Going to buy 8800GTS 512mb ddr3 video card, i was wondering whether my AMD Athlon 5200 x2 would bottleneck it.?

i was just wondering. since i was gonna buy one soon. would the 5200 x2 bottleneck it too much, or since the 8800gts isnt that too powerful a card would the results be ok? and i was wondering if this would run crysis, assassin's creed and spore at high enough settings..thanks!



btw winxp

2 gig ddr2 667 ram

MSI K9N6PGM 2-V mobo.|||Oblivion will be no problem, even a 7600GT plays that well.



For the 8800GTS, it depends on which version. The original cards from last year (320mb and 640mb versions) have been renamed the 9600GSO. Those were based on the G80, and run slower than the newer 8800GTS cards (512mb) which are G92-based.



The new 8800GTS 512mb beats the older 8800GTS 640mb pretty handily, it's a nice card. Don't bother with the 320mb, even a regular 8800GT 512mb is faster.



For your AMD X2 5200+ going with DDR2 800 helps a little bit (like maybe a few percent) but not much. If you have a Core 2 Duo, buying faster RAM than your FSB uses makes NO difference, it just gives you leeway for overclocking.



It's true that 90% of bottlenecks are gpu-based rather than cpu-based, because people often have $300 quad-core processors with $100 video cards that can't keep up, when that should be reversed. For gaming, the video card is of supreme importance. Buy the fastest one your budget allows for.



|||Only thing I would really make sure of first is if your Power Supply Unit (PSU) has enough power (watts) to support the card. For this card, Nvidia recommends at least a 450 Watt Power Supply. And yes this card should run Crysis just fine!|||You should be fine with a 600W power supply- you'll be able to run on high settings since you're running XP (no DX10). You might need to increase your RAM to 3gb or more for performance to be unhindered, but give it a try as-is. Yes, Crysis would run faster on an Athlon X2 6000+ or Core 2 Duo E7200, but don't choose an inferior card for that reason.



In general, don't worry about whether your CPU may bottleneck your video card- if you upgrade the CPU later, your framerates will just increase! Or if you buy a new system, your 8800GTS would be worth migrating to the new case, whereas something cheaper like a 9600GT.. not so much.



It's the other scenario you really want to avoid- where the video card is too weak, so you aren't getting the max framerates your current CPU might provide! In those cases, upgrading the CPU further makes no difference.



** Update**



Don't buy the 320mb 8800GTS, that's an older design. The 8800GTS 512mb is far superior.



Or spend $20 more for the 9800GTX+ or Radeon 4850; those two are hands-down the best cards under $200.|||8800gts with anything above 320mb ddr3 is fine and ur cpu is not a bottleneck for it at all, even for crysis and spore... infact its more than enough to feed the 512 MB of ddr3 ram provided u have the right set of rest of the devices... here are a few suggestions..



to be able to feed ur ddr3 ram at high rates u will need a faster ram.. ddr2 667MHz is not good enough.. try considering an upgrade to 3GB 800 MHz ram at least..

I assume u already have a SATA-2 hdd with 16mb buffer.. if not consider getting it soon as hdd transfer rate might be a bottle neck as well..



rest all seems to be fine..