Hi guys, hope you can help with a simple question. I know very little about CPU's and I have had my current CPU since around about 2011 I believe, an i7 930 overclocked to 3.8Ghz.

I upgraded my GPU from a GTX 480 to a GTX 770 (2GB) about 1.5 years ago and now I am thinking about a further upgrade to either one of the higher 900 series or the GTX 1060.

Are you guys able to tell me if my CPU will bottleneck these cards with this CPU? Just let me know if I need to provide any further info. Thanks very much!

Personally I think yes. would you noticed the difference much, probably not, if you can afford to upgrade do it, if not dont untill you can

Stelly

Stelly said:

Personally I think yes. would you noticed the difference much, probably not, if you can afford to upgrade do it, if not dont untill you can

Stelly

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Thanks for the speedy reply! When you say would I notice the difference, do you mean would I notice the impact the bottleneck was having on the card as in it would likely be minimal?

Bungah said:

Thanks for the speedy reply! When you say would I notice the difference, do you mean would I notice the impact the bottleneck was having on the card as in it would likely be minimal?

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it shouldnt be a massive amount. it will still be a bit faster than you 770

Jumper118 said:

it shouldnt be a massive amount. it will still be a bit faster than you 770

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Benchmarks for the 1060 in particular seem to suggest quite a large leap in FPS from a 770 - I wouldn't upgrade if my processor was gonna hamper that significantly

At 1080p yes. At 1440p possibly. Above 1440p probably not.

You could get the Xeon x5650 as a cheap 50 quid upgrade that will remove any bottleneck at 1440p and up.

Ste said:

At 1080p yes. At 1440p possibly. Above 1440p probably not.

You could get the Xeon x5650 as a cheap 50 quid upgrade that will remove any bottleneck at 1440p and up.

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I'd be playing at 1080p - so not worth doing then?

I'm basically looking for a card to push me to max settings and 60fps instead of mostly High settings and 45-60fps in the more demanding titles.

No definitely worth doing if the games you are playing are struggling on your current setup. Get the Xeon X5650 (or similar), overclock to 4ghz+, buy an Nvidia 1060 and enjoy.

Check this thread out for info on Xeon https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18618052

Bungah said:

Hi guys, hope you can help with a simple question. I know very little about CPU's and I have had my current CPU since around about 2011 I believe, an i7 930 overclocked to 3.8Ghz.

I upgraded my GPU from a GTX 480 to a GTX 770 (2GB) about 1.5 years ago and now I am thinking about a further upgrade to either one of the higher 900 series or the GTX 1060.

Are you guys able to tell me if my CPU will bottleneck these cards with this CPU? Just let me know if I need to provide any further info. Thanks very much!

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I wouldn't recommend it, your 930 will definitely bottleneck it.

I upgraded from a I7 920 @ 3.8Ghz (C0 stepping, wouldn't do more) to a 6700k @ 4.7Ghz, massive performance difference on my 390X. Im now using a 1070 and getting great performance out of it.

I'd recommend a i5 or i7 Skylake to go along with your 1070, it will last for years and will give you much more performance than your 930 or any x58 xeon, while being much cooler and quieter

Dave2150 said:

I wouldn't recommend it, your 930 will definitely bottleneck it.

I upgraded from a I7 920 @ 3.8Ghz (C0 stepping, wouldn't do more) to a 6700k @ 4.7Ghz, massive performance difference on my 390X. Im now using a 1070 and getting great performance out of it.

I'd recommend a i5 or i7 Skylake to go along with your 1070, it will last for years and will give you much more performance than your 930 or any x58 xeon, while being much cooler and quieter

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Whilst I agree with you a new chipset will net him big gains, the route the OP takes will depend on budget. A Xeon could be bought for £50, an Nvidia 1060 for £250 which will allow him to play games at higher settings than what he currently does. To upgrade to Skylake will cost significantly more https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-z170x-gaming-7-skylake-core-i7-6700k-cpu-and-motherboard-bundle-20-pounds-saving-bu-022-gi.html
That's just a motherboard and cpu, he'd need RAM and a new cooler as well.

