GPU CPU relationship

[paranoia23]

to hold the question short ... my old system was a opteron dualcore 2.6ghz with a radeon 4770.
the actual system is a c2d E8500 at 3.5ghz with a radeon 5450

when i play mario kart dd or mario party 4 i get 25 frames at 50hz during the games now. i think with my old system mario kart for example was faster then it is now.

if u uppgrade my gfx card what improvements could i expect ?!
because i thought dolphin is more cpu related?

thanks for the help !

[zumbajc]

you could very potentially see a speed increase espcially if your player at higher then native resolutions. a 4770 is really quite a bit stronger then a 5450 at least in raw power, what are you settings btw

[gore]

disable fog ? and other useless stuffs?

[NaturalViolence]

You really need to upgrade that video card. A 5450 is nowhere near sufficient, even for efb scales <1x.