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Will the AMD FX 8350 bottleneck any GPU's

It WILL bottleneck even 6850/5850 if it was CPU demanding games. Overclocking the CPU would help "reduce" the amount of bottleneck though.

So it's really down to what you play.
 
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It's really going to depend on the games you play to be honest. FPS games? probably not, i suppose if there's an awefull lot of physics going on, maybe, but that would all depend on what deals with the phys.

RTS games - can definately see the cpu being a bottleneck here, especially if the game doesn;t have multi core support...
 
There are games it can bottleneck, same can be said for the 6 core intel, FSX or something and several/most RTS's are mostly CPU based, no idea what framerate FSX needs to be playable, I suspect 60fps+ isn't required, and for RTS several have 30 or 60fps limits and most won't be particularly noticeable as "slow" unless below 20fps because of the feel of them.

Effectively there will be few if any games that really bottleneck the CPU, and most of those will effect max framerates as opposed to min(not always) but most min framerates are when big fancy explosions go off and the gpu is calculating lots of light effects. Overclock it anyway because, why not, IIRC reviews showed that even overclocked idle power remained very good and that was on bulldozer, its been improved further for Piledriver based chips, its not like when you overclock its going to eat power all day long and cost you loads of money.

There are few to no games where a 8350 will hurt you now, not noticeably, maybe some benchmarks due to max frames being limited, in the future this will be even less as most/more games are becoming more and more optimised for multicores and past the next consoles releasing(end of this year for Xbox it would seem), it won't be an issue at all.
 
bemaniac said:
I don't think so. Not even the 7990 I doubt. Badly optimised games will be the culprit before that is.
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It'd bottleneck the 7990 a fair chunk at times in pretty much most games.

It can bottleneck single 7950's/7970's (And lower) depending on the game quite easily too.
While it can be said any CPU will have situations it'll be the bottleneck (2500k etc) it's going to happen first with the FX8350, and a lot more.

For gaming the much older 2500k is still better than it, but I know gaming isn't your priority, so the FX8350 was an acceptable compromise.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
It WILL bottleneck even 6850/5850 if it was CPU demanding games. Overclocking the CPU would help "reduce" the amount of bottleneck though.

So it's really down to what you play.
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I find that very hard to believe.

Any links to tests done to show that?

I am quite sure a 6850/5850 will be a bottleneck in any new game long before a cpu like the 8350 wil be.
 
the1gooner said:
I find that very hard to believe.

Any links to tests done to show that?

I am quite sure a 6850/5850 will be a bottleneck in any new game long before a cpu like the 8350 wil be.
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Like I said it's down to the game you play.

Believe it or not, even my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.6GHz with 80%+ CPU usage would bottleneck my 5850 in Guild Wars 2 in intenseive fights with lots of dynamic things going on and lots of people fighting; a AMD CPU 4 cores performance in this situation (Guild Wars 2 scale up to 4 cores/threads) would be even worse. I'm afraid you'd have to take my word for it on this one.

And then there are plenty of games that don't even use 4 cores fully which developers love to shove in our faces so much. Generally speaking, it is only FPS games published by EA (i.e. BF, Crysis etc) with a more uptodate game engine would use multi-core fully/properly, if you play ANY games by the lesser developers, they are usually poorly/lazily coded to barely use 3 cores fully.
 
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All of the major new multi-platform engines thread well such as Frostbite 2,id Tech 5,Cry Engine 3 and the upcoming Unreal Engine 4. UE3 still can use 4 threads well and is old. These engines are going to form the basis of games spanning multiple genres spanning FPS,RPG,MMORPG,etc,especially now you are starting to see increasing consolidation among games companies. Considering the next generation consoles are increasing the number of threads even more, and with relatively lower single thread performance than most desktop CPUs,it is not surprising and it makes more sense to use common engines as game budgets spiral out of control.

With both Intel and AMD both working on things like TSX to improve scaling when more threads,in the future at the hardware level,even they are realising improved MT performance is important,and if anything the last 10 years has seen a slowing down in single thread performance increases.

This is the reason why people suggest even a locked low end Core i5 over a high end Core i3,ie,because it has much better multi-threaded performance,even if the Core i3 has slightly better single thread performance.
 
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I'd hate to see a Bulldozer or Piledriver chip in comparison to an i5 in RTS games when unit limit is set to unlimited :p
 
It depends.

If you absolutely max out everything with a decent gpu, i'd bet the cpu will become a concern. just check the 3dmark11 scores. The lowest scoring 79XX card on there is me, cause of the BD.

However in gaming terms, i doubt it'll be a problem, unless your running sli 670's/xf 7950's. But that also depends on a lot of other factors. What games? What resolution? etc etc.

An example would be:
My rig hasn't been maxed out while gaming on the cpu or gpu yet. but the most demanding thing i've played so far is BF3 64man metro rush with grenades going off left, right and center. i don't play RTS, Simulators or WoW, and my monitor is 1050@60hz so my rig is just fine for what i need.

TL;DR
It will bottleneck in some circumstances, its not a simple yes or no answer. A real question is, will you ever be in a situation where its the limiting factor?
 
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Games like Plane Side 2, World of Warcraft.... yes it will.

I know that from personal experience as i play Planet Side 2 and my FPS can drop to 50 FPS along with a drop in GPU usage.

(Phenom II x6 1090T @ 4.1Ghz)

Always around bases if there are a lot of people around, which more often than not is the case, you can see as many as 50 players around a base attacking it which will put the CPU under a lot of strain.

BF3 Multiplayer; not a problem even on full 64 Player maps it holds firm, the FX-8350 will be even better for that.

so it does depend on what games you play and whether or not your bothered about holding constant 60 FPS in games like Planet Side 2.
 
humbug said:
Games like Plane Side 2, World of Warcraft.... yes it will.

I know that from personal experience as i play Planet Side 2 and my FPS can drop to 50 FPS along with a drop in GPU usage.

(Phenom II x6 1090T @ 4.1Ghz)

Always around bases if there are a lot of people around, which more often than not is the case, you can see as many as 50 players around a base attacking it which will put the CPU under a lot of strain.

BF3 Multiplayer; not a problem even on full 64 Player maps it holds firm, the FX-8350 will be even better for that.

so it does depend on what games you play and whether or not your bothered about holding constant 60 FPS in games like Planet Side 2.
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Planetside 2 is the only game I have where I drop frames regardless of settings with my PII x4. They really need to update the render engine to use direct x 11.
 
@ Marine-RX179, DX11 engines do tend to be better threaded.

JonSmith said:
Planetside 2 is the only game I have where I drop frames regardless of settings with my PII x4. They really need to update the render engine to use direct x 11.
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If any of these MMO games would it probably would be PS2.

There is hope.
 
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