looks wonderful though :)
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