Bottlenecking on 4200+

It is real bad. My brother had a 3800 X2 that was Overclocked and it slowed down a 8800GTS. So i would say it is killing performance.

Its bad, but try to overclock it at least 2.6ghz+.

Can an old 6000+ (3.0g) can handle it?

Wow...guys. The "bottleneck" all depends on the resolution. If its a high resolution (1080p or higher) then the 2.2GHz dual core won't be AS BAD of a bottleneck. Otherwise just overclock it honestly. Any dual core at 2.8-3.0GHz or higher isn't going to bottleneck a single 4870 in my opinion. I ran SLI setups with my Opteron 165 @ 3.0GHz, but I was at 1440x900, so I did have a bottleneck because of the low resolution.

My friend is running with 17" monitor.

To give an example of how much it might be bottlenecking. Take a look at these 2 vantage scores. The first is when I had a 5600+ Brisbane, the second after an upgrade to a Phenom II 940, absolutely nothing else changed.

5600+ : http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=877509

Phenom II 940 : http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1002698

To demonstrate, I have had the cpu listed in my sig, with the same gpu as yourself, seemed to run fine.... I've now just upgraded to a Phenom II x2 550BE overclocked to 3.7ghz for now and have noticed a nice jump in fps with the majority of games. I know its different platforms AM2+ and AM3 so not sure on the difference that makes but benchmark scores went from 1937 to 2486 for my cpu and noticed the fps in the benchmarks rise a little.