Graphics Dual 6800GT bottleneck question

I was thinking about getting another 6800GT but was not sure if my AMD64 3200 would act as a bottleneck, anyone have any experiences with the same thing or know if it would?

 

why are you after another gfx card? have you upped the resolution you play at or something?

 

just thought that it would be nice to increase my performance

 

if you are 1280x1024 or less then i wouldnt bother as you wont see any milestone in a performance increase.

 

regardless of weither or not the performance would increase much would my cpu act as a bottleneck?

 

Your CPU will act as a bottleneck to some extent with even a single card. It depends a huge amount on the game, resolution, filtering effects, and all sorts of other stuff. Look at UT2004... even a 6600gt is CPU-bottlenecked. Granted the 200fps it'll get you are more than enough, but that's aside the point.

If you play with high effects or high res, you'll see an incease. If you don't, you should be able to. If you just want a higher framerate, it really depends what you're at now.

 

ok so at what clockspeed would my cpu have to be at to effectively not bottleneck a single 6800GT? and 2 6800GTs?

 

If i were you i'd at least upgrade to the 3800+ X2 (dual core) that's the slowest dc but it should eliminate bottlenecking.

 

ok I just might upgrade to that 3800+X2 then

but in the future I am going to get a 7800GTX so would that be a sufficient CPU for that card?

 

I think the 3800+ X2 might hold it back slightly, but those things overclock superbly. You won't have much of a problem there

 

I didn't find much of a difference: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/05/19/nvidia_sli_pt4/1.html

 

thanks for all the help, so would you suggest getting a 3800X2 or a 6800GT?

 

If you all ready have one 6800gt, then go for the 3800 X2... And upgrade to your 7800gtx later

 

ok then that settles it i'm going to upgrade to a 3800X2 thanks for all the help

 

hey, just noticed that the average framerate figures for NFSUG2 seem to be backwards i.e the slowest cpu speed gives the best frame rate etc.

Looking at that article, it seems that whether your cpu will be limiting depends on what game your playing.

However if i remember correctly then when your cpu starts to limit your framerate you can whack the aa and af up to get better quality settings without needing any more cpu power as these are graphics card basec operations.