Pentium D 915 in Modern Gaming

butterfliesrpretty said:
nobody was arguing that, that's common sense the point is it's still possible to game with these, also using low settings in a game is still playing the game, with crysis like I said most of it is low but some I was able to turn up with no performance hit.
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well actually there was some debate or I would not have wasted my time posting benchmarks. and yes MOST games can run fine but there will be a few that wont. thats what I said from the beginning.
 
cannondale06 said:
that may be the case for most games but that cpu is severally holding that 4850 back and does not run every single modern game smoothly. there are games like Red Faction Guerrilla, Far Cry 2, GTA 4, Ghostbusters, and others that will have very low framerate and in many cases be basically unplayable because of that cpu. overall the majority of games will be perfectly playable but that poor 4850 is having over 50% of its performance thrown right down the drain with that Pentium D.

I dont think you realize how slow that cpu is compared to modern offerings. even if I lowered my E8500 to 1.4 it would match or beat that 3.4 Pentium D. if you doubt me just look at reviews for when the Core 2 Duos came out because even the 1.8 E4300 could beat a 3.4 Pentium D. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2903&p=6

as for an example of a modern game that will struggle a bit, you can see even a faster Pentium D 955 EE can only muster 25 fps in Far Cry 2 with a gtx280. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?b=49
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I think we're all forgetting that I was going to pair the Pentium D 915 with a 4670, not a 4850. Big performance gap between the two.
 
Aaron11 said:
I think we're all forgetting that I was going to pair the Pentium D 915 with a 4670, not a 4850. Big performance gap between the two.
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yeah in your case its not nearly such a big deal. my original comment that you are quoting was to somebody with a Pentium D and 4850 though.
 
Well, I put the system together with the Pentium D 915 and the 4670 and I've seen a great performance increase over the Pentium D 820! Before on L4D, I could barely reach 45 fps @ 1280x1024. Now, with the 915, I can get average 50fps w/ 4x AA @ 1920x1080 with the same gfx card! I'm not saying my gfx card isn't being limited by the cpu, but it's definitely a big improvement!
 
cannondale06 said:
yeah we can stop the debate because it really doesnt matter at this point. facts are though that a Pentium D will severely hurt the performance of a decent video card and thats all I was saying.
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Hey, the Pentium D 915 had its days, it was one of the best chips for its value back then, but mixing it with modern tech ain't a great idea. I have a Pentium D 915, and a E5300 and a E8500 too.

I play FEAR Combat quite alot, (16 player pub servers can lag almost any modern cpu if not above 3.0ghz) and when I was using a E5300 at stock with a GTS250, average fps was 200'ish but once alot of explosion activity came on screen, the fps would drop to about 120 or so. Before this with a Pentium D my max fps was only about 280, but once the fps drops, it would drop much further then what the E5300 dropped too. So you really can't compare a chip best if its time (2005-6) to a chip that make its drop to its knees (2008-9). Mixing old tech with new tech ain't a great idea, unless there is not much of a significant gain in performance. But who cares as long as it doesn't lag and can run the game and your happy with it, then everythings good.
 
I have a Pentium D 915, 1G Ram, and a 7600 GS and it's a DOG in all games, lowest settings. Perhaps it's because it's running really hot, 56C idle, or only 1 gig of ram, don't know, but I see it doesn't seem typical for it to be this slow. I really thought the Pentium D was that slow.
 
Berger said:
I have a Pentium D 915, 1G Ram, and a 7600 GS and it's a DOG in all games, lowest settings. Perhaps it's because it's running really hot, 56C idle, or only 1 gig of ram, don't know, but I see it doesn't seem typical for it to be this slow. I really thought the Pentium D was that slow.
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all of those components are pretty weak for newer games. tbh that Pentium D isnt even the weakest link in your case. another 1gb of ram and a 4650 or even 9500gt would be a massive improvement even with that cpu.
 
cannondale06 said:
all of those components are pretty weak for newer games. tbh that Pentium D isnt even the weakest link in your case. another 1gb of ram and a 4650 or even 9500gt would be a massive improvement even with that cpu.
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Ah that makes sense. It's a completely outdated chip, but applications still work pretty decently on it, even on my crap setup, probably the reason why I still haven't upgraded.
 
Pentium-D's (or really any older dual-core or dual-processor system) make for really great office PC's.

IMO the #1 thing that causes an older system to bog down is when you have a single app pegging the processor. This can occur even due to things like Windows Updates and Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware.

To illustrate the point I have a Dual Pentium-3 Xeon system and each CPU is only 550Mhz (they do have 2MB L2 cache each though). Because no single thread can completely use up all available CPU, it is still faster in most cases than even a single-processor P4 system.
 
Well, I tried GTA IV today with my Pentium D 915 and 4670. As expected, the cpu can't handle it. It could be multiple factors, RAM (I think 3GB shoud be sufficient), CPU (most obvious culprit), or Windows 7 64-bit (I know GTA IV is a crappy PC port, but I doubt the OS is the case). I know it's the CPU because I get crap framerates below 20fps no matter what res I choose. With this being said for light gaming, and even games like CoD4 (I got on average 40fps @ 1920x1080) run well with a Pentium D (depending on the gpu of course), but more processor intensive games like GTA IV simply lead to an EPIC FAIL. I know cannondale06 already pointed this out.
 
GTA iv is
1. Buggy/Glitchy
2. Massive amount of Memory Leaks
3. Quadcore recommended
4. Shit PC port, console port only
5. You'll need a 4850 or 9800gtx later or equiv to play it smoothly.

