GPU upgrade from 8800GT to HD5770

[eknihy]

well, I just purchased Sapphire Vapor-X HD5770 1GB and replaced my Palit 8800GT 1GB Superb+

 

Intel E6850 3.0GHz

Asus P5Q Deluxe

4GB DDR2 800MHz Kingston Value

Creative Audigy 2

Windows 7 x64

 

dragon age *.ini files are untouched (I heard that you can adjust graphics level somewhere there), in-game options are at 1680x1050, with every option on/maximum setting (same settings for both GPUs)

 

I left NVidia drivers, Win7 can live with that and maybe I put 8800GT back for PhysX, I installed Sapphire 9.12 ATI drivers

 

now I am not sure what FPS I had with my 8800GT in different game location, I only checked Denerim Market District and I had about 21-25FPS, HD5770 gives me about 25-30FPS but 8800GT gave me smoother visual feeling (I didn't realize my FPS are so low with 8800GT until I used FRAPS), CPU is taxed 100% with both GPUs and with HD5770 there is no hardware PhysX, is my CPU holding me back with my new HD5770 ? should I see more FPS in Denerim Market District with quad core CPU (other game locations are about 40 with HD5770)?

 

I am getting Q9550 soon (eBay), I am just wondering if anything is going to change for me with 4 cores

 

EDIT: that 8800GT is based on g92 chip, it has 112 thinges (shaders, whatever they call it)

[jaysus]

i guess its the good ol system bus bottleneck... theretically you could prolly get some faster ram but most systems dont support it anyway, however thats probably the thing that slows you down

your board at least supports up to ddr2-1600Mhz, however there are ddr3-2xxxmhz RAMs out yet which are probably what you would need to fully experience the speed of the 5xxx series /though i dunno atm how fast these transfer the data right now but i guess its faster than 800Mhz)

 

its simple, every bit of data passes through your mainboard at one point or another (and the mainboards bus speed directly depends on the RAM speed, sets itself to match it) and if that is slower than the fastest component in your system youll never get the full speed

 

a quad core is of course a bit more useful than a dual core, you may try to assign windows to the 1st core and the others to the game once you have the new cpu (do so in taskmanager), that should give you some increase

[eknihy]

Follow up ...

 

Looks like Denerim Market District is full of NPCs with CPU intensive loops, my FPS are at 35-45 with HD 5770 and Q9550 at stock speed for this game location.

 

As far as PhysX goes, looks like it is used for arrow flight computation only.

 

EDIT: checked gazillions of articles and reviews in past few days, memory speed contributes up to 5% in FPS increase/decrease.