CPU Bottleneck with Radeon 9700?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hukuis
  • Start date Start date
H

Hukuis

About a month ago I bought a built-by-ATI Radeon 9700 on eBay for only
$100. It was a great deal and it improved performance by quite a lot
over my old Radeon 9000. One thing I've noticed though, is that I get
approximately the same framerate for 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024
in Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm using an Athlon XP 1900+; is this chip
slow enough to bottleneck my graphics card? I have 512MB DDR RAM, and
it's all running on an old K7S5A Pro mainboard. I've been looking at
the Athlon XP-M 2500+, which is under $100 and can be overclocked to
some very nice speeds. Would this be enough to remove my CPU
bottleneck, or should I wait until I have enough for a S939 64-bit
system?
Thanks in advance,
-Hukuis
 
Hukuis said:
About a month ago I bought a built-by-ATI Radeon 9700 on eBay for only
$100. It was a great deal and it improved performance by quite a lot
over my old Radeon 9000. One thing I've noticed though, is that I get
approximately the same framerate for 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024
in Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm using an Athlon XP 1900+; is this chip
slow enough to bottleneck my graphics card? I have 512MB DDR RAM, and
it's all running on an old K7S5A Pro mainboard. I've been looking at
the Athlon XP-M 2500+, which is under $100 and can be overclocked to
some very nice speeds. Would this be enough to remove my CPU
bottleneck, or should I wait until I have enough for a S939 64-bit
system?
Thanks in advance,
-Hukuis
Click to expand...
You might try deleting all ATI software, then reloading with
the latest drivers.
Then load the latest motherboard drivers from SIS
This site might also offer some help
http://p199.ezboard.com/bk7s5amotherboardforum
 
Hukuis said:
About a month ago I bought a built-by-ATI Radeon 9700 on eBay for only
$100. It was a great deal and it improved performance by quite a lot
over my old Radeon 9000. One thing I've noticed though, is that I get
approximately the same framerate for 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024
in Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm using an Athlon XP 1900+; is this chip
slow enough to bottleneck my graphics card?
Click to expand...

It could. First I'd check that vsync isn't enabled. A straight 9700 non-pro
isn't a screamer with 275/275 clockings, but it is a 256bit card with 8
pipelines. But you should see different framerates with different
resolutions. The XP-M 2500+ is very overclockable, but your ECS mainboard
will require a BIOS flash to run at anything other than stock speeds. Is
your RAM PC2100 also? Do yourself a favor and get a better Nforce2 dual
channel board that you can tweak.
http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/11341.html
 
Hukuis said:
About a month ago I bought a built-by-ATI Radeon 9700 on eBay for only
$100. It was a great deal and it improved performance by quite a lot
over my old Radeon 9000. One thing I've noticed though, is that I get
approximately the same framerate for 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024
in Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm using an Athlon XP 1900+; is this chip
slow enough to bottleneck my graphics card? I have 512MB DDR RAM, and
it's all running on an old K7S5A Pro mainboard. I've been looking at
the Athlon XP-M 2500+, which is under $100 and can be overclocked to
some very nice speeds. Would this be enough to remove my CPU
bottleneck, or should I wait until I have enough for a S939 64-bit
system?
Click to expand...

UT has always been very much CPU-dependent. If vsync as previously mentioned
isn't the reason for the similar results, this probably is, and you would
get improvement with better CPU.
 
VSync is disabled (the framerate was around 47fps). I've already
flashed the CheapoMan BIOS to try and overclock my 1900+, but it can't
pull anything over 1733mHz and remain stable. The RAM is PC3200, so I
won't have a problem overclocking the 2500+.
Thanks for the help,
-Hukuis
 
Also, this card may not be a screamer, but it manages very decent
framerates with the Doom 3 demo at 1024x768 on High detail (they're
around 41fps, still playable in my opinion).
 
One thing I've noticed though, is that I get approximately the
same framerate for 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 in Unreal
Tournament 2004
Click to expand...

I saw similar results in several benchmarks when I got mine. The true
strength of this generation (and later) cards is the ability to run modern
games at 1024x768 (and 1280x1024 if you're lucky) with x8aniso and x4fsaa,
which -- IMO -- really improves the visual experience.

A faster CPU would probably give you higher numbers, but a similar spread
of results over the resolutions.

Andrew McP
 
Hukuis said:
About a month ago I bought a built-by-ATI Radeon 9700 on eBay for only
$100. It was a great deal and it improved performance by quite a lot
over my old Radeon 9000. One thing I've noticed though, is that I get
approximately the same framerate for 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024
in Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm using an Athlon XP 1900+; is this chip
slow enough to bottleneck my graphics card? I have 512MB DDR RAM, and
it's all running on an old K7S5A Pro mainboard. I've been looking at
the Athlon XP-M 2500+, which is under $100 and can be overclocked to
some very nice speeds. Would this be enough to remove my CPU
bottleneck, or should I wait until I have enough for a S939 64-bit
system?
Thanks in advance,
-Hukuis
Click to expand...

The flyby timedemo should show differant results but the botmatch timedemos
are definitely CPU dependent because of the CPU doing all the bot AI.
Are you sure a K7S5A Pro will support a 333fsb chip - thought it only did
266fsb
Athlons ?
 
The flyby timedemo should show differant results but the botmatch
timedemos
are definitely CPU dependent because of the CPU doing all the bot AI.
Are you sure a K7S5A Pro will support a 333fsb chip - thought it only did
266fsb
Athlons ?
Click to expand...

The Mobile 2500+ is a 266FSB part, although it can be run at higher bus
speeds for overclocking purposes. If I were to buy one, I would run it
with a FSB of 150 mHz and a multiplier of 15 for a 2.25 gHz system.
 
Back
Top