Draw Distance and Shadow Density take huge gfx memory affects in the game.
 
Matthew Kane said:
GTA iv is
1. Buggy/Glitchy
2. Massive amount of Memory Leaks
3. Quadcore recommended
4. Shit PC port, console port only
5. You'll need a 4850 or 9800gtx later or equiv to play it smoothly.

Draw Distance and Shadow Density take huge gfx memory affects in the game.
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yeaht you really need a 1gb video card especially for cards like the 4850 or stronger which actually have the ability to run decent settings. btw the game looks like ass considering what it takes to properly run it.
 
Shame Rockstar has not yet released further updates to patch and completely fix up the game. But yet this is how they approach every game they distribute.
 
cannondale06 said:
yeaht you really need a 1gb video card especially for cards like the 4850 or stronger which actually have the ability to run decent settings. btw the game looks like ass considering what it takes to properly run it.
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I actually do have the 1GB 4670. I knew GTA IV on PC was crap. I think I'll just buy it used on the 360 for only $10 @ Blockbuster. And you're right, it does look like crap considering what it takes to run it. Look at MW2, even though they screwed PC gamers over, it is actually is playable on lots of hardware and looks good too. Hopefully, I'll be getting a new processor and mobo over the summer, then I'll try GTA again. I mean, in GTA IV it said I was only using about 800 mb of gfx memory, so I know that wasn't the case. I even lowered it to 1280x720 and that didn't do anything to the framerates because of the Pentium D 915. :(
 
Hi didnt want to read all but quickly has it been asked what drivers your using for your video card?
 
Primu$ said:
Hi didnt want to read all but quickly has it been asked what drivers your using for your video card?
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I'm using ATI Catalyst Control Center 9.11 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Could 64-bit/Windows 7 cause any problems? I'm going to reinstall GTA this weekend and apply all the patches and see how it performs because I think the game should be at least playable on lowest possible settings. Something's up. It doesn't make sense to me that on CoD4 @ 1920x1080 on high w/ no AA I can get on average 40fps, and can't run GTA. Any suggestions? Should I try reinstalling the gfx drivers? With a Pentium D 820 (my old PC) running XP x86 I could get 30fps average @ 1280x1024 with the settings medium in GTA IV, but then after two minutes or so, the game would just crash. It's such a crappy port. I uninstalled it off of my XP machine and just kept it to see if it would hopefully work on different PC. Sadly, I'm disappointed since it performs worse. Well sort of, at least the game won't crash at random. It's still unplayable since it crawls @ 10fps.
 
Aaron11 said:
I'm using ATI Catalyst Control Center 9.11 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Could 64-bit/Windows 7 cause any problems? I'm going to reinstall GTA this weekend and apply all the patches and see how it performs because I think the game should be at least playable on lowest possible settings. Something's up. It doesn't make sense to me that on CoD4 @ 1920x1080 on high w/ no AA I can get on average 40fps, and can't run GTA. Any suggestions? Should I try reinstalling the gfx drivers? With a Pentium D 820 (my old PC) running XP x86 I could get 30fps average @ 1280x1024 with the settings medium in GTA IV, but then after two minutes or so, the game would just crash. It's such a crappy port. I uninstalled it off of my XP machine and just kept it to see if it would hopefully work on different PC. Sadly, I'm disappointed since it performs worse. Well sort of, at least the game won't crash at random. It's still unplayable since it crawls @ 10fps.
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sorry but I dont believe you ever averaged 30fps in GTA4 with a Pentium D 820 because that game is just too cpu dependent. I can barely do that my E8500 and thats WAY more than twice as strong as a Pentium D 820. heck an 820 doesnt even come close to meeting the minimum requirements of a 1.8 Core 2 Duo to play GTA 4. and we all know minimum requirements are a joke nowadays.

EDIT: yeah theres no way you did that with a Pentium D 820. even a 6000 X2 which would be 50% faster than that 820 cpu cant do that. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...ead-of-Core-2-Quad-in-CPU-benchmarks/Reviews/
 
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cannondale06 said:
sorry but I dont believe you ever averaged 30fps in GTA4 with a Pentium D 820 because that game is just too cpu dependent. I can barely do that my E8500 and thats WAY more than twice as strong as a Pentium D 820. heck an 820 doesnt even come close to meeting the minimum requirements of a 1.8 Core 2 Duo to play GTA 4. and we all know minimum requirements are a joke nowadays.

EDIT: yeah theres no way you did that with a Pentium D 820. even a 6000 X2 which would be 50% faster than that 820 cpu cant do that. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...ead-of-Core-2-Quad-in-CPU-benchmarks/Reviews/
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Yeah, you're right. Now that I remeber it a little better, it would average 30fps inside his house, but once I went out onto the street the game went down to like 12fps, then a few seconds later, it would crash. I hate the GTA IV port so much. Like I said, I hope to buy the 360 version for only $10. Any suggestions for GTA IV though with the 915?
 
cannondale06 said:
sorry but I dont believe you ever averaged 30fps in GTA4 with a Pentium D 820 because that game is just too cpu dependent. I can barely do that my E8500 and thats WAY more than twice as strong as a Pentium D 820. heck an 820 doesnt even come close to meeting the minimum requirements of a 1.8 Core 2 Duo to play GTA 4. and we all know minimum requirements are a joke nowadays.
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Was about to say, theres no way it could do that, unless you had it running at 10GHZ. Also, aaron have you considered optimizing mods for gta iv? There are some small text and script mods that actually makes GTAIV more playable on older or handicapped systems.
 
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