Hi there.
First, off, my apologies if what I am asking is considered to be basic knowledge in terms of upgrading video cards, but I have tried researching on my own about this issue for a fair amount of time and I am still finding that I come up at dead ends with no real concrete answer. I'm also sorry if this belongs in another section of the forum; I did believe that it would be more suitable to post here seeming it pertains to me deciding whether or not to buy certain video cards.
Anyway, I have been reluctant to buy the XFX Radeon HD 5770 (or any other previous-gen card for that matter), because I keep hearing mixed opinions about the importance of having a collectively decent CPU and video card. From my understanding or what I've researched, in basic laymans terms, the concept of bottlenecking is that, if we're talking in my potential scenario, the video card would have already processed the information and would then wait for the CPU to catch up, thus limiting the performance of the card, and this would be vice versa for a video card that is inferior to the CPU.
What I want to know however, is if this is such a significant deal? Depending on what source I got my information, I've been told things varying in opinion from it not making too much of a significant effect(or course depending on the card and CPU in question) and/or would only lose a certain amount of performance to a certain percentage, to opinions that it may possibly end up performing worse than the card I originally have. I do plan on upgrading my CPU and Mobo at some point next year to something like the Intel i5 or the Phenom II X4, but due to lacking the budget to buy both at the moment, I've decided to stick with a video card for the moment.
So, basically, what I'm asking is thus:
1) Could someone explain the concept of bottleneck in terms of any hardware, including internal bottlenecking within the hardware device itself, and
2) If I choose to upgrade my video card to a Radeon HD 5770, will the GPU bottleneck my current CPU (as well as other aspects of the system, if applicable) and if so, to what degree?
Here are my Specs:
Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI Mobo
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor OC'd to 2.4Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
180GB SATA Hard Drive + 1TB External Hard Drive
Nvidia GForce 6600GT GPU
620 Watt PSU
Running Windows XP Professional
Thanks.
First, off, my apologies if what I am asking is considered to be basic knowledge in terms of upgrading video cards, but I have tried researching on my own about this issue for a fair amount of time and I am still finding that I come up at dead ends with no real concrete answer. I'm also sorry if this belongs in another section of the forum; I did believe that it would be more suitable to post here seeming it pertains to me deciding whether or not to buy certain video cards.
Anyway, I have been reluctant to buy the XFX Radeon HD 5770 (or any other previous-gen card for that matter), because I keep hearing mixed opinions about the importance of having a collectively decent CPU and video card. From my understanding or what I've researched, in basic laymans terms, the concept of bottlenecking is that, if we're talking in my potential scenario, the video card would have already processed the information and would then wait for the CPU to catch up, thus limiting the performance of the card, and this would be vice versa for a video card that is inferior to the CPU.
What I want to know however, is if this is such a significant deal? Depending on what source I got my information, I've been told things varying in opinion from it not making too much of a significant effect(or course depending on the card and CPU in question) and/or would only lose a certain amount of performance to a certain percentage, to opinions that it may possibly end up performing worse than the card I originally have. I do plan on upgrading my CPU and Mobo at some point next year to something like the Intel i5 or the Phenom II X4, but due to lacking the budget to buy both at the moment, I've decided to stick with a video card for the moment.
So, basically, what I'm asking is thus:
1) Could someone explain the concept of bottleneck in terms of any hardware, including internal bottlenecking within the hardware device itself, and
2) If I choose to upgrade my video card to a Radeon HD 5770, will the GPU bottleneck my current CPU (as well as other aspects of the system, if applicable) and if so, to what degree?
Here are my Specs:
Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI Mobo
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor OC'd to 2.4Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
180GB SATA Hard Drive + 1TB External Hard Drive
Nvidia GForce 6600GT GPU
620 Watt PSU
Running Windows XP Professional
Thanks.