Does processor speed have a (significant) bearing on vidcard performance?

[SpiritWarrior]

Firstly, I know running a system of like 400mhz speed would bottleneck most of todays cards but I mean speeds like 2ghz running with say, a geforce 6600gt *with* a PSU that can handle it (400w for example). Would I see any difference when comparing to a 3ghz processor with same card and PSU? My guess is no but some claim it would, I have always thought that once your cpu is around the 2ghz mark it becomes a non-issue once you meet the PSU requirements.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[Hivetyrant]

Yes!
If you compared those two systems, you would see a significant difference, though it would depend on what you were comparing it with.
A 2Ghz CPU is not likely to "bottleneck" a 6600GT, but a faster processor is much better, as the CPU does alot more than the video card (generally)
Your PSU makes no difference(sort of), if you meet the requirements, then your system will run fine, if it does not, generally your video card or PCI devices will be disabled (in the case of AGP, your display will be set to 2-bit colour and a res of 640x480)
The main reason a kick ass PSU is wanted these days is because more and more people are overclocking and using more power on more power hungry devices, a 2 or even a 3Ghz CPU and a 6600gt should run fine on a 400w PSU

Basically, its a tricky question, stock standard, no, your CPU should be running fast enough to handle the video card, but if you started to overclock that card, your CPU would start to lag behind I think [img]smile.gif[/img]

EDIT: My response may seem a bit strange becasue I say yes then no, I am assuming that you have a 2ghz cpu with a 6600gt, in your case no, in a broad sense yes, your cpu can have a major effect on your video card performance, but there are many, many, many, many other factors that need to be considered, ie, RAM, mobo and so on.

[ 02-07-2006, 08:19 PM: Message edited by: Hivetyrant ]

[SpiritWarrior]

Thanks HT for the response. So in a nutshell it is safe to say 2ghz wouldn't bottlekneck this kind of card at all once PSU meets req's and once there's no OCing. Right? Or it is still possible? If it is, what kind of bottleknecking ar we talking about, is it huge or small? Would it make it not worth trying?

Edit: Okay so taking your edit into consideration, let me outline the specs of this system.

Dimension 4550
2ghz Intel
1g ram
250w PSU
Geforce 4600 ti

I'm not really sure as to the mobo make but I'm sure the 4550 specs are around somewhere if it matters. Basically I want to upgrade this one with a better card but have some reservations about doing so. Firstly, I would have to upgrade my PSU which is kinda hard to do since most Dell stuff is proprietary but I hear it can be done with some kind of adapter etc. I am reluctant to bother if it still won't work. Is mobo a big factor also? Like, if I got everything else right could I suddenly discover my mobo too needs to be upgraded?

I foolishly tried an Ati 9800 pro before in this system and it ran games maybe 5 times worse than the Geforce ti 4600 so I guessed it was due to the low PSU. However, it did not shut off or show no card like you indicated when power is the issue. It simply ran video and gaming stuff very slow (new drivers etc. everything checked out fine). I wonder, could this have been a processor issue instead of PSU? I'd imagine 2ghz is enough for a 98 pro since it's not really a brand new card.

[ 02-07-2006, 08:51 PM: Message edited by: SpiritWarrior ]

[Hivetyrant]

Hmm, the RAM generally used in the Dimension 4550's is 333DDR which is in no way great, but isn't that bad either.
generally the motherboard won't make that much difference, the only real limiting factors are the Front side bus capacity and the maximum memmory speed, but you should be fine ASSUMING! that the board has an AGP slot, I would think that it does, but the Geforce 4600 ti was available as a PCI card, but wouldnt be that great. (You said you used a 9800 Pro so I guess it does)

But I cannot even begin to imagine why the card would perform worse than the 4600, unless the ati drivers were diabling the AGP speed (often happes, that's why I want to kill the people that invented fastwrite)

Next:
Your CPU, is it a Pentium 4 or is it a Celeron?
The P4 would be good and probably perform fine, but i'm not so sure about the celeron, whilst their performance isnt a huge chuck less, they are a bit slower and could slow down your gaming.

Next again:
PSU, I am a HUGE Dell fan, but if there is one annoying thing about their systems, its the power supply, luckily you have a dimension, so it is possible to get a more powerfull PSU *I think*
Where from, I couldn't tell you (becasue I don't know [img]tongue.gif[/img] ) but you can always try ebay or somewhere similar.

In reality, you should be able to run a 6600GT from that power supply, now before all the so called "hardware nuts" come after me, I know this should work, I work on a mine site with over 400 Dell machines and I have many myself, Azeral and horsimus (users here) both use Dell's with standard PSU's (generally about 210/250w) but they both run ATI x850's perfectly, and as long as you aren't using too many other non-standard devices, you should be fine.

But don't take my word for it, as I have never used a Demension 4550 and it might not work.

Hope this helps, I will try and give some more details later, but for no I got heaps of work to do!

[SpiritWarrior]

Yes that helps alot, thank you [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Some clarifications on my system. My CPU is pentium. My AGP speed only goes up to 4x. I don't think it's the ram at all, I love my 1 gig and despite it's generic speed it serves me amazingly on every game. WoW runs fine with it using my ti 4600 but the 98 slowed the game wayyy down when I put it in along with new drivers. IIRC I tried disabling fast writes and no change (I tried alot before I sent it back so I was certain).

I have talked with people who had the same PSU as me (same system in fact) and were running a 98 pro just perfectly. It did plug directly into the PSU IIRC and I do have a dvd drive, cd rw in there already so maybe it was leeching *shrug*.

Well, I'll go tinker and ponder and maybe even call Dell about their PS upgrading options. Thanks for all the tips!