So OP what's your budget

Mariusz said:

Whilst I agree with you a new chipset will net him big gains, the route the OP takes will depend on budget. A Xeon could be bought for £50, an Nvidia 1060 for £250 which will allow him to play games at higher settings than what he currently does. To upgrade to Skylake will cost significantly more https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-z170x-gaming-7-skylake-core-i7-6700k-cpu-and-motherboard-bundle-20-pounds-saving-bu-022-gi.html
That's just a motherboard and cpu, he'd need RAM and a new cooler as well.

So OP what's your budget

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Also depends what motherboard the OP has - not all X58 boards support the xeons. If it doesn't support them, then add another £80-100 for a second hand xeon compatible board etc.

Also he doesn't have to buy the i7 Skylake - the i5 is still an great gaming CPU if his budget doesn't stretch to the i7.

Get the GPU and see how you get on.

At 1080p your upgrades should, in order, be GPU, RAM to 8+ GB, SSD (if budget permits), and CPU. Note that you will need to reinstall Windows after an upgrade from 4 to 8 GB if you are running 32 bit Windows.

BTW don't change too many components in one go or you'll have to re-authenticate Windows.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I had a look at some benchmarks of a similar CPU to mine with the new RX480 and the GTX1060 and both show a knock of about 10-20fps depending on game compared with a more recent CPU.

I don't have a huge budget, the 1060 is right at the top of it so getting extras on top unfortunately not an option.

I'm unsure what to do, it looks like I'd get a decent performance boost but it feels bad to upgrade into a known bottleneck. I know it's future proofing as I can upgrade processor down the line but not sure when that would be.

What motherboard do you have, if it's compatible with a Xeon you could buy one of those off Ebay for around £50, one of those overclocked with an Nvidia 1060 will be a good step up.

List your entire spec here and we'll be able to help you best we can.

Mariusz said:

What motherboard do you have, if it's compatible with a Xeon you could buy one of those off Ebay for around £50, one of those overclocked with an Nvidia 1060 will be a good step up.

List your entire spec here and we'll be able to help you best we can.

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I'm not 100% on the motherboard, my system is one I bought from Overclockers actually in 2011, I *think* the mobo is a Gigabyte Ultra Durable UD3 of some description as that is what comes up on the splash screen when I boot the computer.

I'm not terribly tech savvy, as I said I bought this PC pre-built and simply plugged a new graphics card in as my only upgrade. Upgrading a CPU seems like a tougher job/easy thing to break what with having to reapply coolant stuff between it and the heatsink?

I have 6GB of RAM (no idea on details of speed/GDDR - but it'll be whatever was pretty decent in 2011? Lol)

And I have a pretty standard hard-drive, not an SSD.

I game at 1080p and will be continuing to do so for some time yet as I play via HDMI to my living room TV instead of a monitor and we aren't getting a 4K TV any time soon!

I should maybe add that I generally don't buy second hand goods as I've been stung a couple of times before, so that will obviously have an impact on pricing here.

I'd say the amd 480 or a gtx 1060 would give you a ok increase, I'd also look into what cpu cooler you have and if temps are fine o/c your 930 to 4 or 4.2 . Thats about your best bang for buck upgrade and you can always upgrade the rest of your pc at a later date in a year or two

triss said:

I'd say the amd 480 or a gtx 1060 would give you a ok increase, I'd also look into what cpu cooler you have and if temps are fine o/c your 930 to 4 or 4.2 . Thats about your best bang for buck upgrade and you can always upgrade the rest of your pc at a later date in a year or two

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I tried overclocking to 4.0 and it wasn't happy. I'm not sure what cooler I have, again it came with the PC pre-built. Annoyingly the system was meant to come 4.0 overclocked out of the box and I had to downclock to 3.8 to get it stable!

Bungah said:

I tried overclocking to 4.0 and it wasn't happy. I'm not sure what cooler I have, again it came with the PC pre-built. Annoyingly the system was meant to come 4.0 overclocked out of the box and I had to downclock to 3.8 to get it stable!

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It may have needed slightly more volts to be stable at 4ghz.