Asus P4T-E w/ Geforce 5900XT

[Dennis]

I have an Asus P4T-4 Motherboard which is about 5ish years old. It's
running a northwood 1.6gzh CPU, 1028 megs of RDRam800 on Win2k.

I recently upgrated my video card to a Geforce 5900XT (from a Geforce
Ti4200). I'm disappointed there is almost no increase in framerate in
my favorite game (City of Heroes). I suspect the 1.6gzh CPU is
bottlenecking me, could anyone confirm the cpu is the problem? Or is
the motherboard to blame too? I would hate to have to update my
motherboard because 1028 megs of RDRam was expensive.

Can anyone tell me what is the fastest CPU I can put in this P4T-E,
and would that be enough to let the Geforce 5900XT live up to it's
full potential?

Here's a link to the PT4-E:
http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4T-E&langs=09


Thanks in advance guys

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

I have an Asus P4T-4 Motherboard which is about 5ish years old. It's
running a northwood 1.6gzh CPU, 1028 megs of RDRam800 on Win2k.

I recently upgrated my video card to a Geforce 5900XT (from a Geforce
Ti4200). I'm disappointed there is almost no increase in framerate in
my favorite game (City of Heroes). I suspect the 1.6gzh CPU is
bottlenecking me, could anyone confirm the cpu is the problem? Or is
the motherboard to blame too? I would hate to have to update my
motherboard because 1028 megs of RDRam was expensive.

Can anyone tell me what is the fastest CPU I can put in this P4T-E,
and would that be enough to let the Geforce 5900XT live up to it's
full potential?

Here's a link to the PT4-E:
http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4T-E&langs=09


Thanks in advance guys

Powerleap sells a 2.8 GHz CPU that will work with that motherboard.

 

[Dennis]

Powerleap sells a 2.8 GHz CPU that will work with that motherboard.

I note the motherboard is AGPx4 and the card supports AGPx8. How much
does this affect graphic performance? Can anyone tell me if it's going
to bottleneck me even with a 2.8 GHz?

 

[Dennis]

Powerleap sells a 2.8 GHz CPU that will work with that motherboard.

I note the motherboard is AGPx4 and the card is AGPx8. How much does
this affect graphic performance? Can anyone tell me if it will still
bottleneck even with a 2.8 GHz cpu upgrade?

Thanks in advance

 

[DaveW]

Yes, your CPU is holding you back, as is the older RDRAM.

 

[Nom]

I note the motherboard is AGPx4 and the card supports AGPx8. How much
does this affect graphic performance?
0%.

Can anyone tell me if it's going to bottleneck me even with a 2.8 GHz?

The CPU will always cause *some* bottleneck ! You can't buy much quicker
than a 2.8 though, so don't worry about it.

 

[Stephan Grossklass]

Yes, your CPU is holding you back, as is the older RDRAM.

If one is to trust the THG review (2.8 GHz upgrade for socket 423), the
CPU should be the main culprit, with dual channel PC800 RDRAM only being
a *tiny* bit slower than dual channel DDR SDRAM (presumably PC266
operation).

Stephan

 

[Barry Watzman]

The CPU is most likely the problem. You can go to at least 2.6 GHz with
stock CPUs, and quite possibly higher. In terms of cost, however, the
most readily available higher-end CPU, and the best value, will be a
2.4GHz Northwood P4 with a 100/400 MHz FSB (check the FSB, because the
2.4's were made in both 100/400 and 133/533 variants).

The problem with that motherboard is that it's limited, in most cases,
to a 100/400 MHz front side bus, you can't even go to 133/533, much less
200/800 MHz. Personally, I think it's time to upgrade the motherboard,
even though you can upgrade the CPU and it will make a very substantial
difference. A P4T533-C motherboard would allow an upgrade to 3.06 GHz
with Hyperthreading and would allow you to continue to use your existing
memory (it prefers 1066 MHz RDRAM, but has a multiplier setting to work
with 800MHz RDRAM).

Or, of course, you could just go to a motherboard using DDR memory, but
that means replacing both the motherboard and memory.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Yes, it will be a bottleneck in games. My son has a P4T533-C with an
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and is complaining about the 8x vs. 4x thing also.